Mark Anthony Neal's Blog, page 425

From 'Black Panther' To 'Malcom X,' Ruth E. Carter Creates Character Through Costume

'Black Panther costume designer Ruth E. Carter joins us to talk about how she uses fabric to bring life to African-American stories on the big screen. Carter is a two-time Academy Award-nominee for Best Costume Design for Spike Lee’s 1992 film Malcom X and Steven Spielberg’s 1997 film Amistad. (@iamRuthECarter) -- On Point

Tracy K. Smith — "love is a language / Few practice, but all, or near all speak"

'Tracy K. Smith has a deep interest in “the kind of silence that yields clarity” and “the way our voices sound when we dip below the decibel level of politics.” She’s a welcome voice on the little leaps of the imagination that can restore us. She’s spent the past year traversing our country, listening for all of this and drawing it forth as the U.S. Poet Laureate. Krista spoke with her at the invitation of New York’s B’nai Jeshurun synagogue, which has been in communal exploration on creating a just and redeemed social fabric.' -- On Being Studios 

The African Presence in the English Archives

'Dr. Tony A. Frazier is Assistant Professor of History at NCCU. For his fellowship project, he designed a new course in Digital Humanities and led his students in an exploration of the travels and life stories of 18th and 19th-century African writers in the Atlantic World. He gave a “lightning talk” on the experience of learning with his students in a presentation at the Digital Humanities Nuts and Bolts conference at the National Humanities Center in October, 2018. Prof. Frazier's research interests include the African Presence in Europe, Atlantic slavery and emancipation, and the social and legal history of blacks in Great Britain. He teaches early modern European history, modern European History, African American history, and the African Diaspora.'

It is Time to Confront White Supremacist Violence

'In light of three recent horrific high-profile events, The Takeaway analyzes the continued rise of white supremacist violence. Mark Hetfield. President and CEO of HIAS, the Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society joins The Takeaway along with artist and community organizer Bree Newsome Bass and  Bruce Hoffman, senior fellow for counterterrorism and homeland security at the Council on Foreign Relations.' -- The Takeaway

Who is Kenny Stills, and Why Does He Continue To Take a Knee

'Kenny Stills was one of the first players in the NFL to begin kneeling in protest of racism, inequality, and social injustice back in September of 2016. He continues that protest today. This film explores the “why” behind his actions, his league-leading commitment to bettering the world around us through activism, and the extensive work he does in communities in need all around the country.' -- Park Stories

A Cannabis Pioneer's 'Lonely' Place in the Industry

'Wanda James is the first Black woman to own a cannabis dispensary in the United States. And for Wanda, her identity and work are inextricably linked.' -- The Takeaway

Bearing Witness: ‘The Hate You Give’ and the Generation of Watchers by Mark Anthony Neal

