Mark Anthony Neal's Blog, page 1061

Campus PD: Criminalizing Higher Education?

CampusPD : Criminalizing Higher Education?byDavid J. Leonard | NewBlackMan
In what wasobviously a slow night television night, I found myself searching for somethingto watch.  After perusing up anddown the onscreen schedule, I came across CampusPD (I was somewhat familiar with show having read about their filming inPullman, WA, where I live), a show that "takes viewers along for the ride withofficers on duty to capture firsthand all the mayhem and excitement they takeon night after night when student fun spirals out of control." The show isdescribed in the following way:
From policing parties and securityissues, to keeping the peace at sports events and arresting possible suspects,ride with the "Campus PD"as they tackle the ongoing challenge of keeping students safe. Depictinguniversity life from the perspective of the law enforcement professionals whopolice them, this ground-breaking new series presents a real-life account ofthese modern-day campus heroes. As they gear up for a shift, these courageouscops know they're in for a few surprises!
The series heads to five college townsacross the country including Tallahassee, FL, San Marcos, TX, Cincinnati, OH,Chico, CA, and Greenville, NC. It takes viewers deep inside the internal livesof the law enforcement professionals policing a town of fun-loving collegekids. It isn't easy, but these dedicated officers love their jobs, and wouldn'thave it any other way.
The emphasis on"fun," "keeping student's safe" "fun-loving college kids," parties, and "bingedrinking COEDS" is instructive, demonstrating how a show about criminalmisconduct goes to great extents to decriminalize its primarily white,middle-class, "participants" and in doing so criminalizes the Other once again.
The show mightas well be called "Warning PD."  Inthe three episodes I watched on television, and countless clips online (whichdon't necessarily show the encounters from start to finish leaving it hard tosee the final resolution), I have only seen a handful of actual arrests.  For the most part, the show brings tolife several excessively permissive campus police forces, who tolerate abuse,disrespect, and a culture of chaos. In many instances, college students are given countless warnings, andonly after failing to comply with instructions, are they forced to deal withthe repercussions of their actions with a ticket or an arrest.  
Another commontheme within these initial episodes I watched from start to finish was a belieffrom the students they were unjustly being persecuted by the police.  Students would often note that, "theywere not doing" anything wrong, or that they were simply engaged in "harmlessfun" only to be harassed by campus police.  Given the ways in which harassment, racial profiling, andpre-text stops so often define the experiences of youth of color, it is a troublingre-imagination of policing in America. Worse yet, Campus PD does agood job in showing why many college students view police as unfairly harassingthem. 
In two differentepisodes (as in the book Dorm RoomDealers), students respond to the presence of police by telling them to go"police" and investigate some real criminals.  That is, they were wasting their time with the happenings ofcollege students since they were harmless, as opposed to those who "lived overthere."  In both instances, "overthere" was clearly the neighborhood inhabited by poor people of color.  This assumption (one that is reinforcedby the show) that the "real criminals" exist elsewhere reflects the power of Americanracial and class logic. 
According to astudy from the Journal of Alcohol and Drug Education, 95 percent ofrespondents imagined an African American when asked about drug users.  In other words, blackness operatesinterchangeably with criminality, especially in relationship to the urbanpoor.  Better said, "to be a man ofcolor of a certain economic class and milieu is equivalent in the public eye tobeing a criminal." (John Edgar Wideman, p. 195)
