Mark Anthony Neal's Blog, page 1047

Awkward Black Republican

Awkward Black Republican by James Braxton Peterson | HuffPost BlackVoices
By the time you read this Herman Cain will no longer be the frontrunner amongst the GOP presidential candidates. I will not be the first person to have said this; and many more reports about Mr. Cain's awkward rise and fall will have manifested in/on any number of media platforms including right here on BlackVoices/Huffington Post. 
Since Melissa Harris Perry's passing but prophetic suggestion to watch Cain closely (The Nation), I have observed Mr. Cain's candidacy, his debate performances, his media quips (and clips). I have had numerous opportunities to publicly comment on his emergence, his missteps, and his quirky racial maneuverings. His has been a stunningly awkward campaign, one dogged by old-style racial discourses, pitiful pandering to a wanna-be-post-racial conservative right, and a concerted effort on the part of the 'mainstream' media to prove the "vaudeville" character of his public performances and the absence of "infrastructure" in his campaign's organization.
A recent Reuters/Ipsos poll suggests that Cain's support amongst Republican voters is already slipping, trending downward as a result of a series of sexual harassment accusations that occurred during his tenure at the National Restaurant Association. Sexual harassment scandals are unfortunately not uncommon in American politics (or in America for that matter). Even more common is the complete erasure of the discourses of gender and power in these so-called scandals. Although Cain claimed publicly that race does not have much impact on the lives of black folk, he was quick to channel his soul brother, Justice Thomas, and accept the claim that he was the victim of a high-tech lynching. Cain's change of heart here was a clumsy attempt to deflect attention away from what has become the kryptonite in his super unexplainable emergence in American politics. And let's keep it real, his handling of these accusations has been nothing short of awkward.
In fact, although some folks have asked me to comment on and/or write about Cain, I have been reluctant to do so. At first I thought I would write about an analogy between Cain and Obama as a modern day recasting of the oft-misrepresented debates between W.E.B. DuBois and Booker T. Washington. I'm pretty sure that Mr. Cain is no Booker T. Washington -- not even in an awkward analogical sense. I suppose I was not inspired to write about Mr. Cain at all until these recent allegations emerged -- along with a new idea for an analogy. Herman Cain's awkward responses to his current situation got me to thinking about my own infatuation with Issa Rae's brilliant web series The Misadventures of Awkward Black Girl .
Like Issa Rae's main character "J", Mr. Cain is awkward. J resorts to spitting original gangsta rap lyrics to work through her life's problems; Mr. Cain sings Negro Spirituals at campaign events. J's love life is clumsy and awkward; Mr. Cain's knowledge of foreign affairs is ugly and ignorant. Like The Misadventures of Awkward Black Girl, Mr. Cain's candidacy has been populated by an amazing cast of psychotic characters. The Koch brothers (whom Mr. Cain claims to respect but not know so well) could play the roles of J's "love" interests: Fred and White J. CeCe, J's attractive, inappropriate, and fickle BFF, could only be played by Mitt Romney. Rick Perry, with all of his 'brotherly' love would be perfect as J's unintentionally racist "Boss Lady" and Michele Bachman would be fabulous as J's obnoxious supervisor, Nina. Newt Gingrich is Patti, the germinal character who earnestly shows up to work everyday even though she was fired some time ago. And my personal favorite, (DJ) Darius, always has sensible things to say but he speaks them at such a low volume that no one can hear him; hello Mr. Huntsman. Unfortunately, none of this will make sense to you unless you watch The Misadventures of Awkward Black Girl. I recommend that you do and I predict that Rae's web series will long outlast Mr. Cain's awkward prominence in the national spotlight.   Follow James Peterson on Twitter: www.twitter.com/DrJamesPeterson 

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James Braxton Peterson is Director of Africana Studies and Associate Professor of English at Lehigh University 

Jasiri X Champions Free Speech at the University of Connecticut

posted by jasirix on Nov 7, 2011 Occupy (We the 99) Official Video http://youtube.com/watch?v=Oxv9kIFJh5Y

I was recently invited to perform at the University of Connecticut on November 4th as the principal performer for a "Political Awareness Rally". About a week before the event I got an email from the organizer (who ironically I met at Occupy Wall St) saying people were concerned about my performance, particularly the song "Occupy (We the 99)." I thought this was very strange because this is supposed to be an institution of higher learning that welcomes all types of ideas, plus the event was a rally for political awareness. The organizer said he would not censor me but if I performed it I might not get paid. Then I received an email directly from the comptroller of the University saying specifically I could not perform "Occupy (We the 99)."

