Mark Anthony Neal's Blog, page 1064

Teach for America, Steve Jobs, and the Culture of Poverty

Teach for America, Steve Jobs, and the Culture of Poverty by Mark Naison | special to NewBlackMan
One of the reasons that Teach for America is so attractive to corporate funders like Steven Jobs of Apple—whatever portion of the political spectrum them may come from—is that TFA offers an enhanced version of the Culture of Poverty thesis that was in vogue in the early and middle Sixties. 
In the world according to TFA,  poor school performance is a product of communities who lack a strong foundation of middle class values, burned out teachers who have given up trying to instill those values, and teachers unions which protect  burned out teachers   What is needed, to transform failing schools and communities, is a constant infusion of highly motivated teachers who will be ambassadors for  middle class values and will leave before they are burned out or begin to adapt to the culture of the communities in which they are located.
The "two years and out" commitment is actually consistent with TFA's worldview and "theory of change."  Because TFA teachers are moving in and out of low performing schools at a rapid rate, children of the poor will constantly be exposed to emissaries of mainstream American values who refuse to accept the "culture of failure" that exists in poor communities.   The result- great improvement in school performance at little cost    
The message to funders; Give  money to Teach for America and you will gradually change the culture of poor neighborhoods through its most impressionable and malleable representatives,  its youth, and over time, poverty will diminish, or be drastically reduced .  
What makes this kind of thinking, from the corporate point of view,  so attractive  is that it rejects any structural explanations of poverty that might require a redistribution of wealth or higher tax rates on corporations.  It suggests the problems of poverty and inequality can be solved through private philanthropy and  individual  sacrifice by  bright middle class  college graduates .devoting a few years to uplifting poor children early in their careers   
No evidence that such an approach will work is required. It makes donors feel so good that evidence doesn't matter.  
***
Mark Naison is a Professor of African-American Studies and History at Fordham University and Director of Fordham's Urban Studies Program. He is the author of two books, Communists in Harlem During the Depression and White Boy: A Memoir. Naison is also co-director of the Bronx African American History Project (BAAHP). Research from the BAAHP will be published in a forthcoming collection of oral histories Before the Fires: An Oral History of African American Life From the 1930's to the 1960's.

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Jasiri X | "Bomb the Throne" ("Otis" Freestyle)

from Jasiri X

George H.W. Bush and George W. Bush go in over the "Otis" instrumental on their less than stellar records as President of the United States, and to remind us how America got so messed up.

LYRICS

George H.W. Bush -I invented crack
the highest hit with them scientists in the lab
proof
not hard to find it
read Gary Webb's Dark Alliance
Truth
New terror alert Qaddafi
We tried to kill him in the 80s but were sloppy
Bombs hit his compound every wall was knock down
his infant daughter got found dead under a rock pile

George W. Bush -Damn W bush where the hell you been
Obama's getting blamed for all of ya failures kid
Left trillions in debt they acting like I never did
Kanye even apologized now we're hella friends
They say I'm stupid but I was dumb before
but they so crazy they forgot about my other war
and they don't even mention my other other war
Almost destroyed America they still love me more

George H.W. Bush -Skull and Bones fresh
bomb you with the stealth
I'm bout to call the CIA on my self
I was the first ta
go after Saddam Hussein I tried to murk ya
bombed Iraq with those missiles air to surface
so we would have cheap oil for us to purchase
Iran contra no need for bail
I pardoned everybody they never going to jail

George W. Bush -A born again christian I'm never going to hell
my book about decisions is never going to sale
300 pages of crap it's better in the shredder
I made history the worst president ever
I'm in Crawford with the golfers
cause of my cuts there's just no job offers
now everybody in they house getting foreclosed
I'm done I'll hit you ya tomorrow

George H.W. Bush -Welcome to Panama
Sent troops to get Noriega I am the law
he had pedico in kilos
we bought it from him that's how come that we know
4000 dead it makes no difference
nobody cares cause it's just less immigrants
no coincidence my son went from governor
to president leaving a debt so big we can't get under from

George W. Bush -Can't you see commercial jets flying over you
for seven minutes I froze like what the hell Imma do
put my Arab friends on planes with no kinda proof
even though they said the highjackers were Saudi too
Then I let Osama escape like the hell with it
so I could invade Iraq with fake intelligence
and over 6,000 troops died
but hey keep being mad at the new guy

Jackson Katz: DSK's Alleged Victim Should Not Be Called His "Accuser"

