Mark Anthony Neal's Blog, page 398

Adjunct Professors are Organizing; Demanding Better Pay, Respect

'For educators trying to secure a full-time position as a college professor, that road is often paved by years of working as an adjunct professor. The positions do not guarantee future employment, and payment is based on the number of classes taught, without taking into account the extra time put into grading papers or meeting with students. Both public and private schools over the decades have increasingly come to rely on adjunct professors, leaving many earning poverty-level wages without hopes of working toward a tenure-tracked job. But adjuncts are organizing, and their successes are taking place even in right-to-work states like Florida, where unionization is more difficult. Danielle Douglas-Gabriel is a reporter covering the economics of education for The Washington Post. She joins The Takeaway to share her reporting.' -- The Takeaway

Trailer -- 'Reconstruction: America After The Civil War'

'Reconstruction: America After the Civil War will explore the transformative years following the American Civil War when the nation struggled to rebuild itself in the face of profound loss, massive destruction, and revolutionary social change. This new, four hour documentary series from Henry Louis Gates, Jr. will premiere on PBS.' 

US – Where the Black People Stay Alive Long Enough to be Good, Bad, and Complicated by Stephane Dunn

US – Where the Black People Stay Alive Long Enough to be Good, Bad, and Complicated by Stephane Dunn | @DrStephaneDunn | NewBlackMan (in Exile)
Here’s the first thing viewers need to understand and embrace before and after seeing Jordan Peele’s second big horror flick, US: Expect to be befuddled and remain so long after the final image and the credits end then commit to seeing it at least one more time. You can also question, is this an example of cinematic genius in the horror genre or just bit of a hot, just plain strange, mess and?  This is a healthy quandary.
Critical dialogue about the meaning of white rabbits and  the purpose and fate of the mirror in US, as well as the box office receipts confirm that Peele has directed two blockbuster horror movies buzzed about before and after release that have made us collectively think rather than just take notice.
Here’s another important unambiguous truth. In centering Black characters, and rewriting and directing a Black presence into the genre, Peele is popularizing again and refreshing the psychological horror film. As a cinephile of movies and of horror cinema specifically, he’s deftly weaving diverse elements from horror films with his grasp of contemporary cultural politics and the psychoanalytic underpinnings of all good psychologically intense horror dramas – those that traffic in suspense, unconscious and conscious fear, repression, and trauma.  Peele appears to have an astute understanding of what film theorist Christian Metz has explained as the “kinship” between the spectator’s psychic positioning and the “industrial” as well as economic mechanisms of cinema. 
With Get Out, Peele distinguished himself by offering something viewers hadn’t seen in recent times and ever with such a cool serious vibe, a horror film – rather than a parody of horror flicks – whose core story utilized historical racial taboos, miscegenation, scientific exploitation, and White supremacist racial mythologies.  The film made history both in terms of money and cultural cache, as the “sunken place” became a popular half-joking, halfway serious  way to denote perceived emotional vulnerability or cluelessness danger to the former. The risky, well-written, and directed Get Out launched Peele as a serious filmmaker attached to his chosen genre. Peele’s ability to manipulate cinematic apparatus and spectatorial pleasure with Get Out so induced viewer pleasure that it left critics and moviegoers clamoring for more Peele horror fun.
Get Out’s success paved the way for him to fully linger within the recesses of horror film styles in the production of US, starring a revelatory Lupita Nyong’o simultaneously playing Red, creepy deep-throated double of Adelaide Wilson, a mother and wife haunted by a spooky childhood mirror encounter at the beach. Winston Duke as semi-nerdy, comical husband Gabe and the primitive double, Abraham brings much of the lighter moments of relief, while Shahadi Wright Joseph and Evan Alex amp up the action and chills with badass portrayals of the character’s son and daughter Zora and Jason and their scary red suited doubles, Umbrae and  Pluto.
Though US does not have the same thematic investment in racial politics as Get Out, it culturally signifies in terms of race in relation to Hollywood and the horror genre in particular. Black actors, a family of Black characters no less, headlining a horror film, already  anticipated as a hit, is indeed an unfamiliar big screen event. Thus, Peele’s second film, purposefully, like the first, acknowledges and stirs the pleasure and yearnings of Black spectators who have been historically marginalized and rendered  invisible in horror cinema. In Jordan Peele’s deliciously tripped out revision of horror cinema, the Black people stay alive long enough to be good, bad, and complicated rather than merely funny or inevitable food bait for slashers, monsters, or evil extraterrestrials. With the survival of the Black characters USundergirds the universal human experience of fear that the horror genre, and Peele in this instance, exploit.
In US, a Lacanian-like mirror stage experience complicates the “I” and self-identity when the lead character has a psychic response in childhood to a mirror reflection of her image that turns out to be more than a fleeting spooky encounter in a funhouse boardwalk. Whereas Get Out offered a restrained approach in terms of blood and gore until the last act of the film, US indulges in the mix of traditional slasher horror and the Hitchcockian psychological vulnerability. Genius marketing through a provocative, strategically well-timed trailer release and movie poster featuring Nyong’o’s double-sided character capitalized on Peele’s positive notoriety such that the reception of US by critics and viewers was well set up.
The film’s plot doesn’t entirely hold up. It heads in one direction with the family then jarringly departs – there is a bit too much left as abstract – which we will largely forgive because Peele has reinvigorated movie goers, drawn some scary movie haters to horror, and spooked us without leaving the Black characters behind.
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Stephane Dunn is a Professor and Director of Cinema, Television & Emerging Media Studies Program (CTEMS) at Morehouse College. Dunn is the author of "Baad Bitches" and Sassy Supermamas: Black Power Action Films .

