Mark Anthony Neal's Blog, page 1041

Law Professor Paul Butler on "A Hip-Hop Theory of Justice"

The author of Let's Get Free: A Hip-Hop Theory of Justice , Paul Butler is former federal prosecutor, and a law professor at George Washington University in Washington, D.C.

Jay-Z Subject of Georgetown University Course

from AP:
Author and educator Michael Eric Dyson is decoding the rhymes of rapper Jay-Z to teach students at Georgetown University about race, gender and poverty. But critics argue lyrics about swag and hustle have no place in higher education. (Dec. 2)

This is What Democracy Looks Like: The Occupy Movement Will Reinvent Itself

This is WhatDemocracy Looks Like:    The OccupyMovement Will Reinvent Itself byMark Naison | NewBlackMan
Thetent cities have been bulldozed and the parks have been cleared.  Big citymayors see clean spaces, washed and sanitized, and hope that the Occupationswere a bad dream. Obama supporters hope that the three months of protestrepresented a brief detour in a progressive movement that will ultimately cometo its senses and concentrate on re-electing the president and campaigning forDemocratic candidates for congress, realizing- with the help of a collection ofbizarre and frighteningly ill informed Republican presidential aspirants--,that the most important initiatives to achieve a more just society take placeat the polls, not in the streets.
It'sa plausible scenario, to be sure, neat and rational. As many liberal punditshave pointed out, taking practical steps to address the economic inequalityissues Occupy Wall street has raised- such as shifting the tax burden from theworking class and middle class to the very wealthy- can only be done bycreating electoral majorities in favor of such policies that don't currentlyexist, and that can only be achieved through the "grunt work" of voterregistration an organizing election campaigns in behalf of progressivecandidates. And there is no question that many constituencies who were uneasilyallied with the Occupy movements, particularly labor unions, plan to do justthat in coming months and coming years.
ButI am not sure that the experience of the last three months can be nearlyexcised from the national consciousness and the energy of Occupy supportersnearly directed into electoral activity.
Firstof all, the experience of direct democracy in the Occupy movement has had aprofound, even transformative effect, on those who have participated; one thatwill not be so easy to persuade those who have experienced it torelinquish.  The young people in this movement—part of an entiregeneration facing a stagnant job market and crippling debt—discovered  they had the power to make the wholeworld pay attention to what they were saying by occupying public spaces,working outside normal political channels and refusing to anoint leaders tospeak for them. 
Butit was more than the reaction of the outside world that was transformative. Itwas the transformation of the Occupy spaces themselves into places where freediscussion and debate could flourish in ways that existed nowhere else in thesociety, certainly not in increasingly corporatized and bureaucratizeduniversities, stressed filled public schools under pressure to deliver highertest scores, or workplaces ruled by dictatorial managers cognizant that a tightjob market assured them of worker compliance.  
WhenOccupiers chanted "This is what democracy looks like," they were proclaimingwhat few people have been willing to acknowledge—that lived democracy and freedomof expression have been eroding in the United States for some time, asinstitutions become more hierarchical and wealth has been more concentrated atthe top.  What the Occupy movement created was a space for a no holds bardiscussion of a huge array of issues where people, thanks to the mic checkmethod of repeating comments, actually listened to one another.  Do suchfree zones exist in our schools,  universities and workplaces?  Ifthey did, the Occupy movements would not have generated the levels ofparticipation they did!  There is a reason why Occupy movements sprung upin over 300 towns and cities and that is because they embodied a deeply feltneed for freedom of expressions as well as a hunger to address issues ofeconomic inequality and the mal-distribution of wealth.
Whichbrings us to the next point about why this movement is likely to persist andthat is the reaction of authorities, whether mayors, or college presidents, toits emergence. The size, technological sophistication, and at times theastonishing violence of police mobilizations against Occupy protests dramatizedto the nation, and the world, the degree to which the United States has becomea police/national security state willing to go to extraordinary attempts tointimidate its own citizens.  To immigrants, and to people living inminority and working class communities, particularly young men, this insight isnothing new—they have experienced intimidation by police forces and othergovernment authorities on an almost daily basis, not only in theirneighborhoods, but in prisons and detention centers. But until the Occupymovement, most middle class Americans including college educated youth, couldignore abuses of police power or pretend that the most extreme examples (thepolice murder of an unarmed Sean Bell in Queens NY) were more the exceptionthan the rule.
Butnow, for three months, the people of the United States have been exposedto a steady array of images of police forces using helicopters,bulldozers, sound cannons, tear gas and pepper spray not only againstprotesters peacefully assembling in universities and public parks, but againstrepresentatives of the press covering these events, and doing so with thecollusion of the federal office of Homeland Security.  Not only were suchpolice tactics borrowed from the playbook used by police in gentrifying citiesto intimidate and contain minority youth, they drew upon post 9/11 NationalSecurity protocols used to combat terrorism such as closing bridges and subwaysand placing limits on what photographs might appear in the press.
Inthe repression of the Occupy movement, images of free speech under attack werecreated that cannot be neatly excised from the national imagination any morethan pictures of Bull Connor unleashing police dogs and water hoses on teenagemarchers  in Birmingham in 1963.
Ifthe Occupy movement's showed us, in words and deeds, "This is What DemocracyLooks Like" those attacking the Occupations showed the world, albeitunintentionally "This is What a Police State Looks Like."
Itwould be nice, our liberal friends tell us, if we could forget all of thisunpleasantness and go back to the days of the first Obama presidential campaignwhen youth idealism and energy were directed to electing the first blackpresident. Now, they say, it's time to give him a second term, with a strongDemocratic congress, so he can finish the job he started.
Butthe given what is happened in the last three months, I don't think that islikely to happen. The genie has been let out of the bottle. Young people whohave had a tasted of lived democracy of a kind they had never experienced andthen watched it snuffed out by highly militarized police units using war on terrortactics will not become obedient doorbell ringers for a president who ignoredtheir protest and may have secretly encouraged its suppression.
TheOccupy movement may not take the same form as it did this fall, but it is verylikely to reinvent itself in forms that will not please its liberal would becontrollers, or its conservative critics.
Andthat is a very good thing for the country.
***
Mark Naison is a Professor ofAfrican-American Studies and History at Fordham University and Director ofFordham's Urban Studies Program. He is the author of two books, Communists in Harlem During the Depressionand White Boy: A Memoir. Naison isalso 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.