DSK's Alleged Victim Should Not Be Called His "Accuser" by Jackson Katz | HuffPost
Can we please stop referring to Nafissatou Diallo as DSK's "accuser?" She is his alleged victim. Every time someone calls her an "accuser" they undermine her credibility and bolster his. And it's not just sexist men who are doing this. Even some feminists and victim advocates have started using the term -- although people who are committed to supporting victims and ending rape culture should be the last ones to adopt this problematic usage.
The specifics of the incident involving the wealthy Frenchman Dominique Strauss-Kahn and the African immigrant hotel worker who reported that he sexually assaulted her have captured worldwide media coverage. The phrase "Strauss-Kahn's accuser" yields over five million hits on Google. But the journalistic and linguistic conventions that have been deployed in this case are hardly unique. "Accuser" has now supplanted "victim" or "alleged victim" in mainstream media coverage of rape and sexual abuse cases.
Why is this such a damaging development for victims of sexual violence? Consider:
• When media coverage sets up a binary opposition between "the accuser" and "the accused," there is no longer a victim or even an alleged victim -- a flesh and blood person who was harmed by the violent act of another. There is only an accuser facing off against the accused. The terms of debate shift away from what happened or didn't happen in the hotel room -- or wherever else rapes might take place -- and onto the credibility of the two parties. This helps fuel the mistaken impression among the public that it's a "she said, he said" matter.
But it's not. The person who reports a rape is only the first player in a chain of events and decisions ultimately made by police and prosecutors, and in relatively rare instances, juries. Ms. Diallo reported that she had been sexually assaulted. But she's not the one who brought the charges. That's what the district attorney did after weighing the available evidence that a crime was committed. By bringing charges, the DA in effect accused the suspect of committing a criminal offense. So why don't we call Manhattan District Attorney Cyrus R. Vance Jr. "DSK's accuser?"
• The public is inclined to sympathize -- even empathize -- with female and male victims of rape. Unless our psyches have been hopelessly distorted by misogyny or desensitization we not only feel badly about what has happened to them; we identify with them. Victim-blaming often distorts this sympathetic identification, but the sentiment derives in part from an understanding that "the victim could just as easily have been someone I love -- or me."
Referring to the victim as the "accuser" reverses this process. She is no longer the victim of his (alleged) attack. She is the one doing something -- to him. She is accusing him. In other words, she is now the perpetrator of an accusation against him. At the same time, he is transformed from the alleged perpetrator of sexual assault to the actual victim of her accusation. The public is thus positioned to identify sympathetically with him -- to feel sorry for him -- as the true victim.
This dynamic is especially pronounced when a famous man is charged with assaulting a woman whose identity is withheld by news organizations. Although this is done to protect the privacy of the victim, the result is that the public's ability to relate to the victim is limited. We know and can relate to him; his friends often publicly vouch for his character and insist he's not capable of such heinous behavior. Meanwhile, she is his "accuser," reduced to a type: a "hotel maid" or a "college student," and thus is set up to be caricatured as a gold-digger, or a vindictive woman, someone with a clear motive to accuse an innocent man of a serious felony.
In the DSK case, Ms. Diallo made the highly unusual choice to go public with her identity and tell her story in public. She did so, she said, because she wanted justice, but felt the media coverage of the case was heavily biased against her.
• Language usage always has a political context. In the case of rape, the words people use to refer to the various parties are freighted with a variety of social meanings -- and biases -- that have shifted over time. Over the past 40 years feminists have successfully lobbied for reform of the laws, better training for police, prosecutors and judges, and a host of other legal and social practices that prioritize the needs of victims and seek to hold offenders accountable. They have pushed for the creation of victim advocates to help women (and men) navigate the medical, emotional and legal challenges they face after an incident.
At the same time they've been fighting these battles, they have striven to counteract a powerful system of deeply entrenched rape myths, including the idea that outwardly "nice" or "normal" men are incapable of rape -- or that women often lie about having been assaulted. And they have introduced new words into common usage, such as "date" or "acquaintance" rape, which correct the misperception that most rapes consist of a violent stranger lunging at his victim from behind the bushes or in a dark alley.
But they have faced resistance and organized opposition almost every step of the way. For example, the anti-feminist "men's rights" movement actively works to undo many of the gains made by advocates and activists in the movement to end sexual violence against women and children on the grounds that legal changes and new law enforcement practices around rape and sexual assault supposedly discriminate against men. Men's rights activists in the blogosphere and their allies in mainstream media have long argued that false reports of rape are common, and that women often lie for financial reasons, to get revenge against men who rejected them, or a number of other nefarious reasons.
In the rare instances when the authorities investigate a case thoroughly and then determine that a rape was falsely reported, these activists light up the internet with angry -- and typically distorted and inaccurate -- diatribes about scheming and vindictive women and the feminist ideologues (women and men) who always take the side of women and have no regard for men's needs or rights.
• The way that rape victims are described in public discourse matters, because wittingly or not, calling alleged victims of rape "accusers" undermines the credibility of women who come forward to report what was done to them. It discourages the reporting of rape, which is already a vastly under-reported crime. It also subtly but profoundly advances the disturbing premise that rape is not as big a problem as anti-rape advocates claim, and that justice for men necessitates treating with skepticism and suspicion women who claim to have been raped by them.
Fortunately there is a solution to the (mis)use of the term "accuser." It's simple: refer to the complaining witness in a rape case as "the victim." A compromise strategy is to use the term "alleged victim," although as many rape victim advocates point out, victims who report other crimes are rarely questioned about whether or not they were victimized. The debate typically turns on questions about the identity of the perpetrator, and whether the state can prove its case.
Using the term "alleged victim" treats the woman or man with respect and crucially preserves the presumption of innocence for the alleged perpetrator. Headline writers might chafe at the extra space taken up by the two-word phrase, but that's a small price to pay for helping to create a safer environment for the victims -- and survivors -- of sexual violence.
*** Jackson Katz, Ph.D., is an educator, author, filmmaker, and cultural theorist who is internationally recognized for his groundbreaking work in the field of gender violence prevention education and critical media literacy. His book, The Macho Paradox: Why Some Men Hurt Women and How All Men Can Help, was published by Sourcebooks in 2006.