I initially agreed to perform only a set of songs the University of Connecticut deemed "not political" because the event had already been advertised around campus and didn't want to disappoint my fans by not showing up. I also did not want to let down the organizers who did a lot of hard work in putting the event together. But when I arrived at the University of Connecticut for the event I had a change of heart.

As I looked around the crowd I began to think of all the people around the world occupying for a better tomorrow, being arrested and brutalized by police, sleeping in the cold and rain, sacrificing comfort for freedom. I knew at that moment I had to perform the song, "Occupy (We the 99)" as well as other "political" songs like "Real Gangstas" (about the Wall St bankers), even if it meant I would not get paid. At some point in this movement all of us are going to have to make sacrifices if we truly want to see real change. The 1% control the 99% with promises of money, access, and comfort; we have to put our own souls above all three.

Sincerely,
Jasiri X

Real Gangstas Official Video http://youtube.com/watch?v=41s1oWM9vOQ

Left of Black S2:E9 with Vijay Prashad and Leyla Farah

Left of Black S2:E9w/Vijay Prashad and Leyla Farah November 7, 2011
Host and Duke University Professor MarkAnthony Neal is joined via Skype© by VijayPrashad , Georgeand Martha Kellner Chair in South Asian History and Professor of InternationalStudies at Trinity College andauthor of the recent award winning book TheDarker Nations: A People's History of the Third World (The New Press, paperback 2008).  Neal and Prashad, discuss the impact ofthe #Occupy Movement and what role Left academics and intellectuals have toplay in the movement.Later Neal is joined by Leyla Farah, author of Black Gifted and Gay which profiles the lives and accomplishments of thelesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) community's living icons—who  just happen to be of Africandescent.  Farah is a FoundingPartner at Cause+Effect, a PR firm focused exclusively on the lesbian, gay,bisexual and transgender (LGBT) community.
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Left ofBlack is a weekly Webcast hosted byMark Anthony Neal and produced in collaboration with the John Hope Franklin Center at DukeUniversity.
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Episodesof Left of Black are also available for download @ iTunes U :

"Occupy, Occupy, Occupy"--Rev. Jesse Jackson on The #Occupy Movement

The Reverend Jesse Jackson, Sr. at #Occupy Atlanta Making Connections between Martin Luther King, Jr's "Poor People's Campaign" and the #Occupy Movement.

[Trailer] Black Lights: They Chose to Succeed | A Documentary about the Achievement Gap

Written and Directed by Karla Manning, Black Lights: They Chose to Succeed features  several students, educators, and community members who offer insight into the academic achievements as well as perceptions of black students in Chicago.  They will tell the stories about their struggles, experiences, and dreams; but most of all, about their will and ambition to overcome the obstacles that have been in their way.