Picturing Us: The Work of Deborah Willis

' The From Slavery to Freedom Lab at the Franklin Humanities Institute hosted a conversation with pioneering voice of Black photography, Dr. Deborah Willis, as she discussed her body of work. Deborah Willis, Ph.D, is University Professor and Chair of the Department of Photography & Imaging at the Tisch School of the Arts at New York University and has an affiliated appointment with the College of Arts and Sciences, Department of Social & Cultural, Africana Studies, where she teaches courses on Photography & Imaging, iconicity, and cultural histories visualizing the black body, women, and gender. She has pursued a dual professional career as an art photographer and as one of the nation's leading historians of African American photography and curator of African American culture.' -- Duke Franklin Humanities Institute 

Patricia Spears Jones on a Trip to Calabar Imports

'Patricia Spears Jones is a poet originally from Arkansas, who has lived for many years in the Brooklyn neighborhood of  Bedford-Stuyvesant. We asked Jones to show us one of her favorite places, and she took us around the corner from her home, to a boutique called Calabar Imports. Owned by a mother and daughter who have lived in Nigeria, the shop showcases jewelry, fashion, and decorative items from Africa and other regions. “It’s a neighborhood space,” Jones notes—a place to buy extraordinary things, and to find community.' -- The New Yorker Radio Hour

Is Jordan Peele's "Us" the First Marxist Horror Film?

'Jordan Peele's much-anticipated follow-up to last year's Get Out debuts. Us tells the story of a middle class Black family that's terrorized by twisted copies of themselves. Valerie Complex is a freelance writer covering cinema, and she joins the show to talk about the film, the stereotypes challenged by these Black roles, as well as her recent interview with Jordan Peele. And Rafer Guzman , film critic for Newsday and The Takeaway, offers his perspective on the film's Marxist undertones.' -- The Takeaway