Take Me To The Waters

Take Me To The Waters by Marcia Dyson | HuffPost BlackVoices
I must confess I've had enough: It is high time for black folk to stop beating down on those of our race who dare lift their voices to offer constructive challenges to the White House. I don't mean personal or mean-spirited attacks; there's no place for that in our public discourse. I'm talking about well-reasoned and principled objections to this policy or that one, or the failure to head in a political direction that benefits our communities. The stakes are high and the situation is critical in black neighborhoods and households across the land. We don't have time for bowing down at the thrown of unbroken racial solidarity when our children are suffering, our elders are vulnerable, and our poor are teetering on the brink of economic and social disaster.
The suggestion that such criticism is "hating" is ridiculous; surely we can make distinctions between bitter attacks and enlightened analysis. And the argument that publicly criticizing our first black president is an act of racial disloyalty is immature. We must be grown enough to know that politics at its best is about engaged citizenship, not tribal worship. You can love black people and do what's best for the race without agreeing with everything the president does or says. If we don't use our public platforms to encourage, solicit and push the president to do what we think is right, we've surrendered both our civic duty and our racial responsibility.
The latest victim of such backward thinking on the matter is Congresswoman Maxine Waters, a remarkable public servant and a political force of nature who has been on the battlefield for our people for more than 40 years. Waters was recently hit by a vicious wave of criticism when she waded into the subject of jobs, or the lack of them, for black folk, arguing that the White House must do more to secure the future of black employment. Waters was speaking in Detroit as part of the traveling national town hall on jobs sponsored by the Congressional Black Caucus in the effort to address the crisis of black joblessness. Black unemployment is hovering around 16 percent, nearly 7 percent above white unemployment in the nation.
Predictably, Waters met resistance. But she's a smart woman; she asked her overwhelmingly black audience for permission to honorably and aggressively represent their interests in demanding that the White House pay attention to black people and our issues. Waters pleaded for the crowd to tell her and her Congressional colleagues that "it's all right and you [can] unleash us, and you [can] tell us you're ready for us to have this conversation, we're ready to have the conversation...All I'm saying to you is, we're politicians. We're elected officials. We are trying to do the right thing and the best thing. When you let us know it is time to let go, we'll let go."
You'd think that it would be a no-brainer for black representatives to represent the interests of black people -- and that's all Waters was doing in asking black voters to let the CBC take President Obama to task over job creation and high black unemployment. But the presence of a black president has clearly thrown everything way out of whack. The right to remain silent is only good when you're being arrested and charged with a crime; on the other hand, it would be criminal to remain silent while our economic growth is being arrested by inaction and the neglect of our needs. We are in danger of setting ourselves up to be dismissed by future (most likely, non-black) presidents who can easily cite our failure to speak up now as reason to keep quiet in the future.
I can readily identify with those who are attacked by some blacks because they've taken a principled stand on issues relevant to our communities. Despite knowing our wonderful president for 20 years -- I'm from Chicago, and supported his bid for both the Illinois State Senate and the United States Senate, and even introduced him to my husband, who chose to support Obama -- I chose to campaign for Hillary Clinton during the 2008 Democratic presidential primaries. Because I'm from Chicago, where total loyalty is a must and political incest is the norm, I was prepared to be vilified for my difficult yet thoughtful decision. I knew it wouldn't be easy explaining my choice of the "white woman" over the "black man" to southern-bred, silver-haired black men and women who had endured the reign of Jim Crow law, whose hearts were shackled to unsolved cold cases of murdered loved ones where known white offenders got off scot-free, and whose grandchildren endured environments of extreme poverty where inferior education grew like weeds in unkempt gardens. But I took the lashes of many black critics because I was invested in strengthening our political future. Of course, I supported Obama in the presidential contest between him and McCain, but I don't regret at all following my conscience and supporting Clinton in the primaries. Now that he is president, black folk must follow our consciences and offer support where warranted and criticism where needed.
Make no mistake: I have great respect and admiration for President Obama, and I absolutely adore First Lady Michelle Obama who, with her beautiful daughters in tow, gave me goose bumps when they appeared on stage in Chicago's Grant Park on November 4, 2008 to help take up the charge to lead the nation forward. It was as if the veil of being black was rent and the angels of equality and justice for all God's children were set free. I had grown up in Chicago and tasted the bitter fruit of its northern racism. Witnessing the elevation of my elegant and graceful fellow Chicagoan to First Lady was like witnessing a phoenix rising from our city's racial dust.
I'm also mindful of the vicious, repugnant attacks our president has endured, often for no other reason than he's black. We must protect him and guard against the racist bile that circulates through the body politic. Still, we must remember the traditions and icons that nourished our hunger for freedom and our desire for equality. Harriet Tubman and Frederick Douglass helped to abolish slavery, and present day Tubmans and Douglasses must likewise help us abolish our slavish adherence to tribe and clan at any and all costs. While black folk surely have enormous pride in Obama's achievement, we must not permit pride to undermine a deeper virtue: justice. Justice may just have to trump pride when it comes to calling on the president to do what is right for the black masses.
That is the case with Maxine Waters now as she calls on us to unleash her and the Congressional Black Caucus to do what we put them in office to do: represent the best interests of the people, and to stand and fight for us even when it isn't popular or convenient. Maxine Waters has been a brave warrior for decades, and it is time we rushed to her defense to encourage her to stand tall and be courageous in demanding that the president address our plight as black people, and really, as American citizens. To do less would be to savage the memory of our foremothers and forefathers, and to neglect our responsibility to ourselves and to future black generations.
***
Rev. Marcia Dyson is currently working her book The Rough Side of the Mountain: The Trials on the Trail of the 2008 Presidential Primary.