The consequencesof the permissive policing and a culture that imagines college students engagedin criminal activity as just having fun (as opposed to the "real criminals"),is evident in the lack of attention directed at the criminal misconduct takingplace at America's colleges and universities.
According to a 2007study reported in USA Today, overhalf of America's college student regularly abuse alcohol and drugs. 
The study found that college studentshave higher rates of alcohol or drug addiction than the general public: 22.9%of students meet the medical definition for alcohol or drug abuse or dependence— a compulsive use of a substance despite negative consequences — compared with8.5% of all people 12 and older.
Increasingly,along with the traditionally seen drug and alcohol abuse, college students areabusing prescription drugs like Adderall, termed "smart drugs" by many collegestudents.  "For many middle andupper-middle class young people in New York," notesLala Straussner. "Adderall is much more acceptable than usingmethamphetamine (more common on West Coast) or crack cocaine, although thebrain doesn't know the difference." Yet, the ubiquity and acceptance of "smartdrugs" is simply the perceived function or the consequences of these drugs butthe ways in which crack and meth are both racialized and connected to distinctclass identities.  Prescriptiondrugs, on the other hand, are linked to those in college, who are said to havea future, illustrating criminality and criminals are identities are constructedas elsewhere and not within college communities.   
While shows likeCampus PD illustrate the ubiquity ofinstances of public intoxication, cases of drunk-driving, and physical assaults,other issues plague college communities. As such, it does little to elucidate the problem of sexual violence (20-25%of women in college will experience rape or an attempted rape), prescriptiondrug abuse, and even drug dealing. The erasure of these systemic problems reflects a culture that imaginescollege as a space of parties, fun, and adolescent behavior rather thancriminal activity. 
This type ofnarrative is evident in the recent drug busts at San Diego Sate University andColumbia University.  In 2008,after a several month investigation, authorities arrested 75 students (96people in total), confiscating drugs worth a total of approximately $100,000worth of drugs.  Among the 20students arrested for distribution and sales was a criminal justice major, whowhen arrested was in possession of two guns and500 grams of cocaine.   San DiegoCounty Dist. Atty. Bonnie Dumanis made clear that their investigationdemonstrated "how accessible and pervasive illegal drugs continue to be on ourcollege campuses and how common it is for students to be selling to otherstudents." This was certainly true with Columbia University, where 5 studentswere arrested as part of "Operation Ivy League," "afive-month undercover sting, during which police purchased $11,000 worth ofdrugs from the students out of Columbia fraternity houses and dorms." 
While the mediarendered this incidence and that at SDSU as a shocking spectacle, it is clearthat the situation at these schools is a national phenomenon.   This should actually be surprisinggiven how drug markets are as segregated as the rest of America.  According to A. Rafik Mohamed and ErikD. Fritsvold, authors of Dorm Room Dealers , who spent 6-yearsexamining drug distribution at a Southern California Private school, not onlydo students sell to other students, but do in a reckless manner, which in theirmind highlight a sense of entitlement based on the students' middle-class whiteidentities.  Phillip Smithdescribes their findings in "DormRoom Dealers: A Peek into the Drug World of the White and Upwardly Mobile":
Mohamed and Fritsvold show repeatedly thereckless abandon with which their subjects went about their business: Dopedeals over the phone with uncoded messages, driving around high with pounds ofpot in the car, doing drug transactions visible from the street, selling tostrangers, smuggling hundreds of pills across the Mexican border. These campusdealers lacked even the basics of drug dealer security measures, yet they flewunder the radar of the drug warriors.
