Mark Anthony Neal's Blog, page 1038

William 'Sandy' Darity Wins Prestigious Award from National Economic Association

from Stanford University

Duke Professor William A. "Sandy" Darity Jr. has been named as the Samuel Z. Westerfield Award recipient for 2012 by the National Economic Association (NEA). The award, the NEA's highest honor, will be presented on Jan. 7, 2012, at the organization's annual meeting in Chicago.
The Westerfield Award is named after the distinguished economist and former Ambassador to Liberia, Samuel Z. Westerfield. Established in 1973, it acknowledges outstanding scholarly achievements and public service by an African American economist. Previous recipients include Nobel Laureate Sir W. Arthur Lewis, Phyllis Wallace and Marcus Alexis.
In addition to being the Arts & Sciences Professor of Public Policy in the Sanford School, Darity is also chair of Duke's department of African and African American Studies, a professor of economics and director of the Research Network on Racial and Ethnic Inequality. His research focuses on inequalities related to race, class and ethnicity, stratification economics, schooling and the racial achievement gap, skin shade and labor market outcomes, the Atlantic slave trade and the Industrial Revolution and the social- psychological effects of unemployment.
He is editor-in-chief of the new edition of the International Encyclopedia of the Social Sciences, published by Macmillan Reference in 2008.
The National Economic Association was founded in 1969 to promote the professional lives of minorities within the profession. The NEA focuses on producing and distributing knowledge of economic issues that are of exceptional interest to native and immigrant African Americans, Latinos, and other people of color.

Google GlobalHue on the Black Digital Presence [video]

Google and GlobalHue teamed up with OTX to understand what role search and other digital advertising technologies play in African Americans' purchasing decisions. The research compared their receptivity to ads and explored how they use digital in their everyday lives.
Read then Google GlobalHue Digital African-American Dynamic Whitepaper:

Gina McCauley in ORDINARY ON ANY GIVEN DAY by Ayoka Chenzira

from Ayoka Chenzera
Founder of Blogging While Brown , Gina McCauley, shares her views on why the Internet does not level the playing feel when it comes to monetizing ideas by people of color and what she is doing about it during her Skype interview with filmmaker and digital media artist, Ayoka Chenzira.
The interview is part of Chenzira's interactive art installation, ORDINARY ON ANY GIVEN DAY, which highlights changemakers. The first generation of the project premiered at the International Symposium on Electronic Arts (ISEA2011) in Istanbul.
Learn more about the project ORDINARY ON ANY GIVEN DAY
Learn more about the work of Ayoka Chenzira .