Creating a "Surveillance State" in the New York Public Schools

Creating a "Surveillance State" in the New York Public Schoolsby Mark Naison | special to NewBlackMan
Last spring, a former Bronx teacher named Janet Mayer published a wonderful book about her experiences called As Bad As They Say: Three Decades of Teaching in Bronx Schools. Most of the book was a tribute to the heroic students she had taught at Grace Dodge High School in the Bronx, who overcame incredible obstacles to achieve their goals; the last chapter was a devastating critique of "No Child Left Behind", "Race to the Top" and Mayoral Control of Schools in New York City.
Teachers at Grace Dodge High School, whose unsung labors were honored, along with Dodge students, in Mayer's book, tried to organize a book party for As Bad as They Say. Their efforts were vetoed by the principal, who was afraid that she and the school, would face retaliation from DOE officials if the Dodge community gave public recognition to a book which was critical of DOE policies.
Such is the state of Free Speech in the era of Mayor Control of New York's public schools. But wait as minute you say. Isn't the principal a member of a union? Aren't the teachers? Won't their unions support them if they hold a public event which takes a position critical of DOE policies, especially if it is done in a way that allow for expression of conflicting opinions? The answer, unfortunately is "No!"
In the last six years, an atmosphere of intimidation has been created in the New York City public schools, as the Department of Education, in the name of "accountability," has created what amounts to a Surveillance State, if not an actual Police State, in which every teacher, school and principal, are being rated, and evaluated on the basis of student test scores. Instead of spies and informers, the DOE has spent hundreds of millions of dollars on information systems and consultants, which track student performance on the growing number of standardized tests the schools are being deluged with.
And these evaluations are not just informational, Based on the information accumulated, scores of schools have been closed, principals removed, and thousands of teachers reassigned, often against the protests of students, parents and community members in the schools targeted for such action.
These actions, and the arrogant, dictatorial spirit with which they have been enforced, have placed teachers and administrators under incredible stress, especially those working in schools which serve immigrants and children of the poor. With the threat of school closings and reassignment-- if not actual loss of employment-- hanging over their head, and with Big Brother Style Data systems quantifying every minute variation on every test they administer, few teachers or principals dare to question the overall policies which have swept creativity, initiative, and critical thinking out of their classrooms. The result is that the Department of Education, having smothered all internal opposition, has had carte blanche to spend expend extraordinary sums of money on consultants, data systems, and hiring of new administrators, that could have been used to reduce class size throughout the system.
Now, after six years of Mayoral Control, the public is finally waking up to how democracy has been smothered in the nation's largest public school system, and how favored groups ( charter school administrators, test companies, information system providers) have been allowed to cash in during the creation of the DOE's Surveillance State.
The gloves are off. All important stakeholders—teachers, students, parents, community leaders- must fight to insure that the free exchange of ideas, inside the classroom and out, is encouraged in the New York City public schools, and that a Police State atmosphere imposed in the name of "accountability" is an unacceptable violation of our liberties, and a terrible example to provide to our youth.
***
Mark Naison is a Professor of African-American Studies and History at Fordham University and Director of Fordham's Urban Studies Program. He is the author of two books, Communists in Harlem During the Depression and White Boy: A Memoir. Naison is also co-director of the Bronx African American History Project (BAAHP). Research from the BAAHP will be published in a forthcoming collection of oral histories Before the Fires: An Oral History of African American Life From the 1930's to the 1960's.

The Growing Rift in Black America: Cornel West and Tavis Smiley Clash with President Obama

The Growing Rift in Black America: Cornel West and Tavis Smiley Clash with President Obama by Marc Lamont Hill | New York Daily News
Journalist Tavis Smiley and Princeton Prof. Cornel West completed a week-long, 14-city "Poverty Tour" this week. As they traveled around the country, the duo highlighted the plight of America's poor and directly critiqued President Obama for failing to stand up for them.
Given the current political climate, which has rendered poor people invisible and untouchable, there is an indisputable need to shine a spotlight on our nation's most vulnerable citizens.
Still, there were critical flaws in the tour - and in black America's reaction to it - which speak to a troubling rift in the African-American community. We need to understand this growing divide as the 2012 election approaches.
First, the problems with the tour. Both West and Smiley have publicly expressed personal gripes with Obama that, like it or not, clouded their message. On multiple occasions, Smiley has complained about the President's failure to attend a "State of the Black Union" event in 2008. He has also pointed out that Obama is the first recent President not to invite him to the White House.
West, who actively campaigned for Obama in 2008, has voiced frustration over the President's failure to provide him with inauguration tickets or to thank him for his considerable campaign work.
In fairness to West and Smiley, their concerns were not merely personal. Smiley was challenging the President not to take the black vote for granted. West was trying to articulate a broader frustration with a President who fakes left and goes right more than a player on a Rucker Park basketball court.
Still, the two men cheapened their message by linking it to these complaints. In doing so, they unwittingly aligned themselves with a large cadre of opportunistic black leaders who publicly feign outrage over Obama's policies while privately seething over the loss of their own personal power and access. I hear these voices with disturbing frequency.
On top of this problem, the tour itself was less politically substantive than it could have been. West and Smiley visited towns, met with citizens and held public forums. While the events were ideologically on point, they were largely devoid of concrete and specific policy prescriptions, grass-roots organizing or voter registration. Without such activity, it became difficult to distinguish the tour from any garden-variety book tour or speaking campaign. As a result, the nation's poor wound up, yet again, serving as a media spectacle and political sideshow rather than the focus of much- needed support.
So West and Smiley's tactics were flawed. But did they warrant the vicious attacks they triggered from folks like Steve Harvey - who accused the two of "poverty pimping"? Absolutely not. That was outrageous.
Nor was Harvey alone; a shocking number of meanspirited insults were hurled at the two men by prominent pundits and academics. For example, talk show host Tom Joyner not only dismissed the duo as jealous opportunists but, in a bizarre leap of reason, managed to blame them for encouraging the kind of disrespectful climate that resulted in political analyst Mark Halperin insulting the President on MSNBC.
All this speaks to a strange divide in the black community. On the one hand are the likes of West, Smiley and even myself who are deeply troubled that the President has forgotten a critical portion of his base: the poor. On the other hand is a larger, reactionary contingent of the community that views any critique of the President, even a principled left-wing one, as an act of self-hate, jealousy or race treason.
We must demand that poverty be placed in the center of public conversation. But until we mature politically, it will difficult to effectively make this happen.
***
Marc Lamont Hill is associate professor at Teachers College, Columbia University, host of the nationally syndicated television show Our World With Black Enterprise and the author of Beats, Rhymes and Classroom Life: Hip-Hop Pedagogy and the Politics of Identity.