Bearing Witness: ‘The Hate You Give’ and the Generation of Watchersby Mark Anthony Neal | @NewBlackMan | NewBlackMan (in Exile) I’ll admit; there were several moments during The Hate You Give, the new George Tillman, Jr. film based on Angie Thomas’s young adult novel of the same title, where I was brought to tears.  Next to me, my fifteen-year-old daughter nonchalantly watched the film, largely wordless. Her silence betrayed what I knew was her real interest in the story. It was a year ago that I purchased Thomas’s novel for my daughter, who read it in a single night, and carried the book around in her backpack for a year, like I once did as a teen with that Black Poets collection that Dudley Randall edited and Haki Madhubuti’s Earthquakes and Sunrise Missions; the same daughter who excitedly announced to me that there would be a film made of the book.Police My daughter has watched countless videos of unarmed African Americans killed by police and others.  Like Starr Carter (portrayed in the film by Amandla Stenberg), the main protagonist in The Hate You Give, my daughter is part of generation that is both blessed and doomed to bear witness to the visuality of anti-Black violence that so much defines contemporary life. For this generation of watchers, hand-held devices capable of capturing the random moments of life, are an obligatory appendage; I’m hard pressed to think of a historical comparison. The point was made dramatically in the film, when Starr’s father Maverick Carter is harassed by police officers outside of a Soul Food restaurant where he was dining with his Starr, her mother (Regina Hall) and two brothers – the relative explosion of handheld devices that captured the moment in the film is almost redundant in an era in which virtually every anti-Black microaggression becomes an internet meme. I almost expected folk in the audience to pull out their phones to record the action. In the film, Starr literally bears witness to the shooting deaths of two childhood friends; one a random act of violence when she was a child and the second, the shooting of an unarmed Black male, after the two of them were pulled over by police. Though Starr initially reached for her cell phone to record the police stop, the officer demands that she drop her phone; she is forced to see her friend killed, in a metaphoric sense, with her own eyes. For Starr, and ultimately the message of the film, it is not enough to watch; bearing witness is a charge to action and speech. In one of the moments that brought me to tears, Starr speaks for her late friend Khalil, telling the grand jury about his dreams and aspirations, making him human and alive (his apparition appears in the courtroom with the electric smile, that made Algee Smith the ideal choice for the role). The call to bear witness does not occur in a vacuum; it is the byproduct of parents, family, community, and traditions of resistance and resilience. We see this at the beginning of the film when Maverick Carter, portrayed by Russell Hornsby in an Oscar worthy performance, sits at the kitchen table with his wife Lisa Carter, their baby son, an older son from a previous relationship and a young Starr. Many Black parents recognize this scene as a variation on  “The Talk” – an increasingly necessary ritual where Black parents talk with their children about how to safely navigate interactions with law enforcement. Though my own parents didn’t have such a conversation with me when I was a teen growing up in The Bronx, I can remember receiving a copy of The Little Black Book: Black Male Survival in America: Staying Alive & Well in an Institutionally Racist Society, a pamphlet published by New York activist and registered nurse Carol Taylor in 1985.  When my oldest daughter got her license and began to drive on her own, I did have “The Talk” with her; this following the death of Sandra Bland, who died in police custody after a traffic stop. In some ways the scene in The Hate You Give represents a departure from the standard examples of “The Talk”, at least in the ways that it has been represented in the mainstream. When we see Maverick’s hand placed on the table to mimic 10 and 2 point style that Black motorists are encouraged to do during a police stop – so that their hands remain in sight – he does with a copy of the Black Panther Party’s 10-point program on the table. Starr, her older brother Seven, and younger brother Sekani eventually learn to recite the 10 points on demand, as they do in the aftermath of Maverick’s encounter with the police.  Picking up on his children’s sense of defeat, Maverick lines his children up at the front game of their home and demands that they recite point number seven: “We want an immediate end to POLICE BRUTALITY and MURDER of Black people.” Maverick’s sense of duty here is not unlike that of so many parents; it was that sense of duty as a parent that led me to purchase Angie Thomas’s novel for my daughter in the first place. Days after seeing The Hate You Give, my daughter and watched a police assault on a 14-year-old girl in Coral Springs, Florida – this time on my hand-held device. The assault recalled a similar attack on a 14-year-old three years ago in McKinney, TX.  As the officer subdued the unarmed teen in Texas, who was dressed only in her bathing suit, another officer chimed in “Keep running your mouth...” a provocation directed at a 14-year-old Black girl, whose only crime was being a Black girl who knew the importance of bearing witness to the moment. Recordings of these occasions are important in  an era when the mouths of Black girls are often used to label them as non-compliant and defiant, and thus used to justify such attacks on them. The Hate You Give offers no easy suggestions for parents or the generation of watchers that we have raised.  I saw glimpses of my 15-year daughter in both of the girls in Florida and Texas – she has been labeled non-compliant and defiant many times by school administrators, mostly for her perceived disruptive voice. The challenge remains for this parent, and I imagine many others, as to how to encourage my daughter to temper her righteous rage, to live long enough to be able to truly bear witness in the ways that Starr Carter did for her family and friends.
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Mark Anthony Neal is the James B. Duke Professor of African & African American Studies and Professor of English at Duke University, where he is Chair of the Department of African & African-American Studies and Director of the Center for Arts, Digital Culture and Entrepreneurship (CADCE). Neal is the author of several  books including Soul Babies: Black Popular Culture and the Post-Soul Aesthetic and Looking for Leroy: Illegible Black Masculinities, and co-editor, with Murray Forman, of That’s The Joint!: The Hip-Hop Studies Reader (now in its 2nd edition).  Neal is host of the weekly video podcast Left of Black, produced in collaboration with the John Hope Franklin Center for International and Interdisciplinary Studies. Follow Neal on Twitter at @NewBlackMan and Instagram at @BookerBBBrown.

Nina Chanel Abney on her Début show with Pace Prints

'Ahead of the opening of her first solo exhibition with Pace Prints, we sat down with painter Nina Chanel Abney to talk about her work and the experience of making her first body of prints. Abney will be exhibiting the large-scale unique prints that she created in our printshop October 26–December 15, 2018, at Pace Prints, 521 West 26th Street, 4th Floor.'
Nina Chanel Abney on her début show with Pace Prints from Pace Prints on Vimeo.

The 14th Amendment And The History Of Birthright Citizenship In The U.S.

'NPR's Ari Shapiro speaks with Martha Jones, author of Birthright Citizens: A History of Race and Rights in Antebellum America, about the history of the birthright citizenship in the United States.' -- All Things Considered

“I see black people as superheroes because we keep rising" -- Dancer and Choreographer Camille A. Brown on 'Ink'

'The final work in Duke Performances’ artist-in-residence Camille A. Brown’s visionary trilogy about being black in America, ink celebrates the expressive spirit and style of black men while mourning the way that style has been misunderstood and maligned. ink explores the beauty and power of everyday gesture and the spiritual nature of the ordinary, searching out the stories that live within the bodies of her dancers.'