"You Don't Need That": Privilege and the Holiday Season

"You Don't Need That": Privilege andthe Holiday SeasonDavidJ. Leonard and Anna Chow | NewBlackMan
LastSunday, we sat down to watch 60 Minutes.  While often informative, thisparticular episode profoundly impacted us.  In, "Hard times generation: homeless kids," Scott Pelleytells the story of several families struggling in the face of poverty andhomelessness.  In the shadows ofDisney World, the self-described "happiest place on earth," a generation ofkids is growing up as "America's motel generation."  Schools buses routinely pick up dozens of children at areamotels; others are not so "lucky," living in the back of trucks or in thefamily car.  60 Minutes featured Arielle and Austin Metzger, getting ready forschool in area gas stations, doing homework as the car drives around at night,and sleeping in the back of a truck in various spots in town.  ScottMaxwell, in "Poverty lurks in the shadows of Fantasyland," describes thedevastation in Central Florida in the following way:
The stories are everywhere.They always have been.
This is Orlando's reality.And it's far more complicated — and widespread — than the downtown panhandlerswho get the most attention.
On Sunday night — when"60 Minutes" aired its second segment on the plight of homelesschildren in our own backyard — 295 children slept at the coalition's shelter.
The average age was 8.
The number of kids is nearly20 percent higher than the year before.
It is what the coalition'sdirector, Brent Trotter, defines as Central Florida's "new normal."
"It's like atsunami," Trotter said of the lengthy recession. "It just keeps coming."
60 Minutes describes the situationas follows:
We all hear about therecovery - that the recession ended in 2009 - but some things are getting worsebefore they get better. And child poverty is one of them.
America's motel generationis growing fast.
Like the kids who came outof the Great Depression, this generation is being shaped by homelessness andhunger but also by memories of neighbors who opened their homes, and offamilies that refused to be broken.
Whilehit particularly hard, the problems of homelessness and poverty are a nationalepidemic with almost 25% of children living below the poverty line and 1.5million children homeless.   From Coast to Coast, the 1% has leftbehind America's children, particularly kids of color.  In Oregon, almost 50% of the state's20,000 black children live below the poverty line; 41% of Native kids and 35%Latino children face similar devastation. In other words, a large portion of black, Latino and Native Oregon kids"liveon less than $430 a week for a family of four."  Accordingto the National Center for Children and Poverty, 1:3 black children live inpoverty; in those states with the largest population of black children, povertyrates extend from 28% in California to 48% in Ohio.  
Listeningto the circumstances facing children in Florida, knowing that there are kidsthroughout America living under similar conditions, hit home, pushing us to dosomething.  Worse yet, NewtGingrich's recent comments and the troubling displays of consumerism visible on"Black Friday," reminded us of the importance of practicing what we preached:the importance of people over commodities.
Forseveral weeks, we have talked and debated about how we should celebrate theholiday season and more precisely what role gifts, shopping, and consumerismshould play for us as a family. Concerned about the burgeoning obsession amongst our kids to consume forthe sake of consumption, we struggled to find a way to convey these messages toour children in face of the commercialization of childhood. 
Havingalready talked to our kids about only receiving a few presents this holidayseason, the 60 Minutes episodeprovided us with a teachable moment in our family.  After watching the segment with our 7.5 year-old daughterand 4 year-old son, we talked to them about their own privileges, remindingthem why we would be limiting presents this year.  Our son, who responded to the sight of homelessness and povertyby lamenting "the bad news" was unfazed by the prospect of receiving a few lesspresents.  Our daughter, on theother hand, clearly felt cheated, bemoaning the fact that we were not gettingher a bunch of stuff.  Seeing kidsher own age without homes and struggling to find food did not eliminate herdisappointment, but it has gone a long way to explaining why we have made thisdecision. 
Ourkids won't be deprived but instead of giving them many gifts, and insteadexchanging gifts with other members of the family, we have decided to donate thatmoney to an organization working with families in Florida.  We have asked most of the members ofour extended family to withhold presents and instead to use that money to helpsomeone else.  While seemingly aneasy request, the prospect of disappointed children (our kids, nieces andnephews, cousins) also tears at us. The last thing any parent wants is to disappoint their children, yet wehope our kids will realize that the disappointment in no ways compares to theproblem of homelessness and living in poverty.  If this is the most disappointing moment in their lives,they are blessed beyond belief.  Ourhope is that they will realize how lucky they are and that the holidays shouldbe about family not consumption.    As parents we have long struggledto balance our values, knowledge, and the materialistic impulse of our children(as well as our own).  
Weencourage you to use this holiday season (and better yet, everyday in thefuture) to reflect about the many privileges that we all enjoy and to consume abit less for yourselves and give a bit more to the people in need.  If you are interested in working withyour children about giving to the needy this holiday, we offer a few tips (althoughwe are not experts here):
·       After watchingthe 60 Minutes segment you can:
1.    Ask your kids toname a few things s/he would like to receive for the holidays and discuss whatwould happen if they didn't receive them (nothing).  2.   Ask your kids toname items that are necessary/essential for day to day living vs. desirable/wantitems and discuss the differences between these two categories.3.     Discuss theimportance of family and effects of poverty on family structure.4.     Play a game ofMonopoly and take their money away after 20 minutes and discuss the effects.5.  Donate, donate,donate—give away clothes/toys, donate money to organizations, volunteer time atshelters, etc.
***
David J. Leonard is Associate Professor in the Department of CriticalCulture, Gender and Race Studies at Washington State University, Pullman. Hehas written on sport, video games, film, and social movements, appearing inboth popular and academic mediums. His work explores the political economy ofpopular culture, examining the interplay between racism, state violence, andpopular representations through contextual, textual, and subtextual analysis.He is the author of Screens Fade toBlack: Contemporary African American Cinema and the forthcoming After Artest: Race and the War on Hoop(SUNY Press). Leonard is a regular contributor to NewBlackMan and blogs @ No Tsuris.
Anna Chow is the mother of two loving, intelligent, and attimes, challenging children.  She currently works at Washington StateUniversity as an Academic Advisor for the College of Liberal Arts.  