“It’s Funky Enough:” AOC and the Conundrum of Language by Wilfredo Gomez

“It’s Funky Enough:” AOC and the Conundrum of Language by Wilfredo Gomez | @BazookaGomez84 | NewBlackMan (in Exile)
First-term Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez presents us with a unique opportunity to engage a social experiment. What experiment you might ask? Namely this: one of the beautiful things about hip-hop music lies in its ability to be adapted to any happening imaginable -- if you think long enough there is a hip-hop lyric that suffices to speak to every experience. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is no different. In putting forth that argument, I draw from The D.O.C.’s 1989 visuals from the song, “It’s Funky Enough,” and the release of Onyx's 1995 “Last Dayz,” to invoke the spirit and energy of the search for what’s funky and next, in addition to speaking to the paranoia surrounding the contemporary political moment and what pundits think might happen if the Alexandria Ocasio-Cortezs of the world become the benchmark for progressive legislation and a push towards greater equity in society.
It is no secret that the Congresswoman who goes by the initials A.O.C has at some points found herself at the center of some controversy and some deserved props, whether it is challenging the politics as usual approach that mindlessly supports party over substance, or the ability to forcefully hold folks accountable, highlighting loopholes that have been exploited countless times. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez has proven herself more than capable of being a leader and a refreshing voice of change, clear headed and sharp, as a colleague suggested, fearless and unfazed by expectations to bow down to rookie rhetoric on Capitol Hill. However, these stances don’t come without detractors, whether it is a critique of her eating habits or mode of transport, her every decision is picked apart as a reflection of her class, gender, politics, brand, and more importantly, her race.
The recent fallout with Laura Ingraham is no different. Recently dubbed a “phenom” and appearing on the cover of Time, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez has been at the center of Laura Ingraham’s scorn for having “minority privilege”and for deploying that privilege in the most undemocratic of manners by naming and calling out manifestations of white privilege. That being the case, white privilege was on full display as Laura Ingraham recently shared a segment with Joe DiGenova wherein the conversation inexplicably shifted from the devalued standards of journalism to Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. Ingraham suggested that Ocasio-Cortez does the “Obama thing,” adopting (and adapting) accents in an attempt to appease her audience. From there, DiGenova offered his own take on Ingraham’s invocation of Obama, by suggesting that Ocasio-Cortez does the “Latina thing,” where he proceeds to pronounce her name in an exaggerated fashion -- an attempt to approximate how a native Spanish-speaker might pronounce their name (to an assumed Spanish-speaking audience). In the process of mucking up Ocasio-Cortez’s name (referring to Alexandria as “Anastasia” in his Italian accent), DiGenova invokes his own performance of the masquerade (offering what we might consider to be a less Americanized pronunciation of his own name -- dare we say the “white male thing”), calling attention to his own ethnic origins (and difference), while placating the sentiments of nativism, conservative ideology, and the rhetoric of assimilation (a collective mashup we might call the white paper bag test!).
The illustration of difference via linguistic practice attempts to highlight the false pretenses that undergird Ocasio-Cortez’s American (success) story. This further reinforces the idea that Ocasio-Cortez’s legislative agenda falls outside the purview of what’s good or right for democracy. Moreover, the comment seeks to assuage feelings that while Ocasio-Cortez is experiencing some popularity and attention, she should be read as a passing fad within democratic, and by extension political circles. Deflecting attempts to find a substantive reason to disagree with difference, DiGenova and Ingraham are informing their core audience that, yes, this too shall pass, and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez represents an exotic brand of the exotic itself -- an unassimilable fusion of politics and being. While DiGenova arrogantly assumes that Ocasio-Cortez will like said pronunciation, Ingraham further exoticizes the pronunciation, by not hiding how elated she is at the sound of that exotic pronunciation. It reminded me of this sequence at the opening of the comedy film, Wedding Crashers.
The more disturbing reality here is that the exchange between DiGenova and Ingraham reinforces the very diluted nature of journalism they critique in the moments leading up to A.O.C.s name. Ingraham infantilizes Ocasio-Cortez by referring to her as a “girl.” She then proceeds to clean that up by suggesting that she means that “in the most mature of ways.” The entire segment is dripping in manifestations of white privilege. By drawing a parallel between A.O.C. and Obama’s diction, cadence, and its performance vis-á-vis audience, there is an allusion to the reality of code-switching, which underscores both the inability ( DiGenova and Ingraham) to differentiate between A.O.C. and Obama’s code-switching, and an erasure of the ways in which POCs (that is people of color -- minorities) both monitor and modify their relationship to forms of presentation and being depending on the spaces and places they occupy (and those they share with others).
Many a time, these manifestations of code-switching are linguistic markers of difference that exist in tandem with dress (in the political arena), a survival mechanism that effectively disarms audiences (or attempts to momentarily disrupt them) in their gaze, a socially and culturally constructed script of difference that readily lends itself to stereotype, vitriol, and caricature. Minus A.O.C.’s presence or an example illustrating the argument driven by said analysis, Ingraham and her guest proceed to expose and exploit AOC in her deft efforts to simultaneously speak to and occupy spaces where audiences are undoubtedly coexisting within the temporal boundaries of the local and national.  