Another Mississippi Murder: What the Killing of James C. Anderson Teaches Us

Another Mississippi Murder: What the Killing of James C. Anderson Teaches Us by Charlie Braxton | HuffPost BlackVoices
James C. Anderson was a 49 year-old African-American automobile worker who lived in Jackson, Mississippi. On the surface, James Anderson was no different from you and me. He had a family, worked hard and held on to hopes and dreams of a better life for himself and his loved ones. Sadly he would not live to see any of those hopes and dreams realized during his lifetime.
On a sweltering hot Sunday morning on June 29 at approximately five o'clock, Anderson was spotted standing near his car in a motel parking lot by a mob of seven teens from the nearby predominantly white town of Brandon. He was alone, unarmed and minding his own business, oblivious to the terror that was about to come his way. According to police reports, these drunken teens drove 16 miles to the predominantly African-American city of Jackson (also called Jafrica or Jack-Africa among some racist Mississippi whites) with the sole purpose of looking for "a nigger" that they could "mess with." Unfortunately for Anderson, he was the first Black person they came across as they entered the city.
Immediately upon spotting their potential target, the teens drove into the parking lot, jumped out of their vehicles and attacked Anderson. The teens allegedly beat him unmercifully, yelling racial epitaphs as they administered a volley of blows on various parts of his body. Although the savage beating took place in a matter of minutes it must've seemed like hours for Anderson who was clearly no match for the small mob of angry teens. After beating Anderson to the edge of consciousness, it looked like the teens finally had their fill of pummeling the defenseless man. As the teens were beating Anderson one last time they hurled racial epitaphs at him according to a witness. They screamed "White power," while delivering blows to their victim's body.
By now Anderson is beaten, bloody, dazed, confused and disoriented as he stumbles along the edge of the motel parking lot looking for help that unfortunately would never come. As he stumbled along, he was spotted by Daryl Dedmon (one of the teens who allegedly assaulted him) as he was driving away from the scene in his Green Ford F250 pick up. Dedmon allegedly sped up, drove on the curb where Anderson was stumbling and ran over him. Dedmon then drove to a nearby fast food restaurant where witnesses say he bragged of hitting Anderson as though he had bagged a deer in a hunting trip. "I ran that Nigger over," Dedmon allegedly said to the teens in another vehicle. Anderson was taken to a local hospital where he was pronounced dead on arrival.
Many people around the country (myself included) are outraged by the teens' heinous act of brutality. A lot of Mississippians of good will (both Black and white) have worked so hard to see the state get past its ugly history of racial violence and their efforts have paid off to a large extent. Things have changed a lot in Mississippi. I've seen it happen. The laws and signs that once regulated Black people to the back of the lines are gone. We have the highest number of Black elected officials in the nation with African-Americans serving at the municipal, county and state level. We even have a Black man vying to be the Democratic nominee for Governor of Mississippi. Yet despite all of this political progress, Blacks still find themselves at the bottom rung of society when it comes to economics, education, housing and health care. According to Dr. Marianne Hill of the Center for Policy Research and Planning at the Mississippi Institute for Higher Learning, the wage gaps between Black and white Mississippians remain substantial. In her study titled "The Economic Status of African Americans in Mississippi," Hill writes:
The median household income of African-Americans in the state in 2006 was $21,969 or just 51% that of white households ($43,139). Lower household incomes also result in a wealth gap. Only 26% of African Americans here had homes valued at more than $70,000 in 2000, while 60% of whites did.
As a native Mississippian who has spent all 50 years of my life here and as a student of history, I cannot honestly say that I am surprised that these teens may harbor such deep-seated racial hatred. Mississippi's history is replete with racially motivated violence, especially when the economy is constricting the way it is today. Whenever the economy is bad Blacks and people of color have been designated as the racial scapegoat -- the reason why good hard-working whites are losing their jobs, houses and general way of life.
Beneath the surface of racial progress, Mississippi still remains a closed society -- a State divided into two separate realities. One is white and largely privileged, the other is Black and largely disadvantaged. These gaps are the result of decades of racism both de facto and de jure that has prevented African-Americans from gaining equal access to decent jobs, education, health care, equal housing, etc. Believe it or not in 2011 there are still places in Mississippi where hatred and intolerance of African-Americans is still the subtle yet powerful zeitgeist of the day. This is evident in the fact that even Haley Barbour, the current governor of Mississippi has been accused of making racially insensitive statements in public.
For example, it was Barbour who defended racist organization the White Citizen Council by downplaying the role they played in Mississippi's history. "I don't remember it being all that bad," Gov. Barbour told the Weekly Standard. "Up north they think it was like the KKK. Where I come from it was an organization of town leaders." Although the White Citizen Council may not have been as violent as their Klan counterpart, they were known for their widespread use of political and economic harassment of Blacks citizen who dared to stand up for Civil Rights. Governor Barbour also dismissed criticism of Virginia's celebration of Confederate History Month, which made mention of slavery, as "no big deal." Not to mention his initial refusal to join the NAACP and other progressive forces in the State in their condemnation of a proposal to honor Ku Klux Klan founder Nathan Bedford Forrest with a commemorative license plate.
Daryl Dedmon and his friends didn't come up with the idea to go to Jackson and mess with the first "nigger" they saw out of a vacuum. No, that seed was planted in their minds a long time ago and was watered with the bloody history of Mississippi lynchings. It was nurtured in their home town of Brandon MS, where a large portion of the City's Black population (which is about 25.70 percent) still resides at the bottom of Brandon's soci-economic ladder. Brandon as well as the county in which its located, Rankin (AKA "Stankin' Rankin" ) is known among area African-Americans for being the worst place to be caught driving while Black and/or Mexican, especially if you have a out of town license plate. "Rankin County has a history of being racist," says one Jackson area citizen who asked not to be identified. "The city's largely white police force is known among African-Americans in the area for harassing Blacks from Jackson who drive through there going to the movies, shopping or what have you. I personally don't like messing around in Rankin County, especially late at night. Ain't no telling what can happen to you over there."
The vicious killing of James Anderson is but another name on a long list of racially motivated deaths (including Emmit Till, Medger Evers, Vernon Dahmer and Mack Charles Parker) that took place in the Great State of Mississippi. James Craig Anderson's death should remind us that racism is still alive and well not just in Mississippi but all over. As my grandmother used to say, "You can change signs overnight, you can change laws overnight, but you can't change people's hearts overnight." There are White people who secretly feel the exact same way Dedmon and his friends feel about African-Americans and people of color.
If history is any indication of what is to come then as the economy gets worst and worst we can expect to see more racially motivated violence toward Blacks and people of color in the future. If we as people of good will are to prevent this ever happening again we must be vigilant and see that justice is served to the fullest extent of the law.
*** Charlie Braxton is a journalist, playwright, poet and cultural critic from Mississippi. He has contributed to a number of publications, including One World, Image magazine, The Nashville Scene, Vibe and The Washington Post.