"Acting White" in the "Post-Black" Era on the December 5th Left of Black

"ActingWhite" in the "Post-Black" Era on the December 5th Left of BlackLeft ofBlackhost and Duke University Professor Mark Anthony Neal is joined in-studioby Professor Karolyn Tyson,Associate Professor of Sociology at the University of North Carolina at ChapelHill and author of Integration Interrupted: Tracking, Black Students,and Acting White After Brown (OxfordUniversity Press).  Neal and Tysondiscuss the prevalence of the "Acting White" myth as it relates to Black highschoolstudents and how the myth obscures the more insidious practice of  "Racialized Tracking" in PublicEducation.Later Neal is joined via Skype© by Ytasha Womack, journalist and author of Post-Black: How a Generation is Redefining African American Identity(Lawrence Hill Books).  Neal andWomack discuss the concept of "Post-Black" and what impact it has had onidentity formation among the so-called "Post-Black" generation.***
Leftof Black airs at 1:30 p.m. (EST) on Mondays on Duke's Ustream channel: ustream.tv/dukeuniversity.Viewers are invited to participate in a Twitter conversation with Neal andfeatured guests while the show airs using hash tags #LeftofBlack or#dukelive. 
Left of Black is recorded and produced at the John Hope Franklin Center of International and InterdisciplinaryStudies at Duke University.
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FollowLeft of Black on Twitter: @LeftofBlackFollowMark Anthony Neal on Twitter: @NewBlackManFollowYtasha Womack on Twitter: @YtashaWomack
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Performing Herman Cain

Performing Herman Cain
by Mark Anthony Neal | NewBlackMan


I'vetaken as much interest in Herman Cain's now suspended campaign for president,as I might have over  whetherindividuals choose to use mustard or mayonnaise on their ham sandwiches.  Beyond simple curiosities about why somepotential voters found Cain appealing, I've had little desire to find out whatanimates Cain's political concerns.  This is not to say that I didn't share the belief among someAfrican-Americans, that Cain was some index of the ultimate limits of post-racediscourses—themselves a victory for multiculturalism, as opposed to a victoryover anti-Black racism, as Vijay Prashad has describedit.  Yet, Cain's candidacy has beenshrouded in so much absurdity, that it's hard to see him as anything other thana performance artist.