Even when the rare encounter with policeoccurred, these well-connected students skated. In one instance, a dealer gottoo wasted and attacked someone's car. He persuaded a police officer to takehim home in handcuffs to get cash to pay for the damages. The cop ignored thescales, the pot, the evidence of drug dealing, and happily took a hundreddollar bill for his efforts. In another instance, a beach front dealer was thevictim of an armed robbery. He had no qualms about calling the police, who onceagain couldn't see the evidence of dealing staring them in the face and whomanaged to catch the robbers. The dealer wisely didn't claim the pounds of potpolice recovered and didn't face any consequences.
Aformer Columbia student highlights a similar culture there, adding moreevidence to the arguments offered in DormRoom Dealers.
But,in fact, the prestigious institution on Manhattan's Upper West Side has long been"ripe" for drug trafficking, a knowledgeable 2009 Columbia graduate told TheDaily Beast. "I think the permissive environment of Public Safety"—asColumbia's campus police force is known—"makes it a no-brainer proposition,"said this former student, who described himself as a recreational drug user whodabbled in selling. "I always felt safe."
The culture andclimate of Columbia in terms of public concern and policing, as opposed to thelevels of surveillance found a few miles away in Harlem, tells an importantstory about how race and class operate in contemporary America.  CampusPD offers a similarly distorted glimpse a crime as well.
Media accountsof these two recent drug operations and shows like Campus PD have done little to shine a spotlight on the doublestandards that exist between the primarily white middle-class studentpopulation and poor youth of color when it comes to policing andincarceration.  Withthe situation at Columbia, one student has plead guilty thus far; althoughcharged with the most serious crimes, he was sentenced to 6-months in prison inJuly.  In a city where 46,500people were arrested for marijuana possession in 2009, with 87% of these peoplebeing black and Latino, the inequality is quite clear.
San Diego saw asimilar outcome, with many of those arrested pleading guilty only to faceprobation and entrance into a drug diversion programs, leading some people toquestion why police are spending so much time and energy conductinginvestigations against college students that do not result in incarcerations.   When considering the media coverage, popular representationsof college campuses, levels of policing and unzealous prosecution, it is nowonder that while African Americans constitute 13% of all monthly drug users,they represent 38% of these arrested for drug possession, 55% of convictionsand 74% of prison sentences; it is as argued by Michelle Alexander, the new JimCrow, ostensibly cordoning off America's college and universities from policingand prosecution.  Thecriminalization of black and brown youth and the decriminalization of whiteAmerica, particularly its middle-class college-bound constituency, havematerial consequences.  
Evident in ashow like Campus PD and the variousexamples provided here is the ways in which  "what it means to be criminal in our collectiveconsciousness to what it means to be black."  In other words, "the term black criminal is nearly redundant. . . . To be a black man is to be thought of as a criminal, and to be a blackcriminal is to be despicable – a social pariah" (Alexander2010, p. 193).   No wonderso many students yell at cops to go focus on the "real criminals"; that is themessage they have learned all too well.
***
David J. Leonardis Associate Professor in the Department of Critical Culture, Gender and RaceStudies at Washington State University, Pullman. He has written on sport, videogames, film, and social movements, appearing in both popular and academicmediums. His work explores the political economy of popular culture, examiningthe interplay between racism, state violence, and popular representationsthrough contextual, textual, and subtextual analysis. He is the author of Screens Fade to Black: Contemporary AfricanAmerican Cinema and the forthcoming AfterArtest: Race and the War on Hoop (SUNY Press). Leonard is a regularcontributor to NewBlackMan andblogs @ No Tsuris.