"Who Got the Camera?": Hip-Hop's Quest for Social Justice

"WhoGot the Camera?": Hip-Hop's Quest for Social Justice byMark Anthony Neal | NewBlackMan
Inhis book Let's Get Free: A Hip-Hop Theory ofJustice , former United States prosecutor and George WashingtonUniversity Law Professor Paul Butler suggest that Hip-Hop has "the potential totransform justice in the United States." (123)  Butler's simple assertion is that "Hip-Hop exposes theAmerican justice system as profoundly unfair." (124)  The annals of Hip-Hop are filled with examples of artistsscrutinizing law enforcement and the criminal justice system, the most famousexample being, N.W.A.'s "Fuck the Police," which begins with the explicitclaim, that the group was putting the Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD) ontrial for abuse and misconduct—two years beforethe Rodney King beating.  Too oftensuch moments are reduced to a nostalgia for a so-called more "conscious" era ofrap music, yet recent film shorts by B. Dolan and Pharoahe Monch, suggest thatHip-Hop's critical eye for social justice is as keen as ever.

Morethan twenty years ago, on the evening of March 2, 1991, motorist Rodney Kingwas stopped by LAPD officers for speeding.  King's subsequent beating was videotaped by passerby GeorgeHoliday and quickly became the most famous evidence of police brutality, thoughthe four officers who were charged with brutality were later acquitted of  charges.  The Rodney King beating was digital confirmation of whatmany Blacks experienced in relationship to law enforcement in the 1980s andearly 1990s, whether exemplified by the choking death of graffiti artist MichaelStewart, the shooting of the elderly Eleanor Bumpurs and ofcourse the beating of King.  
Inan era marked by the increased presence of law enforcement in Blackcommunities—a by-product of buy and bust forms of policing, that fed theexpansion of the prison industrial complex—young Black men were particularlysusceptible to blatant forms of police brutality.  As such, so called "gangsta rap"—in spite of its problematicnarratives with regards to gender, sexuality, and violence—was likely the mostorganic documentation of police brutality in Black communities.  As political scientist Lester Spencenotes in his book Starein the Darkness: The Limits of Hip-Hop and Black Politics , he was "hardpressed to find a single song that was uncritical of the police." The RodneyKing beating highlighted, the power and importance of counter-surveillance oflaw enforcement in this country—a value that was instilled within the Blackbody politic twenty-five years before the Rodney King beating, by the BlackPanther Party.
Tobe sure The Black Panther Party (for Self-Defense), with founders the late HueyP. Newton and Bobby Seale, were not the first individuals within Blackcommunities to attempt to hold law enforcement accountable, but at the heightof the Civil Rights/Black Power Movement the Black Panther Party became themost visible proponents of the power of policing the police.  As Alondra Nelson notes in her new book Body and Soul: TheBlack Panther Party and the Fight Against Medical Discrimination , theBlack Panther Party was founded on the premise of  "afford[ing] protection for poor blacks from police brutality."In its earliest incarnation in late 1966, armed Black Panther Party membersoversaw police activities in Black communities from a distance allowable bylaw. The Mulford Act,which outlawed loaded guns in public, was passed by the California Statelegislature a year later, in direct response to the activism of the BlackPanther Party.
Twentyyears later, Hip-Hop culture reanimated this particular activist thread,lyrically reporting on the nature of unfairness of the judicial system and theabuse of power by law enforcement. Yet even in that mode, Hip-Hop narratives seemed to lend itself tovisual sensibilities and the coming digital revolution.  In his book InSearch of The Black Fantastic: Politics & Popular Culture in the Post-CivilRights Era , political scientist Richard Iton observes that BlackPopular Culture became "suddenly, particularly, and violently public…a developmentthat led to a range of gatekeeping responses from those committed torestricting the circulation of certain kinds of information within black communitiesand maintaining 'order'." (104) According to Iton, this heightened visibilityand "policing" was coupled with the "proliferation of hand-held andsurveillance video cameras, camera phones, and the  awareness of these new technologies," creating the"internalization of the expectation that one is always potentially beingwatched." (105)
Thatsense of being watched was manifested in the popularity of a series like Cops which premiered in 1989, and offereda pro-Law Enforcement view of criminal justice, and represented one of the mostsustained representations of so-called Black criminality; Cops was one of the longest running series in television history.  Hip-Hop became a naturalcounter-balance to this dynamic, particularly as the Hip-Hop generationembraced cutting edge technologies from, beepers to hand-held cameras.  When Ice Cube recorded "Who Got the Camera,"months after the officers in the King beating were acquitted, he spoke to agenerational ethos that reanimated the spirit of the Black Panther Party, armedwith cameras and microphones, instead of assault weapons.
Arguably,the hyper-visibility of Hip-Hop and Black Popular Culture since the mid-1990s—inthe context of celebrity culture—has  functioned as a form of surveillance, which has diverted attentionaway from the ways that power and finance has been consolidated in the pastgeneration.  The amount of scrutinythat Kanye West and Russell Simmons generated in response to their appearanceat #Occupy protests is evidence of how effective this surveillance has been;there are a generation of Americans more knowledgeable of the net-worth ofLebron James, Shawn Carter, Tyra Banks and the Real Housewives of Atlanta than they are of the Board members ofthe most powerful financial institutions in this country, many of whom werecomplicit, if not direct agents, in the financial collapse that instigated the#Occupy Movement.
Thebrilliance of recent projects by B. Dolan and Pharoahe Monch is that theyre-purpose the very technological platforms that have increased thesurveillance of American citizens and literally adjusted the frame to offercounter-surveillance and critique of American institutions like lawenforcement.  The presence ofsocial media and accessible technology has allowed such projects to circulatein ways that were unimaginable even a decade ago. Neither project needed, forexample, 106th and Park orHot 97, for example, to find theiraudience.
B.Dolan's song and video for "Film The Police" featuring Toki Wright, Jasiri X,Buddy Peace, and Sage Francis is an update of N.W.A.'s classic "Fuck thePolice," which in light of the visible abuses of law enforcement in the pastfew years—Sean Bell and Oscar Grant immediately come to mind—is more thantimely.  Yet there is a morespecific context for "Film the Police," as law enforcement organizations havesought to criminalize the filming of police officers.   