Hoyas and Hova; Michael Eric Dyson Teaches Jay Z

Why Teachers Must Become Community Organizers and Justice Fighters

Why TeachersMust Become Community Organizers and Justice Fighters byMark Naison | special to NewBlackMan
Thereis a long history of Teacher Activism in the United States. In New York City,the tradition goes back to the late 1930s when teachers associated with theCommunist Party and the New York City Teachers Union fought to have NegroHistory Month honored in the NYC Public schools, to force the replacement orreassignment of racist teachers and to challenge the placement of Blackstudents in the lowest tracks and most decayed schools in a highly trackedschool system. This legacy of anti-racist activism, always done incollaboration with civil rights organizations and community groups, lasted intothe late 50's when many of the most effective teacher activists were pushed outof the New York school system during the Cold War. This forgotten tradition isdescribed in depth in Clarence Taylor's new book Reds and the Black Board: Communism, Civil Rights and the New York CityTeachers Union.
Afterthe old Teachers Union faded from the scene, another group of teacheractivists, drawing upon a broad coalition of liberals, Socialists and moderatetrade unionists, won recognition for the United Federation of Teachers asofficial bargaining agent for New York City School teachers, winning themdecent salaries,  job security, andsome level of freedom of expression inside and outside their schools.  TheUFT from its outset worked to improve conditions in schools for all studentsand supported the non violent civil rights struggle in the South and the North.Unfortunately  in 1968,  the UFT found itself engaged in a conflictwith some community leaders in Harlem and Ocean Hill Brownsville during aseries of brutal strikes challenging community control of school policies inthose neighborhoods. These strikes not only created a fissure between UFT andcivil rights organizations, it created fissures within the UFT betweensupporters and opponents of the strike that left a legacy of bitterness thatlasted for years to come. 
Inthe wake of that strike the UFT proved powerless to resist a devastating attackon the New York City Public schools orchestrated by bankers who dominated theEmergency Financial Board which took the city into financial receivershipfollowing the Fiscal Crisis of 1975. The Board of Education was forced by thisunelected body to make budget cuts which closed down the world class musicprograms in the city's junior high schools      (most junior high schools had upwardsof 200 musical instruments which were lent out free of charge to anyone who hadmade their bands or orchestras) and ended the after school programs and nightcenters which were a fixture of every public school in the city in the 1940's1950's and 1960's. These programs were never fully replaced, leaving childrenin the city's schools, from the late 1970s on, with far less in the way of artsand sports and after school mentoring than their parents generation had enjoyedin those very same schools
Nearly40 years have passed since the Fiscal Crisis budget cuts and our public schoolsnow face a challenge more insidious and perhaps, more formidable. All acrossthe nation, a poisonous coalition of multi billionaire business leaders, testand technology companies, charitable foundations and elected officials arepushing a nationwide education agenda that involves the introduction of highstakes testing at all grade levels, evaluation of teachers and schools based onstudent test scores, and the introduction of "competition" into public educationby the creation of independently managed charter schools given specialadvantages in funding and recruitment.
ThisEducation Reform agenda, embraced by both the Bush and Obama Administrationsand embodied in No Child Left Behind and Race to the Top, represents aformidable assault on teachers hard won collective bargaining rights as well astheir classroom autonomy and freedom of expression, but it also represents adevastating attack on children in America's working class and poor communitiesat a time when our nation is experiencing a devastating redistribution ofwealth upward and a sharp increase in poverty levels. Not only does corporateeducation reform reduce schooling in the nation's poor communities to test prepand obedience training , squeezing out critical thinking and the arts, itdivides those communities against themselves by transforming charter schoolsinto privileged enclaves which promise passage out of the neighborhood to a fewlucky children and view the remaining public schools, and their students, withaversion and contempt.
Giventhe complex challenge corporate education reform poses, today's teacheractivists cannot just have a strategy which is solely school or teachercentered. They must become community organizers who fight school closings, theproliferation of tests, and the weakening of teacher bargaining rights asattacks on the ability of working class people and people of color to fight forbetter opportunities for themselves and their children. In this setting,Teacher Activists must put forth a vision of Radical Democracy which envisionsan education which empowers students as critical thinkers and agents ofhistorical change, not just as obedient test takers and which envisions schoolsplaying a central role in neighborhoods united and mobilized to get a fairshare of the nation's resources.
OccupyWall Street has provided a language and an example to put that model of RadicalDemocracy into practice. But it cannot work unless teachers link their own fateto that of the students they work with and the people in the communities wheretheir schools are located. Unless Teacher activists become community organizersand justice fighters in the broadest sense, they will lose the battle to defendtheir classrooms from the incursions of corporate interests.
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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.

November 7th 'Left of Black' Examines the #Occupy Movement

November 7th 'Left of Black' Examinesthe #Occupy Movement
Host  and Duke UniversityProfessor Mark Anthony Neal isjoined via Skype© by Vijay Prashad, George and Martha Kellner Chair in South AsianHistory and Professor of International Studies at Trinity College and author of the recent awardwinning book The Darker Nations: A People's History of the ThirdWorld (The New Press, paperback2008).  Neal and Prashad, discussthe impact of the #Occupy Movement and what role Left academics andintellectuals have to play in the movement.Later Neal is joined by Leyla Farah, author of BlackGifted and Gay which profiles thelives and accomplishments of the lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT)community's living icons—who  justhappen to be of African descent. Farah is a Founding Partner at Cause+Effect,a PR firm focused exclusively on the lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender(LGBT) community.

