Mark Anthony Neal's Blog, page 525

Black Parents Explain--How to Deal with the Police: Arriell & Antjuan

Pragmatic and maddening at the same time; Daughter and Father talk engagement with law enforcement. -- +WatchCut Video  

‘If You Don’t Own the [Servers]”: Curating + Aggregating + Doing Black Studies in the Digital Era by Mark Anthony Neal

‘If You Don’t Own the [Servers]”: Curating + Aggregating + Doing Black Studies in the Digital Era by Mark Anthony Neal | @NewBlackMan | NewBlackMan (in Exile)
A typical morning -- opening up the Mac Air to check for social media mentions, monitoring the overnight traffic at NewBlackMan (in Exile). Then a scan of my curated lists of the YouTube and SoundCloud sites, to see which sites have uploaded new content, and what of that content will be of value to embed on my site, and also share to my social media followers. In many ways this activity is no different than the millions of Americans who for the past century have sat down at kitchen tables, or while commuting to work by car, bus or rail, have checked for the news of the day, but with a caveat; there was no easy process to share what they’ve read or heard, save word-of-mouth, which for the sake of argument, we’ll accept as an analog version of social media.  
On this particular morning the gem of a find is a 30-minute video of Professor Bianca Williams’ recent lecture at the Franklin Humanities Institute on "Radical Honesty"-- a Black Feminist Approach to Truth-Telling. Professor Williams, who teaches at the University of Colorado at Boulder, was a Duke undergraduate, and a product of the doctoral program in the cultural anthropology department. Professor Williams was also my first graduate teaching assistant when I arrived at Duke, so I was genuinely thrilled to share her ideas with an audience larger than the dozens who were in the room when she gave her address at Duke weeks ago. The analytics tell me that there were close to one thousand “hits” on her video, only two days after its posting, and it has “reached” close to five thousand on the four Facebook accounts that I manage or co-manage. Within the modest digital eco-system that I curate -- NewBlackMan (in Exile), which engages an average of 120,000 readers per month, and my primary Twitter account with its average of 1.5 million impressions per month -- Professor Williams’ post is a hit.  
While the analytics matter -- they are an index of what foundational digital humanities scholar Henry Jenkins calls “spreadability” -- what matters more, in this context, is the very impulse towards spreadability, which in many ways was unimaginable even a decade ago.  
Social media in the digital era, primarily platforms such as Twitter, Facebook, Tumblr and Instagram, is largely premised on the so-called democratization of opinion, engagement and in theory, knowledge production. It is also a moment marked by the ratcheting up of anonymous hate speech and what scholar Tom Nichols calls “the death of expertise.”
Digital Black Studies, Black Digital Studies, or a nascent Black Code Studies, is not only born of this era, but thrives in it, in what might be described as a renaissance of the spirit of the foundational vision of Black Studies as a knowledge project. In its earliest days Black Studies presumed a relationship between knowledge production and  grassroots activism -- Black Praxis -- which in the spirit of the late 1960s, included an expectation that the presence of Black thinkers at predominantly White institutions (PWIs) would engender the siphoning of the resources of said institutions for the benefit of Black liberation struggles, however broadly defined.
To be sure there have been almost three generations of institutionally funded and vaguely imaginative, and unimaginative, efforts to bridge the gap between “town and gown,” and those dark spatial realities, within “town,” in which “town” has little interest in engaging, let alone “gown.” Yet what has been clear, is that Black Studies, as a project and entity, has largely been siloed on the margins of these institutions, tolerated and managed, and rarely deployed except in the management of the very bodies of students that were critical to the presence of Black thinkers on these campuses in the first place. That Black Studies has, indeed, produced a body of compelling and sustainable scholarship, most often in the “service to community,” seems to have gone unnoticed, and unrewarded, by most institutions. Even the pearly Gates of Cambridge, on occasion, dances for dinner.
For the sake of our consideration of the digital turn, if we were to imagine The University as hardware, Black Studies functions as neither firmware or even operating system, yet as part of a network of interchangeable and affordable apps. It was this distancing of Black Studies from the centrality of the institution, yet existing as a metaphor for the colonial vine, that led the former Gerald McWhorter to break from the Institute of the Black World -- a Black Studies think tank that he co-founded with William Strickland, Stephen Henderson and the late Vincent Harding  -- on the basis that Black Studies -- per this framing -- needed its own hardware. And indeed, McWhorter was not alone. If we consider the short-lived Malcolm X Liberation University, which was founded in Durham, N.C., in the aftermath of the 1969 Allen Building Takeover, we see it was rooted in the inability of Duke University to fully imagine a Black Studies project at that time.