Suchefforts came to the forefront a few years ago when a Simon Glik, videotaped withcell phone, Boston police offers beating a man.  Police officers arrested Glik, an immigration attorney, andcharged him with an obscure wiretapping statute, which was quickly thrown outof court.  Glik and the ACLU fileda countersuit against the police department and in August of 2011, the FirstCircuit Court of Appeals concluded, "thatGlik was exercising clearly established First Amendment rights in filming theofficers in a public space, and that his clearly-established Fourth Amendmentrights were violated by his arrest without probable cause." Propelled with adocumentarian sensibility, "Film the Police" is as much offering evidence ofpolice brutality and misconduct,  asit is a call to "point and shoot"—an open declaration of the right of Americancitizens, in the midst of militarized crackdowns on public dissent, to holdtheir institutions accountable.
Concernsabout police misconduct also inform the short film for Pharaohe Monch's "Clap(One Day)," which was the featured single from Monch's stellar 2011 release W.A.R. (We Are Renegades). Directed by Terence Nance, who also shotthe short film Native Son for Blitzthe Ambassador, and starring Gbenga Akinnagbe (The Wire's Chris Partlow),  "Clap (One Day)" is set on a Brooklynmorning in the aftermath of a cop shooting. An informant provides a detectivewith information—in a cash and carry exchange--about where the shooter's familyresides, cautioning, that the shooter is rarely present there—and presumablywouldn't be so, if he is suspected of the shooting.  A SWAT squad is dispatched to the apartment complex, andthough the officers rush into the wrong apartment—1B instead of 1D—andaccidentally kill a black child who was using the bathroom, there is every indication that such a fate would have beenmet by the family of the cop shooter. In either instance, the confrontation draws attention to the generallack of regard for life by law enforcement officers charged with policing—oroccupying—Black neighborhoods; the death of the young boy would be viewed bysome within law enforcement as simply collateral damage.


"Clap(One Day)" resonates in the aftermath of the accidental shooting death of seven-year-oldAiyanaStanley-Jones, who was sitting of the couch with family member, whenmembers of a Detroit SWAT team bumrushed their apartment—with reality TVcameras in tow—and officer Joseph Weekley fired a single shot to Stanley-Joneshead.  Weekley was recentlyindicted on charges of involuntary manslaughter. 
Thefamily and neighbors in "Clap (One Day)" would not have such recourse, as theytake retribution into their own hand. Whereas a term like "Clap" invokes gunfire in many urban communities,Monch uses the term as a metaphor for the deep knowledge that many possess inBlack communities regarding the misconduct and abuse of law enforcementofficers; community members literally break out into rhythmic clapping wheneverthey confront the offending officer, who not so surprisingly, lives in the veryneighborhood where the killing occurs. That the officer (portrayed by Akinnagbe) lives in a working classcommunity is a subtle reminder of the economic status of many officers asmunicipal employees; an irony that has not been lost on many who have witnessedofficers on the frontline of abuse of #Occupy protesters.
Whetheremploying a documentary style or the conceptual art, "Film the Police" and"Clap (One Day)" offers further evidence of the critical role that Hip-Hop culturecontinues to play in the pursuit of social justice; a reminder of the power andresponsibility that individual Americans also have in that pursuit.
*** Mark Anthony Neal is the author of five books, including the forthcoming Looking for Leroy: (Il)Legible Black Masculinities (New York University Press) and host of the weekly webcast Left of Black .  Neal is Professor of Black Popular Culture in the Department of African & African American Studies at Duke University.