The Tweening of America: The Disappearance of Age-Appropriate Television

The Tweening of America: The Disappearance of Age-Appropriate Televisionby David J. Leonard | NewBlackMan
What started as an ordinary conversation about marriage between my partner and our 7 ½ year old daughter (Rea) concretized our ongoing frustrations and precarious relationship with popular culture.  Following a role-playing game that ended in a pretend marriage between Rea and Sam (our son, who will be four next month), my partner asked Sam if he knew what marriage meant.  Unsure, Rea intervened with a very elaborate description that went something like this: it is when two people meet and then start to date.  If they like each other, they continue to date for a while until they are ready to get married.  At the wedding, the promise to follow the rules for married people.  While her description actually encompassed a few more details, it was clear that she not only understands dating, relationships, and courting rituals, but the institution of marriage and the associated vows.  At the age of 7 ½ , she is well versed in both the fairy-tale and happily-ever-after narratives of marriage.
Over the last year, my partner and I have struggled to help Rea find age-appropriate, and most importantly, empowering television shows.  In her mind, she is too mature and grown-up for those preschool/kindergarten shows.  You know that ones that emphasize language skills, inter-personal skill development, symbolic reason, and cultural literacy: Sesame Street, Arthur, Sid the Science Kid, Word Girl, and Martha Speaks.  In her estimation, these shows are neither cool nor sophisticated enough for her; her brother yes, but definitely not for a 2nd grader.  Simply put, those shows are boring and, worse, beneath her.  Instead, she would much rather watch shows like ICarly, Victorious, Hannah Montana, Wizards of Waverly Place, Good Luck Charlie, or countless other tween shows. 
According to Gary Marsh, a top executive at Disney Channels Worldwide: "It's always been presumed that animation is the gravy train. Nobody quite understood you could create lifestyle franchises out of live-action tween shows." Similarly, Peter Larsen, in "TV's Tween Scene," describes this cultural shift as not only economically significant but culturally important as well: "What they discovered was that kids in that age range didn't want to watch shows for little kids, and didn't want to watch their parents' shows. Instead, they wanted to see themselves and their stories on TV."
While trying to attract the 9-14 age consumers (25 million in the United States, representing a 50 billion dollar industry), tween shows universally tell stories of TEENAGERS.  ICarly chronicles the trials and tribulations of Carly Shay and friends, now in high school, who have their own webcast.  One Nickelodeon executive identified the show as one about "relationships and humor" a fact that illustrated by a list of Carly's "boyfriends, dates and crushes" on one website.  Victorious similarly follows high school kids at a performing art school in Hollywood, CA.  It, like just about every other show, explores the issues of relationships, getting-in-trouble, boyfriends and girlfriends.   While focusing on the experiences and stories of 13-16 year olds, the dearth of shows dealing with the experiences of 6-10 year old kids, along with marketing efforts directed at these younger consumers, results in gravitation to shows that are more teen than tween. 
Our discomfort with her watching shows that focus on dating, boys and materialism, looking beautiful and being cool isn't simply about age appropriateness and our desire for her to define her identity and otherwise imagine her own childhood outside of teenager themes and issues.  The focus on dating sends a message that coolness and acceptance comes for girls who have a boyfriend, who guys think are attractive, and who has been kissed.   Likewise, too much of these shows chronicle the struggles of girls to be accepted, to feel good about themselves, and part of this comes from the struggles to get a boyfriend. 
According to a 2009 study from True Child, school-age television shows lag significantly behind preschool shows in terms of offering representation of confident and self-aware girls.  Compared to 94% of preschool shows, only 42% of shows geared toward school-age kids like my daughter exhibit characteristics like confidence, assertiveness, and high-self esteem.  Similarly, the report found that "49% of shows feature at "82% of shows feature girls primarily with long hair"; "60% of the shows feature girls who are underweight with skinner than average waists."
The questionable messages about consumerism, gendered-identity, and appearance-determined coolness run against the presented image of the Disney and Nickelodeon shows about girl power.  As example, True Child celebrated several tween girl shows for "breaking through gender stereotypes."  Similarly, David Bushman argues the importance these shows in giving girls something to watch that indeed is about confident girls:
I think Nickelodeon has empowered kids in a lot of ways … but I think they've specifically empowered young girls, and that's a really important thing that Nickelodeon deserves a lot of credit for. This whole idea that you could not make girl-centric shows because boys wouldn't watch them, they disproved that theory (in Banet-Weiser).
Yet, visibility and even challenging stereotypes isn't the only issue to consider when examining these shows. Visibility doesn't generate empowerment; visibility isn't by definition empowering. 