Forall the talk that necessarily questions Cain's commitment to a Black politicalproject and wrongly questions his "blackness," as if Black identity can besimply reduced to a content analysis, Herman Cain's "performance" is filledwith enough racialized signifiers, that his oft willingness to break out insong is far more interesting than even the sexual dramas (some potentiallycriminal and others simply morally questionable) that have all but ended hisquest for the Republican nomination for President.


Itwas during a recent dinner conversation with two colleages, Guthrie Ramsey, Jr.and Angela Ards, neither of whom who had spent much time watching Cain, thatthe performative aspects of Cain's public presence came into focus for me.  Both Ramsey and Ards have expressedrelative shock over Cain's clearly "raced" diction;  if Herman Cain had once called you on a cold sales call some thirtyyears ago, there would be little to suggest that he wasn't a Black man from theSouth. 


Indeed,the way that Ramsey and Ards described recoiling at the sound of Cain's voice (asopposed his "twirling in my head" moment) was reminiscent of some of thestruggles faced by New York Governor Alfred Smith more than eighty-years ago,when running for President. Potential voters outside of the Northeast,similarly recoiled in response to Smith's decidedly "New Yawk" accent,particular in an era well before television became such a vital component ofnational politics.


Theirony is that only four years ago, then Senator Barack Obama would have neverbeen taken seriously as a presidential candidate had he sounded like Cain orany number of Southern Black men—something the President's current runningmate, noted  at the time. 


BothObama and Cain's vocal performances are reminders of the role that the voice has played in establishing the"authenticity" of Blackness. One hundred years ago when Black "black-faced"minstrels were in open competition with White "black-faced" minstrels over whowere the real "darkies," the tippingpoint occurred with the development of the phonograph and the "talkies" (motionpictures with sound), and the ability of Black artists—most prominently BertWilliams—to approximate Blackness insound (as opposed to the use of black vernacular language) in ways thatwere more challenging for White "black-faced" minstrels; Al Jolson simplysounded like he was trying to sound Black.

Despitehis "sound of Blackness" Cain had been successful reaching a broader audiencethan expected, in large part of his deft negotiation of racial nostalgia andracial accommodation—none which makes him any less Black or so-calledself-hating, but simply more willing to work within the constraints of a highlyracialized society,  on that society'sterms.  It goes without saying,perhaps, that Cain is a racial throwback. 


Theoft-cited example of Cain's experiences at Morehouse College in the 1960s,where his father insisted that he "stay out of trouble," in an era when Blackcollege students were indeed starting trouble and changing the world for thebetter—even at an institution known today for its marked socialconservatism.  This admission onCain's part, no doubt strikes a chord for potential voters who still readPresident Obama as postmodern Black Power radical, as embodied in the frankracial talk of his life partner Michele Obama during the throes of the 2008primary season.


Thatbit of autobiographical positioning on Cain's part was easy; moredeliberate—and complicated—has been his performance of spirituals, at anynumber on campaign events.  Hiswillingness to take on the role of the minstrel—the American brand of travelingbards who traveled the country, telling stories of far away lands, and not tobe mistaken with the "black-faced" variety, who traveled the land embodying"the other" in Blackness—has in some way been a stroke of performative genius,no matter how uncomfortable it makes the Black rank-and-file feel. 


Thesongs are a gesture towards nostalgia, a way to make some Whites morecomfortable with Cain, and clearly not a performance for simply performance sake;  Cain has clearly been singing these songs all of his lifeand sounds pleasing doing so. Quiet as it's kept, Cain's gestures were every bit as effective as thePresident's "dirt off my shoulder" gesture, which quickly became part of themythical lore that has characterized Candidate Barack Obama.