My Barack Obama Problem

My Barack Obama Problem by Mark Naison | special to NewBlackMan
Like manypeople on the Left, I have become disillusioned with the ObamaPresidency.  As one of those people who devoted huge amounts of time,money and energy to getting Obama elected, and who cried on election night whenhis victory was assured, I found myself hoping against hope that there wassome redemptive quality to his leadership amidst expansion of foreignwars,  attacks on public school teachers, bailouts of banks unaccompaniedby serious controls, and a host of other policies that appeared to contradicteverything he stood for during his campaign.
Although myheart wasn't in it, I tried to justify his policies as the result of apowerful congressional opposition that refused to support policies thatbrought the full power of the federal government behind job creation andincome policies designed to ease the pain of the  nation's struggling working class and middle class, along with those long trapped inpoverty.
But recently,I have started to think that the "real" Barack Obama is not the communityorganizer pictured in Dreams from MyFather or the fierce defender of the middle class that emerged on thecampaign trail, but a cynical, ambitious, politician who loves spending timewith the rich and the powerful and who has tied his administration's and hisown future to gaining their support.
The straw thatbroke the camel's back, after many disappointments, was the image of thePresident regaling a $2,500 a plate dinner in San Francisco while Occupy Oaklandwas being attacked by an army of police using tear gas, rubber bullets, pepperspray and bulldozers.  The Obama of Dreamsfrom My Father would have rushed across the Bay to stand with theOccupiers, but this Obama didn't so much as give the protesters a secondthought. 
The Presidentwas totally relaxed and in his element with the hedge fund and dot comexecutives, and media moguls, supporting his campaign. THEY, not the Occupiers,were now his real constituency. Not only were they the ones funding hispresidential campaign, they were the ones who were going to be employing himafter he left the Presidency, assuring that he, and his family would be part ofthe 1 Percent for the foreseeable future.
As a youngman, who like the President, grew up in a lower middle class family and went toan Ivy League college and graduate school, I can understand the lure of greatwealth and power to someone who grew up with neither.  When you are atalented person from a family of modest means, it can be very heady to becourted by and praised by some of the nation's smartest, wealthiest and mostpowerful people.   And if you are so talented and charismatic thatthese people decide to groom you to become one of them, it can definitely persuadeyou to make compromises that end up affecting your conscience and your socialconsciousness.
For verypersonal reasons, I never enjoyed hanging out in the clubs and restaurants and vacationhouses of the wealthy as much as the times I spent in neighborhood ballfields, schoolyards, and community centers interacting with working class andmiddle class people. I keep my feet in both worlds but I consider "the hood" tobe my moral compass, the place where I have to go to find out if my life'smission has any real traction, any real meaning.
But I fear thePresident is different.  The people who come to the White House, whetherthe professional basketball players who show up at his birthday parties, thetalented musicians who come to entertain, or the CEO's and political kingmakerswho come to discuss policy, are always a cross session of the most successfulpeople in whatever field they are in. The President never tries to bring inordinary people to talk to him privately and find out what is going on in theirworkplaces and neighborhoods. Those are not the people he trust, those are notthe people he is comfortable with; those are not the people he wants to spendtime with when he leaves the Presidency.
A real cue tothe President's character came when he decided to host an Education Summit. Tothis event, he invited CEO's of the nation's largest corporations, andexecutives in some of the nation's wealthiest foundations, but not oneteacher.   This is the real Barack Obama—someone who has left theworld he grew up in, and the communities in Chicago he organized in, and whocraves the company and advice of people, like himself, who have accomplishedgreat things or accumulated great wealth.
In some ways,he is the perfect President for a country where ambition is honored aboveloyalty, generosity, and concern for those who have fallen in hard times andwhere we honor those who have overcome great obstacles to "rise to the top."
But whether heis the right President to lead us through the worst economic crisis in seventyyears and stand up for all the people who have lost jobs and homes and hope isanother matter entirely.
***
Mark Naison is a Professor of African-American Studies andHistory at Fordham University and Director of Fordham's Urban Studies Program.He is the author of two books, Communistsin Harlem During the Depression and WhiteBoy: A Memoir. Naison is also co-director of the BronxAfrican American History Project (BAAHP). Research from the BAAHP will bepublished in a forthcoming collection of oral histories Before the Fires: An Oral History of African American Life From the1930's to the 1960's.

