Mark Anthony Neal's Blog, page 504

Why Hourly Wages Don't Make Sense, but a 30-Hour Workweek Does

'Think about the idea of an hourly wage. If you do X amount of work and the profits increase by Y, shouldn't you get paid more? That isn't true for 95% of the workforce. In fact, most people work hard just to make their bosses or the shareholders and investors of a company richer. Michael Slaby argues that we should revisit the idea of wealth in this country and perhaps swing to a universal base income. We could afford it, and it might make many millions of people a lot happier. Yet it goes against the oft-cited "American work ethic" that is propped up by the 'hard work equals moving up in the world' idea. Poverty could be eradicated using the techniques Slaby talks about, but it would take a lot of convincing to happen.' --  Big Think
 

When A Historically Black University's Neighborhood Turns White

'The area around Howard University was once working-class and Black. As more non-Black residents move in and property values rise, the D.C. university is taking advantage of the hot real estate market.' -- Morning Edition

We Was Girls Together…: Reflections on Seeing ‘Girls Trip’ by Simone C. Drake

We Was Girls Together…: Reflections on Seeing ‘Girls Trip’by Simone C. Drake | @SimoneCDrake | NewBlackMan (in Exile)
She had been looking all along for a friend, and it took her a while to discover that a lover was not a comrade and could never be—for a woman.~Toni Morrison, Sula
Grown-up life can be rough. Raising three kids, negotiating the trials of marriage, and striving to be successful professionally leaves little room for my girls. Add in different life situations like no childcare or short bank accounts for some, and girls nights are rare in the over forty club. This is one reason I am really glad I broke off my first marriage engagement when I was twenty-one (it happened eventually) and lived a life of many girl nights and numerous girl trips. I have zero regrets, because, well, the real grown-up life is rough.
Fast-forward twenty years. It pops up on Facebook that it’s one of my oldest girlfriend’s birthdays. We have not celebrated birthdays together for years. Feeling guilty about that, I send a message and say let’s go out and celebrate. I am thinking dinner someplace midway between our homes and back home by 10PM. She responds back and says let’s go see Girls Trip…at 9PM. I had forgotten it was coming out, because, well, grown-up life is rough and I thought 9PM was a joke.  
To make the experience even more like high school and college, we are going on opening night and to a theatre sure to be packed with black people—black women to be specific. When my girlfriend arrived at the town center, she sent a text, “Girl, there are black people everywhere.” There were black people at the town center, for sure, but there were definitely more white people. I responded back, “Yeah, this is nothing like the world I live in everyday.” As a corporate lawyer, she had to agree, “Me neither.”
Two things struck me about the film beyond the nostalgia and hilarity that Regina Hall, Jada Pinkett Smith, Queen Latifah, and Tiffany Haddish bring to the film. It is no surprise that Malcolm D. Lee teamed up with Kenya Barris (Blackish) and Tracy Oliver (Barbershop) on Girls Trip. In spite of Lee claiming he does not make “black films,” the theater audiences for his cult classic Best Man (1999) and its long awaited sequel Best Man Holiday (2013) were much like the opening night audience for Girls Trip—all black (except for our Korean-American high school friend).
Unlike the slave movies that often times have a larger white audience than black audience, or even Get Out, whose racial critique, for its white audience, was lost in its absurdity, Girls Trip was all about black pleasure—on and off the screen.
Something that strikes me about this collaboration of black director and black writers is that the twenty-first century marks a shift in black film production. The literal ghettoization of blackness that was the hallmark of 1990s urban cinema—Boyz n the Hood, New Jack City, Menace to Society, Juice, etc.—has taken a backseat to other narratives of the black experience. More and more films are framed around friendships developed in college and professional work places rather than in urban spaces marked by economic blight.
This shift has also resulted in representing black mobility. Black people are traveling. And not just in Soul Plane style. Girls Trip chronicles the reunion of four black women who had lively travel days during college—Freaknik, NBA All Stars game, etc. They meet up at the Essence Festival in New Orleans and the fun, drama, and clichéd plot line begins. But the mobility is striking. Best Man Holiday similarly was framed around a plot that relied upon mobile black folk.
One thing that these narrative shifts demonstrate is there is a strong (black) market for films that focus on black pleasure narratives. Girl Trip is set to bring in $28.1M this weekend, making it the second highest grossing film this weekend and already making back the $20M it cost to make it. And, in contrast to the Tyler Perry Why Did I Get Married franchise and the Steve Harvey Think Like a Man franchises, this particular narrative disposes of the marriage plot that inundated black-cast films in the early 21st century. Marriage becomes a farce in Girls Night as it creates a space for women-centered camaraderie.
Interestingly, and refreshingly, this film allowed black women to relish in the friendship and camaraderie Toni Morrison imagines for Sula and Nel, visualizing what it “we was girls together means” in a light and very real way for many black women. Thus, watching Girls Trip in a theatre full of black women was simultaneously like a flashback to watching Waiting to Exhale in 1995, but with the lived experience of not being girls together anymore but grown women who have found a moment of pleasure in spite of grown-up life being rough.
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Simone C. Drake is Youngberg Distinguished Professor of African American and African Studies at The Ohio State University.  She is the author of When We Imagine Grace: Black Men and Subject Making by the University of Chicago Press and Critical Appropriations: African American Women and the Construction of Transnational Identity (LSU Press).
Other essays from Simone C. Drake:"Mother to Son": on ‘Fences’ and Climbin’ Crystal Stairs‘Cause I Slay: A Beyoncé Timeline for February 2016Witnessing While White and the Violence of Silence