"Third Wave feminism (or sometimes "Girlie feminism") embraces commercial media visibility and enthusiastically celebrates the power that comes with it," writes Sarah Banet-Weiser.  "In this way, Third Wave feminism situates issues of gender within commercial and popular culture, and insistently positions Third Wave feminist politics as not only fundamentally different from Second Wave feminist politics, but because of the embrace of media visibility and the commercial world, as also more representative for a new generation of women."   The celebration of these shows, against a backdrop of hyper consumerism, hyper materialism, and an over-emphasis on an appearance, relationships, and coolness, illustrates the problematic nature of "girlie feminism" in the context of popular commodity culture.  The source of empowerment and collective identity that results from these shows isn't driven from political, cultural or social power, but the power of visibility and the market.  This doesn't result in individual or collective power.   Susan Douglas, in Where the Girls Are: Growing Up Female with the Mass Media notes, "Once this sense of generational collectivity as a market evaporates, so does the sense of political collectivity."  In generating individual identities tied to consumerism, material consumption, personal choice, and being attached, these shows are promoting a different sort of power for future generations. 
To be clear, our struggles with tween shows isn't just about whether or not a 7 ½-year should watch shows that often deal with dating, relationships, and other high-school themes.  Her expertise in dating and marriage illustrates the power in these shows, and the messages she is receiving, all of which is leading her to think more and more about relationships and the importance of her appearance.  For appearance and having a boyfriend are constructed as the core elements of cool within these shows.
While that is certainly an issue at the moment, hoping that she will see her identity outside of being attached and having the right clothes, these concerns and criticism about the consumer message transcend the moment.  When she is 10, 12, 14, and so on, we will remain vigilant in challenging these messages and pushing her to think critically about the media world she lives within.
On a regular basis, I ask my daughter questions, challenging her to think about the pedagogical messages transmitted on television and in the broader popular culture.  I ask her why so many female characters, otherwise talented as students, artists, and athletes, spend so much time within these show trying to attract the attention of boys.  I ask her why these "free-spirited" individuals seem so focused on fitting, on being cool, and otherwise acting like everyone else.  I ask her why she thinks these shows go to great lengths to encourage her to want things either because of the products they have or because of the endless show-related stuff for sale.  Just this week, in regards to this article, we were talking about the lessons learned from these shows.  In response to my comments about consumerism, she offered the following: "But I like to shop. I like to look at things."
Me: You don't like to shop, you like to buy
Rea: Yes, I like to buy
Me: Why?
Rea: Because I like to get things
Me: Why?
Rea: because I like to have things?
Me: Why?
Rea: How many whys are you going to ask me?
Pushing her to think about learned consumerism, and how popular culture defines her primary role as a citizen to be both a consumer and a girlfriend/wife is difficult given the ways in which tween shows link both to acceptability and coolness.  Challenging her to think about why being attractive, having to have a boyfriend, the right clothes/shoes/ jewelry is so often tied to her identity as girl is not easy. 
Yet, the importance of pushing back, challenging the heteronormative patriarchy lessons emanating from these shows, all while questioning the idea that power comes from visibility, is clear. "Young girls – our daughters, our nieces, our friends kids – need to learn how to talk back to the media at ever younger ages," writes Susan Douglas in The Rise of Enlightened Sexism: How Pop Culture took us from Girl Power to Girls Gone Wild. "Talking back to the media may seem inconsequential or fruitless – and indeed, it only has a limited effect in bringing about change – but look at some of the great stuff we get to see now that we never saw in, say, 1985.  But that's not the points – it's not necessarily about them, it's about us, and changing what we can imagine."  We are working hard so that Rea is able to imagine a world beyond the tween world commonplace on television.  We are working hard to help her see herself beyond the constructed reality of America's tween television fantasies.   
***
David J. Leonard is Associate Professor in the Department of Critical Culture, Gender and Race Studies at Washington State University, Pullman. He has written on sport, video games, film, and social movements, appearing in both popular and academic mediums. His work explores the political economy of popular culture, examining the interplay between racism, state violence, and popular representations through contextual, textual, and subtextual analysis. He is the 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.

Trailer | Limelight: The Rise & Fall on the NYC Club Scene

Synopsis:

As the owner of legendary hotspots like Limelight, Tunnel, Palladium, and Club USA, Peter Gatien was the undisputed king of the 1980s New York City club scene. The eye-patch-sporting Ontario native built and oversaw a Manhattan empire that counted tens of thousands of patrons per night in its peak years, acting as a conduit for a culture that, for many, defined the image of an era in New York. Then years of legal battles and police pressure spearheaded by Mayor Giuliani's determined crackdown on nightlife in the mid-'90s led to Gatien's eventual deportation to Canada, and the shuttering of his glitzy kingdom.
Featuring insider interviews with famous players in the club scene as well as key informants in Gatien's high-profile trial, Billy Corben's (Cocaine Cowboys) exuberant documentary aims to set the record straight about Gatien's life as it charts his rise and fall against the transformation of New York, offering a wild ride through a now-closed chapter in the history of the city's nightlife.

