Mark Anthony Neal's Blog, page 457

'The Gospel According to André': Look Fabulous, And Know Your History

'André Leon Talley is best known for his time as a fashion editor for Vogue — and for what he wears on his large 6'6" frame. Talley — and his signature look — is the subject of a new documentary, The Gospel According to André.'

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Published on May 28, 2018 16:51

Aymar Jean Christian and Miriam Petty on 'Insecure', 'Queen Sugar' & the Branding Quality TV

'How do representations of black women/women of color "brand" TV networks and/or film/TV studios? Audiences joined professors Aymar Jean Christian and Miriam Petty as they watched clips of recent critically acclaimed cable and TV shows like Insecure and Queen Sugar and discussed how they fit into strategies of major film and TV brands. This screening also included the screening of a Chicago-made indie TV series developed by Christian with a Q&A focused on their artistic and marketing goals. (This audio has been edited to comply with copyright standards.) Presented by the Block Museum of Art in partnership with the 2018 Evanston Literary Festival.'

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Published on May 28, 2018 16:44

On 'White Fear Being Weaponized' And How To Respond

'White people have called the police on Vlack people in multiple incidents recently, despite no crimes being committed. Professor and Historian Khalil Muhammad thinks it's a problem with a complex history: "where citizens feel that it's OK to be afraid of potential Black criminals, or Brown ones, or Native American ones — they are not feeling like they are going to be censured for that. So that raises the possibility that more people will pick up the phone, or threaten.'

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Published on May 28, 2018 10:38

Glen Henry: What I've Learned about Parenting as a Stay-at-Home Dad

'Glen Henry got his superpowers through fatherhood. After leaving behind a job he hated and a manager he didn't get along with, he went to work for an equally demanding boss: his kids. He shares how he went from thinking he knew it all about being a stay-at-home parent to realizing he knew nothing at all -- and how he's now documenting what he's learned.'-- TED

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Published on May 27, 2018 06:07

Angela Bassett Talks "The Fever" of 'Black Panther' & Ryan Murphy's '911'

'Angela Bassett (9-1-1) joins Close Up with The Hollywood Reporter for this season's Drama Actress Roundtable. She discusses working on Ryan Murphy's 9-1-1 and Ryan Coogler's Black Panther. "There's some moments and some sets where everyone catches the fever of it," Basset told THR.

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Published on May 27, 2018 06:00

How a Corrupt Chicago Cop Framed Dozens of People

'In the mid-aughts, the police sergeant Ronald Watts knew how to exploit the lawlessness of the Ida B. Wells Homes. The Exoneration Project believes that he and his officers wrongly arrested hundreds of people.'

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Published on May 27, 2018 05:46

Adwoa Aboah, Model & Activist, On Mental Health Issues

'Adwoa Aboah discusses mental health and body image. She is a co-founder of Gurls Talk, a platform where young woman can openly talk about mental health issues.'

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Published on May 27, 2018 05:41