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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: @NewBlackManFollowVijayPrasad: @VijayPrashadFollowLeyla Farah: @LDFarah
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FAAN Mail Talk Back: "It's Free Swipe Yo EBT"

In this talk back, FAAN Mail responds to "It's Free- Swipe Yo EBT" a controversial music video produced by emerging artist, Chapter. The music video has reached over 400K views and received over 3,000 comments on youtube, including many charged reactions.

In this conversation, we consider key media literacy questions about this piece:
Who is the AUTHOR and TARGET AUDIENCE?
What is the MESSAGE?
How might different audiences INTERPRET this message?
What TECHNIQUES are used to attract audience attention?
In what CONTEXT does this message exist?
What are the EFFECTS? (i.e. who benefits or is harmed by this message?)

We also ask--is this music video an effective attempt at SATIRE?

If you would like to hear artist Chapter's commentary about her piece, see here:
http://www.rightthisminute.com/story/its-free-swipe-yo-ebt

FAAN Mail is a media literacy and media activism project based in Philadelphia designed to promote critical dialogue about the media.
 https://www.facebook.com/FAANMail
 Twitter: @faanmail

Is the Tween World Ready for the Subaltern? A.N.T. Farm and the Politics of Blackness

Isthe Tween World Ready for the Subaltern?  A.N.T. Farm and the Politics ofBlackness byDavid J. Leonard | NewBlackMan
Havingalready graduated Miley Cyrus, Selena Gomez, and Demi Lovato to various formsof stardom, it should be of little surprise that Disney has sought to infuseyounger talent as a way to maintain its stranglehold on tween audiences.  In recent years this has increasingly provendifficult given the success of Nickelodeon with the emergence of MirandaCosgrove and Victoria Justice. 
Realizingthe increasingly fickle marketplace, Disney has sought to change-up the formulain some regards in building a show around a young African-American girl,Chyna.  A.N.T Farm chronicles the story of three genius middle-schoolerswho because of their talents and skills attend high school as part of itsadvanced program.  Whileparticipating in the Advanced Natural Talent Program (A.N.T), they facenumerous dilemmas resulting from their special gifts, tensions with their olderschoolmates, and simply because they are kids growing up in a complexworld. 
AlthoughA.N.T. Farm explores this issuesamongst the three main characters, Chyna (the musical prodigy), Olive (the girlwith a photographic memory), and Fletcher (the artist), the show is truly ashow about Chyna.   From theinclusion of her family to the endless opportunities for her to showcase hermusical talents, whether it be playing the violin, jamming on the guitar, orsinging a familiar pop song, the show is really one that is selling China AnneMcClain (Tyler Perry's House of Payne),who stars as Chyna.
According to one review ofthe show, A.N.T. Farm representsa continuation, albeit modified, of the proven formula of Disney's groomingstars of significant marketing potential: "Disney has turned the concept intoits latest situation comedy—and a star-grooming vehicle for the very talentedChina Anne McClain. China, who plays Chyna, is one of the Mouse House's latestsinging, dancing mini-Mileys, sure to soon grace lunchboxes and toothbrusheseverywhere."  While certainly true,with a CD and the back-to-school Chyna accessory package just around thecorner, the significance of this A.N.T.Farm transcends the commercial practices of Disney.
Creating abreakout tween superstar takes years of careful grooming that hark back toHollywood's studio system days. Disney, scouring audition tapes and the Web,looks for various elements: presence, a genuine interest in show business andraw talent in acting, singing or dancing. Good looks are a must, but so is acertain blandness. Tween viewers gravitate toward actresses who they think havebest-friend potential; the slightest mean-girl whiff can prevent astar-in-the-making from reaching the stratosphere.   
Giventhe history of race and racism, the persistent demonization of African Americanwomen as loud, mean, and aggressive, and given the systematic erasure of youngblack girls from television culture, it is easy to see the ways in which thearrival of A.N.T. Farm can be seen astransformative and ground-breaking. 