"I Arrived the Day Fred Hampton Died": If Jay Z Met Fred Hampton

"I Arrived the Day Fred Hampton Died": If Jay Z MetFred Hamptonby Mark Anthony Neal | NewBlackMan
Inthe early morning of  December 4,1969, before dawn, the Chicago Police Department in conjunction with theFederal Bureau of Investigation—The FBI—riddled the residence of Black PantherParty leaders Fred Hampton and Mark Clark, killing them both.  Hampton, who was sleeping in the backof the house with his pregnant girlfriend was unable to defend himself (he hadbeen drugged by an informant), leading poet and Third World Press founder HakiMadhubuti (then Don L. Lee) to describe the incident as a "One SidedShootout."  On that same day, ShawnCorey Carter—the maverick hip-hop mogul and artist—was born in theBedford-Stuyvesant section of Brooklyn, NY.   I can't helpbut wonder what might have happened if these two—icons for two distinctgeneration of Black youth—might have ever had the chance to meet.
Forthose familiar with the legacy of Fred Hampton, simply known as Chairman Fredfor many, Jay Z might seem the very antithesis of what Hamptonrepresented.  At the time of hisassassination, Hampton was being prepared for national leadership within TheBlack Panther Party, which was decimated by incarceration (Huey P. Newton and BobbySeale) and exile (Eldridge Cleaver). Hampton was 21-years-old, five years younger than Martin Luther King,Jr. was when he led the Montgomery Bus Boycott and the same age of MalcolmLittle when he was when he began the prison sentence that transformed him intoMalcolm X. Hampton was no ordinary young Black man.
Specificallythe Black Panther Party was targeted by FBI director J. Edgar Hoover'scounter-intelligence program, known by the acronym COINTELPRO.  The year before Hampton's death, Hooverpublically announced that the Black Panther Party was the "greatest threat tothe internal security of the country." Part of the FBI's strategy was to killoff the local leadership of the Black Panther Party, before it could ascend tonational leadership. In that vein Hoover targeted the Black Panther Party'sbreakfast program, because it was one of the most tangible ways theorganization impacted their communities.
Accordingto historian Craig Ciccione, author of the forthcoming  IfI Die Before I Wake: The Assassination of Fred Hampton,  "The threat was on the local levelbecause on the local level the organizing was most effective."  Ciccone suggests that killing off localleadership could be achieved on a much quieter level—he notes that virtuallynone of the Panthers killed in the late 1960s were part of the nationalleadership.
Ofthose local leaders, Fred Hampton was perhaps the most significant—The FBIcreated a file on Hampton when he was just an 18-year-old high school student,who would shortly become leader of the Illinois Chapter of the Black PantherParty.  Fred Hampton was acompelling figure because of his skills as an organizer—he was instrumental inthe creation of the Rainbow Coalition (a term later appropriated by JesseJackson) which included the Black Panther Party,  young White activist known as The Young Patriots and TheYoung Lords, a national organization of Puerto Rican activists co-founded byFelipe Luciano, who was also a member of the original Last Poets.
Combinedwith his accomplished skills as an orator and his willingness to organizebeyond the Black community, Hampton was the prototype for the next generationof Black activist, a possibility that was literally killed in the early hoursof December 4, 1969.
Oneof the tragedies of Fred Hampton's death is that his presence would not be feltin the Marcy Houses that Jay Z came of age in, or in any of the likecommunities across this country were young Black Americans lacked examples ofpolitical agency and activism that were in sync with their lives at the dawn of1980s.  The period, best known asthe Reagan era, was marked by the child murders in Atlanta, the explosion of crackcocaine in Black communities, the emergence of AIDS and the collapse of the kindsof social and cultural infrastructures that helped Black Americans survivesegregation and racial violence throughout the 20th Century.
Hip-Hopinitially filled that void and though early hip-hop was little more than the"party and bullshit" that seems so normative today, it ability to allow youngBlack Americans a voice and alternative ways to view the world may have been itmost potent political achievement. For example, Chuck D would have been Chuck Dregardless of Hip-Hop, but how many young Blacks became politically engagedbecause Chuck D had Hip-Hop.  Indeed as Jay Z details throughout his memoir Decoded (written with Dream Hampton),the possibilities that Hip-hop offered were compelling enough to take him fromthe street life.
Theeasy part of this story is to suggest that Jay Z, as emblematic of a Blackgenerational ethos, has squandered Hip-Hop's political potential on the spoilsof crass materialism, middle-management wealth and a politics of pragmatism (asembodied by his man Obama).  The feel good move is to imagine a 61-year-old Hampton and a 41-year-oldCarter sitting down in conversation with Sonia Sanchez to discuss the legacy ofthe Black Panther Party on Hip-Hop and Carter's funding of the Fred Hampton andShirley Chisholm Institute for Black Leadership Development (which by the wayMr. Carter, need not be a dream). Unfortunately the history of Black politicalengagement is not as simple as one of those Staples "easy" buttons.
Whathappened on that morning on December 4, 1969 in many ways is not even about theman Fred Hampton.  Who knows whatHampton's political trajectory might have been—COINTELPRO guaranteed a mixedlegacy for so many of that generation of Black radicals whether they became theseasoned and spirited intellectuals that Kathleen Cleaver and Elaine Brown havebecome or a cracked-out Huey P Newton, Ph.D.  who was shot to death by a drug dealer in 1989 or thecard-carrying conservative Republican that the late Eldridge Cleaver became inthe 1980s.
Whatwas murdered in the early morning of December 4, 1969 was the idea of FredHampton—an idea that some hip-hop artists, notably Dead Prez have triedvaliantly to resuscitate.  HadHampton been allowed to more fully mature as a leader, thinker and human, hewould reproduced others who found value in his political passions and hissingular skills. 
Hadthe idea of Fred Hampton been allowed to survive and flourish, perhaps a16-year-old Shawn Carter wouldn't have needed Hip-hop or the street game andwould have lived in a world where his brilliance could have been amply displayedand reproduced long before Decoded becamea New York Times Bestseller.