Worth It All: Jeffrey Osborne Returns to R&B -- by Mark Anthony Neal

Worth It All: Jeffrey Osborne Returns to R&B by Mark Anthony Neal | @NewBlackMan | NewBlackMan (in Exile)
When Jeffrey Osborne appeared as a drummer and vocalist on a band called L.T.D.’s (Love, Togetherness, and Devotion) debut release for A&M in 1974, they were just another solid funk band trying to share airplay with the likes of Parliament/Funkadelic, The Ohio Players, and Earth, Wind & Fire. It wouldn’t be until the third album, Love to the World (1976) that L.T.D. found its niche, pushing Osborne out to the front and recording the now classic Skip Scarboroughpenned “Love Ballad.” The song not only crossed-over to pop audiences, but, for all intents, helped establish the career of a figure, I’d like to argue, was the purest male R&B singer of his generation. More than 40 years after L.T.D. broke through with “Love Ballad” and "(Every Time I Turn Around) Back in Love Again", which was a top-5 pop hit in the fall of 1977, Osborne, now 70, returns with Worth It All, his first album of original R&B tracks in 15 years.
Jeffrey Osborne was rumored to be one of Luther Vandross’s favorite vocalists – and it makes sense; when Vandross was still grinding in late 1970s New York City, Osborne was putting his stamp on the R&B ballad with a string of memorable cuts like "(Won't Cha) Stay with Me" from Something to Love (1977), "We Both Deserve Each Other's Love" from Togetherness (1978), the plaintive “Stranger” from Devotion (1979) and “Where Did We Go Wrong?” from Shine(1980).
Mirroring the trajectory of another Funk band from that era, Osborne departed L.T.D. for a solo career; Both Lionel Richie (formerly of The Commodores) and Osborne, released their solo debuts in 1982, and while Ritchie went on to major crossover success, Osborne remained a crowd-favorite among traditional R&B audiences with tracks like “On the Wings of Love” (from his debut), “Don’t Get So Mad” (1983), “Crazy ‘Bout ‘Cha” (1984), "You Should Be Mine (The Woo Woo Song)" (1986), which was Osborne’s highest charting pop hit, and “Only Human” (1990), which closed his run as radio relevant R&B artist.
Osborne had a comeback of sorts in 2000 with the title track to “That’s For Sure”, which 17-years later holds up as quality, adult R&B – and that’s what you get on Worth It All, which features 12-songs, all written by Osborne, that won’t offend the R&B purist, and might earn Mr. Osborne a few millennial fans, who don’t need their music to be woke all the time.
Osborne is in fine form on tracks like the opener “Let a Brotha Know” and the mid-temp stepper “I Want You”, which both betray Osborne’s age; he has lost none of the power, depth and nuance of his voice – a sweet, supple and still authoritative baritone – that still rivals Teddy Pendergrass in his prime. Few would blink and eye if either track ended up in the summer cookout playlist.
Of course there are the ballads. As Osborne told Parle Magazine , “I wanted this to be a real heartfelt album. My strength is singing R&B ballads; I am known for ballads, so [Worth It All] kind of took on that flavor.” The songs “Work It”, and in particular the title track “Worth It All” are standouts. The latter is the kind of song written by a man reflecting on a 45-year career and 35 years of marriage, a perspective sorely lacking in contemporary R&B.
For fans of Jeffrey Osborne and those needing a more thorough introduction, Worth It All is the perfect companion to A Time For Love, Mr. Osborne’s collection of Jazz standards from 2013, which features saxophonist Kamasi Washington, two years before his To Pimp a Butterfly breakthrough.

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Published on May 26, 2018 07:30