Evidenceby blog commentaries, the prospect of a Disney show starring a young AfricanAmerican girl led to praise and celebration.  For example, KimberlySeals Allers laments the lack of diversity available for youth of color,praising Disney for the creation of A.N.TFarm because of its potential positive impact on African Americangirls:  "As a mother, trying toraise a young black girl with positive self-esteem and self-love for her hair,her body and her mind, it's frustrating that my daughter doesn't see manyimages of herself on her own favorite channel. I knew things were bad when shebegged me to buy her a Hannah wig (it wasn't Halloween) and complained a lotabout her own thick hair," writes Allers on a parenting blog. "So I was reallyhappy to see the new Disney show starring the very sweet and lovely, China AnneMcClain.... And the character has a two-parent home! Whoo hoo! When she says shewants her hair to be straighter and longer and her skin lighter, it breaks myheart.  I'm working super hard todo my part to counteract that. But I'm hoping a vivacious, and talented youngbrown girl on the TV screen every week will help a little too."   
Searlesreiterated this same theme on her own blog, MochaManuel, focusing on the show's potential message to young African Americangirls: "Anyway, I know it's up to us parents to instill in our little browngirls the self-love that the media could never do and to fill the hole ofpositive images with our own research and resourcefulness, but I'm hoping anA.N.T. Farm and this talented, beautiful, young black girl can help a littletoo. Are you hoping the same? Why are we still struggling to see positive youngblack girls on kids TV?"   Similarly,MeghanHarvey, who praised the show for a variety of girls, seemed to highlightthe shows efforts to challenge stereotypes, especially as it relates to girlsand African Americans
Smart isCool – The girls on these shows are all smart girls whomake good grades and school a priority, yet they are all cool. In fact the showAnt Farm, centers on the "ANT" program for gifted youngsters who have skipped afew grades including our lead character. And with A.N.T. Farm it's also great to see a super smart African American girl back on the Disney channel! It's about time.
The concerns andhopes here are obviously real, reflecting on the damaging impact of popularculture and society at large on African American identity (See Kari Davis).  It does represent an importantintervention in a cultural world that normalizes whiteness as the standard ofmeasurement all while demeaning and devaluing those who come to embody theOTHER within the dominant white imagination.  According to Anne Ducille, in writing about her experienceswith toys and dolls, children's culture is one of hegemonic whiteness:
Whitewashed by the images with which I was daily bombarded,for most of my childhood I little noticed that the dolls I played with, theheroes I worshipped, and the alter egos I invented did not look like me. Themake-believe world to which I surrendered my disbelief was profoundly white.That is to say, the "me" I invented, the self I day-dreamed in technicolorfantasies, was no more black like me than the dolls I played with" (duCille,1996, pp. 11-12, in Guerrero p. 187)
Assuch, the introduction of a show centering around a young-African American girlrepresents a counter narrative to the cultural jamming of whiteness, albeitlimited because of broader racial realities and its emphasis on a middle-classsensibility, its elevation of a politics of respectability, and of course thedifficult path of countering hegemonic stereotypes.  Celebrations, notwithstanding, the show replicates what S.Craig Watkins describes as a commitment "to the notion of promoting respectable– or in other words, bourgeois – images of blackness."
Thecreation of A.N.T Farm, however,should not simply be thought of in terms of Disney's efforts to challengepersistent racist images within American culture or even its efforts to provideblack youth with "role models" and "positive representations."  It is clearly a marketing strategy thatseeks to capitalize on a market share that has ostensibly been ignored bytelevision networks: African American families.  Describing it as "shrewd marketing" "at a time when children'schannels are working harder to find minority stars." Brooks Barnes highlightsthe economic calculations here. It is
Signaling to parents that diversity is a priority.But Nickelodeon and Disney also want to hold a mirror to a diversifying viewerbase. "We have taught children to look for themselves," Mr. Marsh said.
Other actresses vying for tween superstardom areZendaya, a biracial 14-year-old who co-stars in Disney Channel's budding dancehit, "Shake It Up." Coco Jones, 12, is an African-American singer. (CombineJennifer Hudson with Rihanna and give the results a middle school gloss.) Ms.Jones has become a darling of Radio Disney. Nickelodeon is developing a seriesaround Cymphonique Miller, a 14-year-old African-American singer and actress,called "How to Rock Braces and Glasses."