Sunday Classics: Marvin & Tammi on the Tonight Show

Marvin Gaye and Tammi Terrell perform "Ain't No Mountain" on "The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson" in the 1960s.

Addressing Mental Health During This Economic Downturn

Addressing Mental Health During This Economic Downturn  by Mychal Denzel Smith | HuffPost Black Voices 
The Great Depression earned its name, not just because of the severe economic depression experienced in the wake of the 1929 stock market crash, but additionally because the national mood was one of prolonged sadness and despair. As the unemployment rate rose up to 25 percent, people simply lost hope and mental health deteriorated.
Poverty is a leading cause of clinical depression, not just on account of causing one's mood to drop, but loss of access to healthy food, loss of sleep due to prolonged employment search, and overall decline of physical health are also contributing factors to depression and anxiety. Left untreated, this in turn can lead to increased rates of suicide. During the Depression, suicide rates reached an all-time high of 22.1 suicides per 100,000 individuals, a 22.8 percent increase from 1928 (pre-crash) to 1932 (unemployment was at 24.1 percent). There was an immediate spike in suicides after the stock market crash, jumping from 18.1 in 100,000 in 1929 from the 12.1 in 100,000 of the decade before. From 1930-1940 the suicide rate was 15.4 in 100,000.
We haven't reached Depression era levels of unemployment, but a double-digit (nearly 16 percent) jobless rate in the black community coupled with an increasingly bleak economic outlook (we'll see what plans President Obama and the Congress enact in September) is cause for major concern. Suicide is already the third leading cause of death for black men between the ages of 15 and 24 (rates are lower in black women and black men are seven times more likely to commit suicide). With a rate of unemployment for black male teenagers up near 50 percent and what we know about the correlation between joblessness/poverty and depression/suicide, this is a potentially dangerous and deadly moment.
Mental health is of particular concern for me. I myself was diagnosed with depression and anxiety disorder back in 2008. Before I sought therapy, depression ravaged my entire body and psyche. I was unable to graduate from college because I hid myself away and refused to talk to anyone about the very real and all-encompassing fear that had consumed my thoughts. At home, with no college degree, my anxiety only worsened as the country experienced wide-spread panic related to the housing market bubble bursting and the resulting financial crisis. Jobs were lost and I was further isolated as I became more and more uncertain about my future.
As we attempt to navigate these uncertain economic times, it's important that we become increasingly more sensitive to the issue of mental illness and proactive in discussions of mental health and wellness to ensure that those most vulnerable will have the help they need to survive. Mental illness still carries a damaging stigma, one that is pervasive and intensified in the black community, that often stalls the discourse needed to properly address otherwise treatable illnesses.
We should constantly be educating ourselves on mental health issues and encourage dialogue and treatment, but during this economic downturn it becomes ever more urgent. 

Follow Mychal Denzel Smith on Twitter: www.twitter.com/@mychalsmith  

Rape Culture and American Comedy

Funny Women Are Dangerous: Rape Culture and American Comedy  by Black Artemis  

Sometimes I miss doing standup. Women who are funny are powerful, and therefore dangerous. But this is the first time I ever regretted not pursuing standup because I missed an opportunity to hand some predator's ass to him.  

Summary: in pursuit of shits and giggles, a man admitted before a live audience that he aggressively pursued sex with a woman who told him repeatedly that she didn't want him in her home never mind her body. The purpose of said revelation: to inspire other men to improvise a sketch based on this event for even more shits and giggles.  

Let someone suggest, however, that rape culture in the United States is alive and well, and heads rush to spew conspiracy theories about humorless feminists.