The Tea Party's War on Young Americans

The Tea Party's War on Young Americans  by Mark Naison | special to NewBlackMan
During the last two years, a political revolt on the Right has changed the landscape of American politics. A movement which calls itself the Tea Party, overwhelmingly composed of white Americans over the age of fifty, has taken over the Republican Party, and with it the House of Representatives, with a program calling for drastic curbs on government expenditure and a moratorium on new taxation. The startling growth of this movement is in large measure attributable to racial fears triggered by Barack Obama's election as president. But those fears are connected to demographic shifts which have made  school populations majority minority in many states, and prefigure a  future when whites are no longer the nation's dominant group.  Economic anxiety and racial fears have produced a truly vindictive approach to politics on the American Right. To put the matter bluntly, the  Tea Party has declared war on American youth by trying to cut school budgets, library budgets, publicly subsidized recreation programs, and access to college scholarships.
Until quite recently. young people in the country, who do not vote in the same proportions as their elders, ( the 2008 Presidential Election excepted) have mounted little no significant resistance to the Tea Party offensive and showed few signs of dissatisfaction.   But this could change with startling rapidity A wave of protest in other nations, starting in the Arab World, spreading to continental Europe and most recently taking the form of massive riots in England, all have originated among young people  using social media to spread their message. It is not difficult to imagine that this wave of global protest, both non-violent and violent, will soon spread to the US, taking forms uniquely adapted to American conditions.
Some of this protest has already started; It is significant that the most important recent  youth protests in the US have taken place in our prison system, a sector which dwarfs its counterparts in the Arab world or Europe. There have been two huge hunger strikes in prisons in the last six months, the first in Georgia, the second in California, in each case ending when authorities made  concessions. Since a significant portion of the American working class lives in communities where people move in and out of prison with startling frequency, such protests are a sign of growing discontent among that section of the US population steadily being beaten down, not only by Depression imposed job losses and foreclosures,, but by the budget cuts Tea Party activists have helped negotiate.
Another sign of this discontent is are electronically organized commodity riots  which the media have called "flash mobs," groups of adolescents from poor neighborhoods, who, with the help of cell phone communication, suddenly descend on a downtown business district, or a store, and rob everyone in sight, disappearing as quickly as they've congregated. Incidents of this kind have taken place in Cleveland, Chicago, Philadelphia, and Maryland, prompting moral panic among politicians and religious leaders who view these outbursts as a consequences of faulty childrearing and parental neglect.   But while it is hard to endorse indiscriminate acts of violence which put forth no  program and make no demands, it is also naïve to condemn them without referring to the increasing  poverty and isolation of the  young people responsible for these actions , or to the blithe indifference to their plight among  urban elites and young professionals whose prosperity has been untouched by the recession.   Can you really expect young people to stand by and suffer in silence while libraries and recreation centers are shut, while food becomes scares, while many among them are being forced into homelessness, and when schools become test factories, especially since their older siblings in prison are starting to organize and protest against  their plight.  As conditions worsen among the working class and the poor, expect more flash mobs, more school takeovers and walkouts, and more actual riots, especially when and if police over react to these other forms of protest.
Now as for middle class students and ex students trapped in an unfavorable job market, will they remain silent in the face of working class violence and dissent, or join forces with their elders in calling for its suppression? I don't think so.  There is not only a growing awareness among college students about racial and economic disparities in the country, there are signs of actual activism. College and high school students were a central component of the protests , marches and occupations surrounding the elimination of collective bargaining for public workers in Wisconsin, they have major participants in protests against repressive immigration laws in Arizona, and they have been active in protests against police violence and police brutality from New York to Oakland.. Because of economic pressures as well as moral incentives, more and more college graduates are choosing to participate in programs which place them in low income communities, whether it Vista, Americorps, the Jesuit Volunteer Corps, or alternative certification programs like Teach for America.  As the residents of these communities erupt in protest, they are going to inevitably pull along a portion of the middle class community workers and teachers in their midst
In five years, I predict, there are going to be youth movements in the US, multiracial, multicultural, and multi-class in their composition, which dwarf the Tea Party in size and importance.  Like their counterparts around the world, they will take a wide variety of forms, some violent and even nihilistic, some visionary, carefully  organized and inspirational. But they will make demands on this nation that will require it to sharply change direction in favor of greater inclusiveness, greater compassion, and greater equality. No younger generation worth its salt will allow the poor and the weak in its midst to be driven into the dust, by smug, racist movements, financed by self-interested elites.
The current concentration of wealth at the top of our nation—that  allows 400 of the nations wealthiest individuals to make as much as the bottom 150 million—will  not go unchallenged forever. The youth of this country will rise up and demand something better, and the people running the country had better listen, if they want to have a country left to govern.
***
Mark Naison is a Professor of African-American Studies and History at Fordham University and Director of Fordham's Urban Studies Program. He is the author of two books, Communists in Harlem During the Depression and White Boy: A Memoir. Naison is also co-director of the Bronx African American History Project (BAAHP). Research from the BAAHP will be published in a forthcoming collection of oral histories Before the Fires: An Oral History of African American Life From the 1930's to the 1960's.