The problem lies with Ingraham and DiGenova. Not only are they (intentionally) revelling in the cheeky nature of their white privilege, defined by partial humor, cultural criticism, and political commentary, they are doing so defying the cardinal rules of code-switching (namely, that you do not point out when it is happening, nor exploit said person for doing so). Thus, what is unwritten and unspoken, yet readily understood to be a norm (amongst communities of color) -- particularly within spaces and institutions where whiteness, its approximation, cultural norms, and mannerisms go unquestioned -- often demarcated/masked as “middle-class” -- exists as yet another added layer of ridicule, demonization, and the default position of self-anointed othering.
Such a stance ignores the emotional, psychological, cultural, and arguably, physical labor involved in cultivating a know-how that functions as both arms (in the sense of being equipped with a tool/skillset) and armor, a means of deflecting so as to be empowered and further the existence of a “safe space” from which other others can be enabled in their own being within knowing. Furthermore, the exchange between Ingraham and DiGenova reinforces the idea that Ocasio-Cortez not only looks like a language (Spanish), but sounds like a race (Latina? Hispanic? Other? Pick your exotic nationality of the moment...or just lazily conflate notions of language, nationality, and race by referring to A.O.C. as “Spanish”), to riff on the brilliant and groundbreaking work of Stanford anthropologist Jonathan Rosa.
All of this collectively highlights the erasures of these competencies (cultural, social, emotional, and linguistic) within the actual labor of legislating. That is to suggest, that rhetoric and thinly veiled references to professionalism effectively glosses over the very practices employed by politicians ALL ACROSS THE COUNTRY irrespective of political party! Moreover, the comments and fetishization of A.O.C. and her linguistic practices (not even accounting for whether or not Ocasio-Cortez actually speaks Spanish, or the realities faced by Spanish-speakers given the generations they’ve spent in this country) implicates the kinds of concerns and outrage minorities are taxed with in their quest to be their authentic and ideal selves, let alone doing so while attempting to bring forth social change.
The exchange further reinvigorates conversations around the unfair burdens placed upon those “privileged minorities,” whom Ingraham identified as those who would dare call out white supremacy, a tax whose brunt is bore by those same bodies. Min Jin Lee poignantly addresses these disparate  taxes through a dialogue in her second novel, Pachinko. The exchange between Solomon and Kazu is worth quoting at length:
        Kazu: “Okay, tough guy...listen, there is a tax, you know, on success.”         Solomon: “Huh?”         Kazu: “If you do well at anything, you gotta pay up to all those people who did         worse. On the other hand, if you do badly, life makes you pay a shit tax, too.         Everybody pays something.”                 Kazu looked at him soberly.
        “Of course, the worst one is the tax on the mediocre. Now that one’s a bitch.”         “Pay attention: the ones who pay the shit tax are mostly people who were born         in the wrong place and the wrong time and are hanging on to the planet by their         broken fingernails. They don’t even know the fucking rules of the game. You         can’t even get mad at ‘em when they lose. Life just fucks and fucks and fucks         bastards like that.” Kazu wrinkled his brow in resignation, like he was somewhat         concerned about life’s inequities but not very. He took a deep breath. “So,         those losers have to climb Mount Everest to get out of hell, and maybe one or two         in five hundred thousand break out, but the rest pay the shit tax all their lives, then         they die. If God exists and if He’s fair, then it makes sense that in the afterlife,         those guys should get better seats.”
        Solomon nodded, not understanding where this was going.
        Kazu’s stare remained unbroken. “But all those able-bodied middle-class people         who are scared of their shadows, well, they pay the mediocre tax in regular         quarterly installments with compounding interest. When you play it safe, that’s         what happens, my friend. So if I were you, I wouldn’t throw any games. I’d use         every fucking advantage. Beat anyone who fucks with you to a fucking pulp.         Show no mercy to chumps, especially if they don’t deserve it. Make the pussies         cry.”
        “So then the success tax comes from envy, and the shit tax comes from         exploitation. Okay.” Solomon nodded like he was starting to get it. “Then what’s         the mediocre tax? How can it be wrong to--?”
        “Good question young Jedi. The tax for being mediocre comes from you and         everyone else knowing that you are mediocre. It’s a heavier tax than you’d think.”
Minorities must represent (silently and unconsciously as per Ingraham’s and DiGenova’s comments) and be above being reprehensible. Ingraham and DiGenova are making Ocasio-Cortez pay the “success tax,” glossing over the societal conditions that contribute to a “shit tax,” all the while upholding what seems like a “mediocre tax.”
In showing their receipts for said “mediocre tax,” Ingraham and DiGenova grossly underestimate that which is privileged within whiteness. White folks (not a homogenous identity) neither ask one another to perform their nationality, nor do they hold one another accountable for not upholding a consciousness about their heritage.
This inaction, an approximation and performance of “Americanness” or rather whiteness, is in fact a pillar of their white privilege. In exercising that privilege, they reinforce Ocasio-Cortez’s othered body, while essentially questioning her ability or inability to fundamentally own and perform whiteness as an ontological and epistemological fact of American identity (and democracy). A failure to do so, not only reinforces A.O.C.’s exotic body, it effectively places her outside democracy’s scope of credibility and legitimacy. In the current state of a fragile democracy, Ingraham and DiGenova’s inability to meet Ocasio-Cortez where she is at, points to a failure to do better given the troubled history of whiteness in this country. That particular brand of mediocre whiteness...well...it’s funky enough…
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Wilfredo Gomez is an independent scholar and researcher. He can be reached at gomez.wilfredo@gmail.com or via twitter at @BazookaGomez84.