Yet this occurred in a nation where, according to our own justice department, one in four women will be the victim of a rape or an attempted rape. Where violent words like smash, pound, beat, and hit have become synonymous with have sex. Where a female pop singer can't even imagine being raped and fantasize revenge without getting several advocacy groups on her case while no one blinks an eye as one male recording artist after the next makes the top twenty by packaging rape carols as love songs. 

This happened at an improv festival in New York City. Not in Congo, Iran, Nicaragua or anyone of "those places" we like to turn up our noses and wag our finger at for the atrocious way women are treated. Nope, it happened right here in the good ol' US of A where a sexual assault survivor has to be damned near perfect if she stands a snowball's chance in hell of seeing her perpetrator tried by a jury of his peers. Between the acquittal of two police officers for sexual assault (one with a history of being abusive toward women while in uniform) and the dismissal of the rape charges against Dominique Strauss-Kahn (who suspiciously leaves a trail of rape allegations wherever he goes), this damned city is turning into Club Med for predators. 

The thing that disturbs me the most about this incident is that the male comics on stage were astute enough to crack jokes about the ethical and legal ramifications of this knucklehead's behavior, but not a damn one of them was brave enough to call it out explicitly and shut him down. Then again, evidence abounds that violence against women is regular fodder for our entertainment, especially comedy. From Ralph Kramden's threats to send his wife Alice to the moon to Twitter hashtags such as #reasonstobeatyourgirlfriend our society has a long history of laughing at threats and assaults against women.

Read the Full Essay

ReelBlack Talks with Steve James & Alex Kotlowitz of 'The Interrupters'

RBTV's Mike D. caught up with filmmakers STEVE JAMES (Hoop Dreams) and ALEX KOTLOWITZ to discuss their new documentary, THE INTERRUPTERS.http://interrupters.kartemquin.com

Robert Greenwald Discusses the Koch Brothers Battle to Re-Segregate North Carolina Public Schools

Brave New Foundation releases its latest video in the Koch Brothers Exposed series, focusing on the Koch brothers attempt to re-segregate public schools in Wake County, North Carolina. Robert Greenwald discusses on MSNBC "The Ed Show."