The Long View—W.E.B. DuBois, A Forgotten Legacy

The LongView—W.E.B. DuBois, A Forgotten Legacy byWalter Greason | special to NewBlackMan
W.E.B.DuBois built the world you live in today.  Brick by brick, concept byconcept, he tore down a world dedicated to colonialism, segregation, andexploitation.  Who was he?  Sadly, too many people will ask thisquestion with flawless sincerity.  The United States Congress essentiallyerased him from the public record because he stood for peace in an age ofmultiple wars.  DuBois's academic and intellectual accomplishments wouldfill this entire newspaper for years, if they received the coverage heearned.  In brief, his career began before the Presidency of WilliamMcKinley and ended just before the assassination of John F. Kennedy. While the world celebrated Andrew Carnegie, J.P. Morgan, Thomas Edison, andHenry Ford, DuBois refined Frederick Douglass' concept of universal humanequality and developed the global political agenda of democraticself-rule. 
DuBois'smost recognized insight was the exploration of 'double consciousness' – the  idea that within a single person therewas a self-image and an awareness of how other people saw you.  Thedistinction between the internal and external perceptions of a person couldutterly destroy an individual, especially when the difference between the twovisions involved the idea of race.
However,another keen insight came from his work, "The Freedom to Learn," in1949.  DuBois asserted that the right to learn was the most difficultachievement humanity had won in 5000 years of struggle.  Considerthat.  More than the Jeffersonian rights to life, liberty, and property,the right to learn was most valuable.  In the long process of human beingsexploring different form of civilization as we moved from religion toenlightenment to science in pursuit of greater freedom, learning was never aright. 
ForDuBois, this achievement was a product of the American commitment to publiceducation in the late nineteenth century.  Education was no longer theexclusive domain of the wealthy or the devout.  Everyone couldlearn.  The content of the education could certainly be debated. Which lessons were most appropriate for which people?  Still, thefundamental claim that everyone had a right to more information built theconceptual foundation for the schools, libraries, and colleges across theworld.  Indeed, it is the premise behind the widespread informationsharing we do with websites like Wikipedia, Youtube, and Google.
Whocarries the torch today for increased freedom, education, and a better worldtomorrow?  Salamishah Tillet and Aishah Simmons have led the way in givinggreater voices to women around the world in their work No! The Rape Documentary and its related projects.  JeffreyO.G. Ogbar, Mark Anthony Neal, Marc Lamont Hill, Dawn Elissa-Fisher, and MarciaDawkins have all established the ways hip hop music transforms societiestowards democracy.  Mary Sies, Thomas Sugrue, Robin Bachin, John McCarthy,and Julian Chambliss have applied these lessons to understanding architecture,environmentalism, and metropolitan growth for more than twenty years.  Weare all inheritors of DuBois' unparalleled intellectual legacy. 
Fromhis work on The Philadelphia Negroto The Souls of Black Folk to The Crisis Magazine to Black Reconstruction (of Democracy) in America,DuBois was the voice that invented an America and a world that stood forjustice and equality in ways inconceivable when his career began.  If wewant the best world in the twenty-first century, we must teach these lessonsand engage this work in ways that have been too rare over the last fortyyears.  DuBois is the touchstone for establishing the best humanprinciples for the future.  There are literally thousands of interpretersof his work throughout secondary and higher education.  When all Americansrediscover and embrace these ideas, we will have taken another step towardsachieving the beloved community.
***
WalterGreason is Associate Professor of History at Ursinus College. He is the authorof The Path to Freedom: Black Familiesin New Jersey, The History Press, 2010.

What to Make of the Hazing Crisis at HBCUs

Professor James Braxton Peterson, director of Africana Studies at Lehigh University  speaks with Dr. Boyce Watkins and political analyst Yvette Carnell about the hazing situation with the band at Florida A&M University after the death of Robert Champion.

Short Film: The Colored Waiting Room by Dr. Guy's MusiQology

This short film is an introduction to Guthrie Ramsey's Dr. MusiQology Presents The Colored Waiting Room. The film features many of the musicians, ideas and producers that made this such a great project to produce.

Abdul Alkalimat: Theory in Black Studies--Tradition

AFRO 490: Tradition