The Intersectional Black Panther Party History Project Celebrates First Anniversay [video]

'The Intersectional Black Panther Party History Project (IPHP) was founded on July 19, 2016, to recover and restore the Black Panther Party’s (BPP) history and womens’ critical roles within the organization. This reel is an overview of select IPHP publications, curated sources, conferences, presentations and media projects since our October 2016 public launch. The collective's co-founders are: Angela D. LeBlanc-Ernest, M.A.; Tracye A. Matthews, PhD; Mary Phillips, PhD; and, Robyn C. Spencer, PhD. IPHP is a collective of scholars, filmmakers, and activists who joined forces with the common passion of #changingthenarrative. IPHP can be found at http://www.iphpcom.wordpress.com or on any of our social media sites (Facebook: @IPHistoryProject, Twitter: @IPHProject, or Instagram: iphistoryproject).' -- Intersectional BPPHistoryProject

IPHP's One Year Anniversary Retrospective from Intersectional BPPHistoryProject on Vimeo.

Songs We Love: The Isley Brothers & Carlos Santana, 'Mercy Mercy Me (The Ecology)'

The lead single from 'Power Of Peace -- a 13-track exercise in old-school funk and soul, featuring the iconic R&B family band The Isley Brothers (Ronnie and Ernie). And it's a return to form of sorts: Santana's earliest tours included double bills with R&B bands like Tower of Power and Earth, Wind & Fire, and the band's Afro-Cuban music has always been imbued with the grittiness of funk and the tenderness of classic soul.' -- NPR Music

Dave Chappelle On Comedy And Politics In The Age Of President Trump

'Preparing for a month-long residency at Radio City Music Hall, Dave Chappelle talks about growing up in D.C. and his decision to host the first SNL after the presidential election.' -- What's Good with Stretch & Bobbito
 

The Racial Legacy of the Southern Baptist Convention

'Lawrence Ware, co-director of the Africana Studies Program at Oklahoma State University discusses his recent New York Times op-ed that explains his decision to leave the Southern Baptist Convention and how the 2016 election unearthed a legacy of racial intolerance that propelled him to speak out.' -- The Brian Lehrer Show

        