Forexample, when Cain broke out into a version of "He Looked Beyond My Faults(Amazing Grace)," at the National Press Club, to a melody most recognizable asthe Irish ballad "Danny Boy," few knew that there was a version of "AmazingGrace" that was set to "Londonberry Air," an Irish song that dates back to thelate 18th century. "Londonberry Air" later served as the melody for Frederick Weatherley's"Danny Boy," which the late Dottie Rambo later appropriated for her 1970southern gospel classic "He Looked Beyond My Faults". 


ThatRambo worked closely with well-known televangelists like Oral Roberts, JohnHagee, Jim Bakker, Paula White, Pat Robertson and T.D. Jakes, speaks volumesabout the audiences that Cain was trying to reach with his gestures.  As much as positioning himself at the anti-BarackObama—which can't be easily conflated as "anti-Black"—Cain shrewdly, via hisuse of Southern gospel, positioned himself as the true southern conservative.


Inmany ways, it is not surprising that what has undone Cain's campaign is not hisshuffle back to Dixie routine—which none of his Republican peers could haveever pulled off credibly—but  thebasic truism that as an African-American candidate you simply have to be abovethe moral fray.   

Unfortunately for Cain there is no nostalgic era thathe can conjure to help navigate the still-water mess that continues to be raceand sex, unless he starts singing R Kelly's "Bump N' Grind" at future publicappearances.


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MarkAnthony Neal is the author of five books including the forthcoming Looking for Leroy: (Il)Legible BlackMasculinities (New York University Press) and Professor of African &African-American Studies at Duke University.  He is founder and managingeditor of NewBlackMan and host of the weekly webcast Leftof Black .  Follow him on Twitter @NewBlackMan .

Book Trailer: The Passion of Tiger Woods

Duke University Professor Orin Starn casts his anthropological eye on two topics most academics wouldn't touch: celebrity scandal and golf.

By dissecting the social, economic and political strands of "Tigergate," Starn's book The Passion of Tiger Woods: An Anthropologist Reports on Golf, Race, and Celebrity Scandal gets at the heart of American culture in the 21st Century.

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"Orin Starn's excellent examination of Tiger Woods offers deep insight, original thinking, and valuable new perspectives. This book tells us a lot about Tiger, but even more about ourselves."—Jaime Diaz, senior writer, Golf Digest

"The next time someone asks me about anthropology's value to contemporary cultural debates, I'll just tell them to read Orin Starn's The Passion of Tiger Woods, a funny, engaging, readable and unapologetically anthropological take on celebrity scandal, popular culture, and American sports. From playful musings on a potentially recessive 'golf gene' to critiques of (wildly popular!) speculative genetic theories about black athleticism, Starn takes us on an entertaining ride through the history of a sport, the rise of its current superstar, and the media maelstrom of racial and sexual imagery that followed from a relatively minor car crash in Florida one fateful Thanksgiving night. I'm one of those people who was tired of hearing about Tigergate almost as soon as the story broke, but Starn does a convincing job of showing me why I should have been listening and watching even more closely."—John L. Jackson Jr., author of Racial Paranoia: The Unintended Consequences of Political Correctness

The Today Show: Reading, Writing, Rap? Jay-Z Inspires College Course

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Had the privilege of presenting portions of "My Passport Say Shawn: Towards a Cosmopolitan Hip-Hop Masculinity" (from the forthcoming Looking for Leroy: (Il)Legible Black Masculinities) to Michael Eric Dyson's class on October 5th.

Is the New York City Public School System a Police State?

from BlackLikeMoi :
In this video, Dr. Boyce Watkins speaks with Professor Christopher Emdin from Columbia University. Dr. Watkins and Dr. Emdin respond to the recent report that one child per day is arrested in New York City public schools and 93% of those kids are black or brown.  The conversation (the audio is a bit choppy, but we're working on that) focuses on black kids in the school system and why they are more likely to be punished by teachers.