Nickolas Ashford and the Cult of Black Manhood

Nickolas Ashford and the Cult of Black Manhood by Mark Anthony Neal | NewBlackMan
As the primary lyricist of the legendary singer-songwriter duo Ashford and Simpson, the legacy of Nick Ashford, who recently died at age 70 of throat cancer, has long been cemented.  Whether it's the endless times that Ashford and Simpson compositions and recordings can be heard throughout the day on the radio or the Pullman Bonds that literally established their catalogue as intellectual property, Nick Ashford will be remembered as one of the 20th Century's greatest song-writers.  Mainstream media should be taken to task,  as Soul-Patrol founder Bob Davis recently suggested, for  marginalizing Ashford's legacy by referring to him as a Motown songwriter, lumping him in with the label's stable of writing and production teams and neglecting the nearly 40 year career Ashford and Simpson had after leaving Motown's fold in 1973.
The list of artists who recorded or sampled Ashford and Simpson's music is impressive; Ray Charles, who had a comeback of sorts in 1966 with the decidedly secular, yet sanctified, "Let's Go Get Stoned"; the recording duo of Tammi Terrell and Marvin Gaye, who served as muses for the young Ashford and Simpson; Diana Ross, whose finest sides as a solo artist where arguably written by Ashford and Simpson; Disco legend Sylvester, who recorded the duo's "Over and Over" on his solo debut in 1977; Chaka Khan, whose signature tune "I'm Every Women" is an Ashford and Simpson classic; Teddy Pendergrass who recorded "Is It Still Good To Ya"; Cheryl Lynn, who matches the duo's own performance of "Believe in Me"; Aretha Franklin who covered several of their tracks; The Dynamic Superiors, whose out gay lead singer Tony Washington, was clearly influenced by Ashford's own soaring falsetto (a lost art in today's musical environment); the late Amy Winehouse; and even Mary J. Blige and Method Man, who maintain the integrity of the original on their 1996  classic "I'll be There for You/You're All I Need," recorded, notably, two years before those Ashford and Simpson Pullman Bonds were established.
Yet Nick Ashford's influence was not limited to his musical talents.  As the duo began to reach their peak as recording artists in the mid-1970s—Valerie Simpson recorded two solo albums before the couple departed Motown in 1973—Ashford also pushed boundaries with regards to notions of Black masculinity.  Ashford emerged as a star in an era premised, on what I refer to as the Cult of Black Manhood—post-nationalist strains of Black masculinity, defined in part by a hyper-masculinity and hyper-sexuality, best represented in the popularity of figures like the fictional John Shaft (Richard Roundtree), Isaac Hayes, Barry White, Billy Dee Williams, Teddy Pendergrass and the mythical father-figure James Evans, Sr. (John Amos). 
With his long, straightened mane, falsetto singing voice (balanced by Simpson's vocal heft), measured mannerisms, and clear comfort in his body, Nick Ashford, became the model for a cosmopolitan, metro-sexual Black masculinity at a time when Sean Combs, Andre Benjamin, and Kanye West were still children—and when the current generation of New York Times sanctioned, post-hip-hop Dandies were yet to be born.  While Simpson had many falsetto peers during the era, like Earth Wind & Fire's Phillip Bailey, Blue Magic lead-singer Ted Mills, Stylistics' lead singer Russell Thompkins, Jr. and the oft-forgotten Ronnie Dyson, few functioned with the sartorial sass that Ashford did, save the aforementioned Sylvester.  Years later, Eddie Murphy's character in Vampire in Brooklyn was a l nod to Ashford's singular style. Indeed some of Ashford's signature stylistic touches could be found at the couple's Upper West Side New York City restaurant The Sugar Bar.
Ashford's radical performance of Black masculinity in the 1970s and 1980s, was largely muted because he was romantically linked to Simpson as the couple served as a model for the possibilities of a Black love, that wasn't tethered to rigid notions of gender; Ashford and Simpson's influence in that regard can be witnessed in the gender performances of contemporary figures like Jada Pinkett-Smith  and Will Smith, Beyonce Knowles and Shawn Carter and Ashford and Simpson's musical progeny Aja Graydon and Fatin Dantzler (Kindred the Family Soul).
Nick Ashford will be remembered as a professional partner, husband, father, gifted song-writer and vocalist—and a Black man, who relished the comfort in his own skin.

"I'm too pretty to do homework" T-shirt by JCPenny Yanked [Video]

(CBS News)
The power of social media was proven once again this week when it took only hours for an online petition drive to prompt JC Penney to stop selling a T-shirt targeted to young girls that had a message some feminist activists and others found objectionable.
The controversial shirt, which sold for $10, said, "I'm too pretty to do homework, so my brother has to do it for me," was sold on the retail giant's website.
It caught the attention of Lauren Todd, a user of Change.org, who promptly posted the petition demanding that the store stop selling the shirt.
Change.org women's rights organizer Shelby Knox spread word of the petition on Twitter and Facebook -- and the message quickly went viral.
By noon Wednesday -- four hours after Knox began tweeting about the shirt to her 10,000 followers, writing about it on Facebook and spreading the word through the feminist blogosphere -- JC Penney apologized and took the shirt off its site.
The petition had 1,600 signatures. With each one, change.org automatically sent an e-mail to JC Penney's CEO.
Penney issued a statement saying, "We agree that the "Too pretty" t-shirt does not deliver an appropriate message, and we have immediately discontinued its sale. Our merchandise is intended to appeal to a broad customer base, not to offend them. We would like to apologize to our customers and are taking action to ensure that we continue to uphold the integrity of our merchandise that they have come to expect."
Todd and Knox discussed the shirt, its message, the uproar it caused and Penney's response on "The Early Show" Thursday with co-anchor Erica Hill.

9th Wonder feat. Phonte & Median | "Band Practice" (Part II)