The Juice Box Incident and the Erasure of Black Girlhood by Mark Anthony Neal

The Juice Box Incident and the Erasure of Black Girlhoodby Mark Anthony Neal | @NewBlackMan | NewBlackMan (in Exile)
It has come to be known in our family as the “juice box incident”. I was called to my youngest daughter’s kindergarten class at a local charter school because she was being suspended. Apparently my daughter had been accused of purposely squeezing juice, from a juice box, into the eye of a classmate, a White girl. As I sat talking with her teacher, I wondered to myself about the dexterity it would take for a five-year-old to deliberately squeeze juice across the table into someone’s eye. What I did ask the teacher directly, was if he had ever handled a juice box before. As any rank and file parent will tell you, there’s nary a juicebox occasion that doesn’t end with some amount of juice anywhere but in a child’s mouth.  
I am reminded of the Juice Box incident reading the recent study Girlhood Interrupted: The Erasure of Black Girls Childhood, published by the Center on Poverty and Inequality at the Georgetown Law School and based on research from the team of Rebecca Epstein, Jamilia J. Blake and Thalia Gonzalez.  
The gist of the report argues that adult educators, in their interactions with Black girls aged 5-19, believe that Black girls deserve less nurturing, protection, support, and comforting -- dynamics that seemed to be grounded in perceptions of Black girl independence, though as the researchers note, that is rarely to their benefit. Though the scope of the research is admittedly limited -- there were less than 400 respondents -- I couldn’t help but read the report and think “this is my life.”
A critical component of the study highlights the “theory of adultification” of Black children where educators “associate Black girls’ behavior with stereotypes of adult Black women.” Adultification, in effect, creates a condition where Black children are treated as the babies of suspect stereotypes of Black women. As the researchers note, “adultification is a form of dehumanization, robbing Black children of the very essence of what makes childhood distinct from other developmental periods.”
The process of adultification has direct impact on the experiences of Black girls in school, particularly in the context of discipline with regards to in-school and out-of-school suspensions. Citing the work of Subini Annamma, the report highlights how Black girls are often disciplined for subjective reasons such as exhibiting defiance or as a school administrator said to me about my daughter “non-compliance,”  which was her way of describing my daughter’s regular proclivity to ask followup questions or request explanations for directions that might not have made much sense to her.  
As such, in comparison to their White female counterparts one study suggested that Black girls were twice as likely to be disciplined for minor infractions such as dress code violations or cell phone use. And they are  two-and-a-half times more likely to be disciplined for “disobedience.” Remember the high school student who was assaulted by a school resource officer in South Carolina?  These narratives overlay troubling examples of police shootings where Black victims failed to comply by running away.
Ironically the very attributes that encourage Black girls to speak back to power, if you will, was openly cited by respondents as evidence of the leadership skills of Black girls. Yet the tendencies of Black girls to “talk back” are viewed as disruptive in the classroom, and those energies are very rarely nurtured or redirected towards leadership development opportunities. As the report’s researchers observe, “the perception that Black girls do not merit nurturing or that their leadership qualities should be restricted could be associated with our finding that adults believe that Black girls do not need protection or nurturing, and could affect opportunities for success.” (11)
The report suggest that as “early as 5 years of age, Black girls were more likely viewed as behaving and seeming older than their stated age.”  The day that I sat with my daughter’s kindergarten teacher, I remember struggling for language to describe what I clearly viewed as a form of profiling; what the teacher heard was that I called him a racist. Unfortunately as the report’s multiracial responders highlight, perceptions of Black girls transcend the race and the ethnicity of the adult educators. And as my own experience has shown with both of my daughters, now aged 14 ands 18, very often adult educators believe that are helping Black children by encouraging, and even demanding, compliance and “good behavior” from them.
My daughter survived the “juice box incident” -- and many such incidents.  As she prepares for her first year in high school, she is also hyper-aware of the mechanisms of surveillance that exist, in ways that her White counterparts simply don’t have to.  In their conclusion, the researchers write, “all Black girls are entitled to, and deserve, equal treatment. Including equal access to the protections that are accepted as necessary and appropriate for children.”  There’s a part of me that lives with the reality that my daughters, like so many Black girls, never fully had the freedom to simply be children.  
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Mark Anthony Neal is Professor of African + African American Studies and English at Duke University, where he is Chair of the Department of African + African American Studies, and co-Director of the Duke Council on Race and Ethnicity (DCORE). Neal is the parent of  two daughters, a rising college sophomore and a rising first-year high schooler.

Law Professor Paul Butler Talks "Chokehold: Policing Black Men"

'Paul Butler is a law professor at Georgetown University, a legal analyst for CNN and MSNBC, and frequent writer and speaker about issues related to racism and criminal justice. As a former federal prosecutor he has special insight into these matters, understanding not only how the system works, but how it can most effectively be challenged. Butler’s bold call-to-action starts with the need to abolish the principle known as The Chokehold, which is the popular assumption that all black men are dangerous, and must therefore be subject to rigorous policing.  Butler is in conversation with Kojo Nnamdi.' -- Politics and Prose 

The Unconventional Poetry Of Tyehimba Jess

'Tyehimba Jess, the African-American poet from Detroit, won this year's Pulitzer in poetry for a collection that shines a different light on minstrel shows.' -- Weekend Edition Saturday