A Victory for the 99%: Movers & Officers Show Compassion Toward Elderly Women Scheduled for Eviction

Read more at ThinkProgress

No Heir Jordan: The NBA Lockout and the End of an Era

NoHeir Jordan: The NBA Lockout and the End of an Era byDavid Leonard | NewBlackMan
TheNBA lockout is over.  With theplayers and the owners having reached an agreement, basketball will returnbeginning Christmas Day.  Ushering in substantial structural changes to the league, which willlikely restrict player movement and constrain middle-class player salaries, theNBA lockout will also go down in history as an end to the search for the nextMichael Jordan.  Since MJ'sretirement, the league, its marketing partners, and fans alike have pinned forsomeone to fill his AIR Jordans. Each anointed as the next Michael Jordan, Penny Hardaway, Grant Hill,Vince Carter and Harold Miner ("Baby Jordan") all failed to deliver because ofinjuries, limited production, or a combination of both.  Each in their own right was imagined asa player who could fill the shoes, whose talents, charisma, and athleticismwould propel the NBA during its post-Jordan era.  None of them met these expectations resulting in an NBA in continuedsearch for a twenty-first century basketball God.    
KobeBryant and LeBron James each took the mantle of the next Jordan to places noneof the other NMJ (next Michael Jordan) had reached.  Kobe, because of his talents, the ways in which he patternedhis game and demeanor after Jordan, his quest for rings, and most importantlyhis competitiveness, all elevated the comparisons, leading many to argue thathe was the NMJ.  Yet because ofEagle County, Colorado, because of his conflicts with Shaquille O'Neal and theultimate demise of the Lakers Dynasty, and because he is said to have demandedto get out of Los Angeles, Kobe has fallen short in other's quest to find thenext Michael Jordan.  Like Kobe,LeBron James has delivered on the court, dazzling fans with his passing skills,his athleticism, and his ability to make his teammates better.  Worse than struggling to secure atitle, LeBron James fall short in the MJ sweepstakes when he decided to takehis talents to South Beach.
Whilepossessing the skills, charisma, and baller potential, the two most promisingplayers to lead the NBA, to build upon the global popularity established byJordan, have fallen short not because of their basketball talents but theirinability (or our inability) to fill mythical shoes.  The quest to find the Next Michael Jordan, thus, has nothingto do with basketball but rather is part of an effort to find a player whoreinforces popular narratives about the American Dream, the protestant workethnic, and post-racialness. 
Jordan,only seen in public in his basketball uniform or a $3,000-dollar suit, Jordanembodied the politics of racial respectability on and off the court.  He "allow[ed] us to believe what wewish to believe: that in this country, have-nots can still become haves; thatthe American dream is still working" (Ken Naughton quoted in Andrews2000, p. 175).  David Falk,Jordan's agent, celebrated the dialectics between his dominance in themarketplace, his worldwide popularity, and racial identity in illustrativeways:
When playersof color become stars they are no longer perceived as being of color.  The color sort of vanishes.  I don't think people look at MichaelJordan anymore and say he's a black superstar.  They say he's a superstar.  They totally accepted him into the mainstream.  Before he got there he might have beenAfrican American, but once he arrived, he had such a high level of acceptancethat I think that description goes away (Quoted in Rhoden, 2006 , p. 204). 
Amidthe 1980s and 1990s, amid Reagan's dismantling of America's safety net and hiselevation of the War on Drugs, Jordan provided more than a wicked jump shot,playing a lead role in the Republican Revolution.  He was "cast as a spectacular talent, midsized, well-spoken,attractive, accessible, old-time values, wholesome, clean, natural, not toogoody-two shoes, without a bit of deviltry in him" (Falk quoted in Andrews2001, p. 125).   Imaginedas emblematic of the power and importance of  "personal drive, responsibility, integrity, and success," asopposed to "the stereotypical representations of deviant, promiscuous, andirresponsible black males," Jordan's racially transcendent, colorblind-driven,raceless image was always tied to racial language.  He represented the possibility of acceptance by whites(racial transcendence), which meant he was able to "transcend his own race"(Rhoden 2006, p. 204), or better said, constraints of the "facts of blackness." 