"Come Sunday: All Hell Breaks Loose!" by Johari Jabir

Come Sunday: All Hell Breaks Loose! [in memory of James Cone: 1936-2018] by Johari Jabir | special to NewBlackMan (in Exile)
The bourgeoisie has stripped of its halo every occupation hitherto honoured and looked up to with reverent awe. It has converted the physician, the lawyer, the priest, the poet, the man of science, into its paid wage labourers. – Karl Marx, Communist Manifesto.
The Netflix docudrama, Come Sunday dramatizes Bishop Carlton Pearson’s rejection of hell in 2004. Pearson had been the golden boy of Oral Roberts’ evangelical legacy, and his annual Azusa Street event was an international platform that served a wide range of religious professionals. But after Pearson announced to his constituencies that he no longer believed in the Christian doctrine of hell − all hell broke loose!
Pearson was taken to task by his primary mentor, Oral Roberts, who symbolized the White colonial father disinheriting his disobedient Black son. The Joint-College of African American Pentecostal Bishops branded him a heretic. Several of these very bishops had previously reaped the economic benefits of Pearson’s religious empire. And, enrollment in Pearson’s 6,000 member interracial congregation swiftly declined, forcing the church to abandon its space and auction its furniture. Religious colloquialisms such as “fall from grace,” and “excommunication” have been used to frame the controversy surrounding Bishop Pearson. This kind of provocative language gives the illusion that in this context, hell exists only as something purely theological. Thankfully, however, the film reveals the real truth about hell as a theological and economical construct. Hell is a man-made social reality in the enterprising of Christianity.
Not to minimize Pearson’s personal losses and suffering, but his confession is our revelation. The reactions of clergy and religious professionals reveals a lack of compassion and mercy, and a deeper concern for numbers and the economic results. But ultimately, the collapse of Pearson’s religious empire is a testament as to how hell was assumed to be a necessity, one that blinds us to the ways we live with hell as a man-made social reality. The stress and strain of Empire is the hell in which we ALL live. In more specific terms, the film allows us to consider how the current moment of Black Church as TV Entertainment is a primary vehicle used to flaunt the wealth of a few in order to conceal hell.
Come Sunday arrives in a television market flooded with Black Church Entertainment. The Oprah Winfrey Network’s (OWN) Greenleaf, is a soap opera that revolves around the family secrets, competition, and conflicting corporate interests of a family’s religious dynasty. Another Black church soap opera is Bounce television’s Saints and Sinners, which, in contrast to Greenleaf, follows members of a large Baptist church in a small town in Georgia. Both shows are set against the backdrop of greed, corruption, and murder, but Greenleaf stands out in terms of excess and opulence. In addition to Greenleaf and Sinners & Saints, several reality TV shows extol the virtues of personal wealth displayed by Black pastors − Thicker than Water, Pastors of L.A. and Preachers of Atlanta just to name a few. And, this is not to mention the ongoing television programming of Black Mega-Churches, which glorify mass membership as evidence of economic prosperity.
Images of Black preachers and Black churches flaunting their evangelical decadence are constantly streamed over our television screens, so as to mask the church’s complicit role in sustaining poverty. In keeping with the logic of race, capitol, and society, Black Christian celebrities flaunt their wealth and a perversion of the gospel known as “the prosperity gospel” blames the poor for being poor. The messages encoded in these images and the accompanying sermons correspond to the theological foundation of America as a chosen nation in which some are free while “others” were to be enslaved in the service of their master’s wealth. The Civil War did not destroy this social structure.
Even after the gains made by African Americans during Reconstruction, racists forms of Social Darwinism secured the anti-democratic “pursuit of happiness” for some but not all. Centuries and decades of civil protests have not yet decimated the logic that some people in the society are chosen to live above and beyond their means, they have God’s favor, while others are destined to live in hell here and now, and will do so again after their earthly departure. The combination of a violent Social Darwinism and American evangelical fundamentalism is a hell that, by design cannot be seen or dismantled using the traditional tools of the master.
The moment that [re]defined Bishop Carlton Pearson’s belief in the Christian conventions of hell was his awakening to the 2004 Rwandan genocide. It is logical that the film’s use of archival news footage in order to serve the overall arc of Pearson’s de-conversion. But, what is missing from his transformation is how the CIA, well informed about the deadly conflicts in the region, did not halt its supply of weaponry, which only further enabled a genocide that otherwise could have been thwarted. Here, unfortunately, Pearson’s conversion experience repeats the same personal piety that renders Christianity in America a complicit observer in human suffering.
“Africa,” as presented in most forms of American media, is always already a portrait of disease, violence, and immorality. This visual construct is an old colonial trope that considers Africa to be innately “undeveloped.” But meanwhile, the fires of hell are raging all around us, right before our very eyes, but because we choose an optics of a Christianity that prioritizes profits over people we cannot tell the difference between the cranes for luxury condos and a crucifix; we confuse the auction blocks of the market place with the altar of our souls. O Jerusalem. Even as I write this the embers of hell burn within the Holy City of Jerusalem. The reign of Trumpism fuels the fire of hurt, hate, and xenophobia not only in the United States but throughout the world.
When Sunday Comes
Lord dear lord of love God almighty, God above Please look down and see my people thru…. Up from dawn til sunset Man work hard all day Come Sunday, oh, come Sunday That’s the day -- From My People, by Duke Ellington, performed by Mahalia Jackson
According to the chronicle of the film, it was a Sunday morning when Pearson tried to explain to his congregation his new position. Members in the audience challenged him with venom and anger, and some walked out in protest. Would that Christians were empowered every Sunday morning to confront the money changers, thieves, and false prophets with the same might.
In the Christian Church’s Gregorian calendar Sundays come and go, marking the beginning of the seven-day week. In America Sunday morning is the time when Christians reenact the very segregation that betrays the human connectedness of the gospel. But, another Sunday is on the horizon. This kind of Sunday comes as a result of radical forms of love that lead to revolutionary acts of justice and compassion, new social visions of caring and sharing, and a radical redistribution of the world’s resources. This Sunday will come from a real state of emergency after the yokes of hell the strongholds of capitalism − have been broken. And when this Sunday comes, and it most surely will, if we are still convinced that we must have a church or a liberation theology, then let this church and its theology first liberate itself from the forces that can never realize the Kingdom of God. If we take a cue from Pearson’s courage, “Come Sunday,” all the chains of hell will break loose and perhaps, then, we can all be truly born again.
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Johari Jabir is Associate Professor of African American Studies at the University of Illinois at Chicago and the author of Conjuring Freedom: Music and Masculinity in the Civil War’s “Gospel Army”

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Published on May 25, 2018 14:13

#BackChannel: #MuteRKelly, ‘This Is America,’ And Being A ‘Professional Black Girl’

In this installment of #BackChannel hosted by WUNC’s Frank Stasio, regular contributors Natalie Bullock Brown and Mark Anthony Neal discuss the #MuteRKelly movement, Childish Gambino’s “This Is America”, Janelle Monáe’s new album “Dirty Computer,” and the recent storyline on the ABC sitcom Blackish that dramatized the challenges of a working marriage. In addition Bullock Brown and Neal are joined by North Carolina Central University professor Yaba Blay to preview the second season of “Professional Black Girl,” her short form video series profiling women who unapologetically embody Black girl culture.
Natalie Bullock Brown a is filmmaker and adjunct professor, and Mark Anthony Neal is the chair of the department of African and African American studies at Duke University in Durham.

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Published on May 25, 2018 07:52