'What Doesn't Kill You' Navigates The Challenges Of Existing While Black

'Damon Young's new memoir is full of pointed, thoughtful, barbed and funny essays about the ways race has affected his life, and the lives of his family — and about his hopes for the next generation.' 

The Road to Global Debt Supremacy: How Finance Swallowed Democracy

'Political economist Jerome Roos explains how sovereign debt swallowed global politics -- as US policy makers unleashed credit to address a 1970s crisis of profitability, the demands of capital pushed the power of creditors ahead of democratic controls worldwide, triggering a generation of political and economic disasters that must be challenged by renewed (and new) institutions empowering democratic power over finance.'  Roos is author of Why Not Default? The Political Economy of Sovereign Debt from Princeton University Press.' -- This is Hell! 

Left of Black S9:E14: Ingrid LaFleur Discusses AFROTOPIA

[image error] Left of Black co-host Sasha Panaram (@SashaPanaram) is joined in the studio by artist, activist, and Afrofuturist, Ingrid LaFleur (@ingridlafleur). Her mission is to ensure equal distribution of the future, exploring the frontiers of social justice through new technologies, economies, and modes of government. As a recent Detroit Mayoral candidate and founder and director of AFROTOPIA, LaFleur implements Afrofuturist strategies to empower Black bodies and oppressed communities through frameworks such as blockchain, cryptocurrency, and universal basic income. As a thought leader, social justice technologist, public speaker, teacher, and cultural advisor, she has led conversations and workshops at Centre Pompidou (Paris), TEDxBrooklyn, TEDxDetroit, Ideas City, New Museum (New York), African Innovation Summit, Harvard University, and Oxford University, among others. LaFleur is based in Detroit, Michigan.