Thelongstanding struggle for the next Jordan has been a journey in search of thenext the  "Africanized HoratioAlger" (Patton quoted in McDonald,2001, p. 157) to lead the NBA. The search has failed in part because of the inability of the nextgeneration of players to fulfill the imagined narrative and qualities associatedwith Jordan.  Michael Jordan wasthe leader of an "army of athletes who possess the (new) right stuff withmodest beginnings, skill, and personal determination" (McDonald 2001, p.157).  In the dominant imagination, theserecent players lack "the right stuff," leading to a paradigm shift facilitatedby the 2011 lockout. 
Therecent celebration of Kevin Durant illustrates how the search for America'snext Michael Jordan has little to do with basketball and is all about thenarrative, the ideology, and the overall mythical representation embodied byJordan.  David Heeb, in "NBALockout 2011: Searching for the Next Michael Jordan," encapsulates thenarrative and ideological elements central to the proverbial MJ Search:
So after allthese years, we are still looking for "The Next Jordan."  Will we ever see another player thatgreat?  Maybe not, but the firstthing we have to understand is, when looking for "The Next Jordan,"we have to stop looking for guys that look like Jordan.  Instead, we have to look at what madeJordan tick.  What made him burn tobe great?  We all know the story ofhow he was cut from his high school basketball team, and how he couldn't beathis older brother Larry in the backyard one-one games they would play.  We all heard the Hall of Fame speech,where Jordan recalled how he remembered even the slightest challenges to hisgreatness.  Michael Jordan was thekind of guy that got out of bed every morning looking for a challenge.  He looked for hurdles to jumpover.  He searched for mountains toclimb.  If there were no worthyopponents, he just invented insults, so he could say he had to prove himselfall over again . . . . That doesn't change the fact that Kevin Durant might be"Next." Jordan had a "love of the game" clause in hiscontract, permitting him to play pickup basketball whenever he wanted to.  Durant, like Jordan, loves thegame.  He will play anytime,anyplace, and against anybody.  Wehave seen him this summer playing pickup basketball all across the country.
Despitethe purported potential of Durant to be the heir to Jordan, the NBA hastranscended the struggle for the NMJ. 
TheNBA lockout, with its efforts to systematically change the system, will end thequest for the next Michael Jordan. In an attempt to remake the league in the fashion of the NFL (despitethe significant differences between the leagues), the NBA has traded in themarketed superstar for greater parity and emphasis on team rivalries.  The greatness of Jordan (and Magic,Bird, Kobe, Tim Duncan, and even Dr. J) came not just from their individualgreatness but because they were all part of dynasties.  At a basketball level, the ability ofteams to bring together the level of talent that surrounded these great playerswill nullified by the future collective bargaining agreement. 
Thesystemic changes resulting from the 2011 lockout will not only curtail theascendance of superstars who build their legacies through dynasties butreflects the league's abandonment of a star driven league.  The inability of LeBron, Kobe andCarmelo to attract Jordan level fan support prompted such a change. The fearsthat Durant, Dwight Howard, Chris Paul, Blake Griffin, and Derrick Rose mightfollow in their footsteps guided the lockout.  In the end, the presumed failures of the players to deliveroff the court contributed to this shift. The low q-ratings of these players, and claims about player betrayals offans mandated a system change that has traded a league organized aroundsuperstars to one more focused on parity and competitiveness. 
Withthese changes, the league no longer needs another MJ; better said, the leagueseems to have decided that it could no longer wait for a player who coulddominate on the court and appeal to the masses of the court.    More importantly, given the ideological shifts thathave led to increasingly visible racism and the complete destruction of thepublic safety net, society at large no longer needs a Michael Jordan to justifythe abandonment of the 99% - that, like the search for the next MJ, is awrap. 
***
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 to Black: Contemporary African American Cinemaand the forthcoming After Artest: Raceand the War on Hoop (SUNY Press). Leonard is a regular contributor to NewBlackMan and blogs @ No Tsuris.