Whilewriting about Nickelodeon in her fantastic book Kid's Rule: Nickelodeon and Consumer Citizenship, Sarah Banet-Weiser'sobservations are applicable to Disney and in this case A.N.T Farm, a show that imagines a world where "race is simplysomething that 'happens' in a kid's world" (p. 170).  Thus far, it has gone to great lengths to avoid racialconflict and tension, all while imagining blackness and whiteness as insignificantin the daily lives of American kids. In this regard, it operates through the commodification of blacknessthat ultimately reifies the hegemonic practice of reducing race to little morethan a cultural or aesthetic marker.  
EmbodyingAnne DuCille's idea of "mass produced difference" A.N.T Farm, highlights the broader approach to race within children'stelevision culture (and popular culture as a whole). "Any time representation ofrace is produced it reflects a stereotype or a narrativizing of a cultural mythabout race – even if ostensibly 'positive,'" writes Banet-Weiser.   Or as Lisa Guerrero notes,  "race merely serves as another kind of 'accessory'that signifies 'hipness,' without incurring the actual costs and consequencesof real world racial signification." As such, Disney "employs several different strategies of representingrace: race either is represented as hip or cool, as a kind of aesthetic styleor it is represented through the lens of authenticity, with 'real' tropesstructure the narrative of the program. The inclusion of explicitly racial images . . . coincides with theexclusion of a specifically racial agenda, so that inclusion functions as akind of exclusion" (Banet-Weiser, p. 171). 
A.N.T Farm bridges these two themes together, using race as anunspoken backdrop for viewing Chyna all while constructing her as a "real"breath of fresh air that challenges the less desirable and less positive (yetno less supposedly real) representations of blackness within popularculture.  Most importantly, itfollows suit with other programs through its erasure of an explicit "racialagenda."  It lacks even the merehint of the ways in which the race, class, sexuality, and gender are lived byAmerican teenagers.
Inher essay about race, gender, and the Bratz dolls, Lisa Guerrero highlights thecomplex relationship between children (particularly children of color) and dolls/toys/popularculture.  She notes that, at onelevel, visibility, inclusion, and the ability to see oneself within spaces ofplay and consumption are important. At another level, given commercial demands and the practice of denyingand erasing the real-life realities of race, gender, and class, theserepresentations can be at best limiting, and at worst problematic, all whilenormalizing whiteness. Guerrero notes in "Can the Subaltern Shop: TheCommodification of Difference in the Bratz Dolls:"
As much as the dolls rely on images of difference, thatdifference relies on naturalized notions of whiteness. The dolls may besucceeding in presenting a new, and much needed idea of difference as beautifuland coveted, but that idea still exists in opposition to the "normal," Whitebeauty that Barbie, and the ideals reflected in her and her world, present.Ultimately, though, it is a start.
However small the impact of a doll may seem, and despitesome of the paradoxes of the Bratz's representationof difference, there remains an important oppositional potential about thecollection. They have presented a challenge to the Anglocentric version ofwomanhood found in the arena of toys that has been dominant since the 1959introduction of Barbie. They have given face to difference and provided imagesthrough which young girls of color might find themselves reflected. And theyhave begun the work toward opening up a space in the popular imaginary for thenormalization of multiracial identities. 
A.N.T. Farm, despite its shortcomings, much of which reflectsthe broader cultural/political landscape and the dubious motives and marketingplans of Disney, illustrate this same important instance of change.  The tween world is embodies the hyperemphasis on materialism and consumption, yet given the hegemony of whitenessthe entry of China Anne McClain it is hard not to think about this change astransformative a frustrating intervention at that. 
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David J. Leonard is Associate Professor in the Department of CriticalCulture, Gender and Race Studies at Washington State University, Pullman. He isthe author of Screens Fade to Black: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.