The scholar formerly known as Gerald McWhorter, a.k.a. Abdul Alkalimat, was still on this journey well into the digital era, with his highly influential H-Afro-Am listserv; the list an index of the space between those “never digital” and those “born digital.” As the generation of social media platforms came online, Alkalimat’s listserv had the ability to break news that most in the world knew about three weeks earlier, but which was genuinely breaking news for those on his listserv.  It was not simply a case of a generation of (frankly) 60-something-year-old Black Studies luddites (though it was still that), but a legitimate suspicion of the proliferation of digital platforms, that in the aftermath of the Patriot Act, might catalyze the very surveillance state that we are now all too familiar with. Alkalimat's listserv was a digital source that could be trusted.
That trust was born out of a basic reality -- Alkalimat owned his servers. The servers that power Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Snapchat and process the massive data of those operations are not owned by those who share interests in Black Liberation projects, even as the narratives of Black Liberation provide needed content for those platforms. Indeed as Professor Marisa Parham recently suggested at a gathering at Johns Hopkins University, #BlackTwitter is an apt metaphor for the exploitation of Black Digital innovation; #BlackTwitter helped Twitter figure out what its own power was, President “Agent Orange” be damned.
Alkalimat, old-school nationalist that he is, never lost sight of what might be described as Black digital nationalism. With a nod to the late Prince Rogers Nelson, Alkalimat offers “If You Don’t Own the [Servers], the [Servers] Own You.” As such Black Studies in the digital era remains a resource issue, even as the so-called aggregation model of Black Studies has arguably made Black Studies more visible -- and importantly -- more accessible than it’s ever been.
Forever the “ghost in the machine” -- or perhaps, “Fugitives in the Machine” as historian Jessica Marie Johnson might be apt to describe --  the Black Digital responses to said machine has been in the curation of Digital Blackness (the digital archive as “maroon”);  the building of digital platforms, the construction of symbolic Black literacies or #hashtags; the privileging of backchanneling (in concert with the undercommoning of the University and The State);  and then in the aggregation Blackness, where aggregation functions as the ethical embodiment of Black collectivity.
In terms of Black Digital praxis, a direct line can be drawn from the emergence of the Black Radical Congress in the late 1990s, notably Barbara Ransby and the late Manning Marable, and its inclination to harvest the power of the Internet, to contemporary digital Black Studies practitioners. Consider Alondra Nelson’s editing of the indispensable special issue of Social Text on Afrofuturism in 2002; the Crunk Feminist Collective, which propelled co-founder Brittney Cooper as the leading voice of a generation of insurgent Black digital intellectuals; the development of the Hortense Spillers curated Feminist Wire; to the burgeoning African American Intellectual History Society, whose essays have been aggregated by the New York Times.
Black Studies exists in the digital realm as a vibrant, intellectual rich terrain. One need only look at the impact of the hashtag syllabus movement -- the crowdsourced syllabi for #Ferguson by Marcia Chatelain,  the  Charleston shooting, Beyonce’s Lemonade -- including Melissa Harris Perry’s curated digital symposium for Elle Magazine on the visual project -- and even Colin Kaepernick’s protest -- to give witness to the wide accessibility of Black Studies in this moment. 
We are witnessing a Black Studies that relishes in its messiness. The aforementioned historian Jessica Marie Johnson calls it “Black ephemera” or the “flotsam and jetsam of Blackness” -- Manthia Diawara once described it as “Afro-kitsch” -- as if Blackness itself might not be that ephemera. And indeed, responding to the impulse and inclination by those with the resources to “dig” deeply for data and mine “Blackness,” there have been moves within Digital Black Studies, or Black Digital Studies or Black Code Studies, that resist the order(ing) of things; Same as it ever was.
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Mark Anthony Neal been conjuring analog for a digital world for a minute; Check him at @NewBlackMan + @LeftofBlack + BookerBBBrown on the ‘Gram + and the homebase at NewBlackMan (in Exile). 

Visually Speaking: Lina Viktor and Amy Sall

'Guest curator and moderator Ja'nell Nequeva Ajani introduces artist Lina Viktor, whose practice is described as a “merging of photography, performance, and abstract painting,” in conversation with Amy Sall, New School Lecturer and Founding Editor of SUNU: Journal of African Affairs, Critical Thought + Aesthetics. Through both their practices, the two discuss Colonial ethnographic imagery versus the work of contemporary West & Central African portrait photographers, neocolonial systems, and furthering discourse on the power of image making within divergent contexts.' -- +Schomburg Center   

The Future is Female; So How Do We Get There?

'Guided by Chicago Reader staff writer Aimee Levitt, four women—Mikki Kendall, Claudia Garcia-Rojas, Sameena Mustafa, and Alicia Swiz—discuss how intersectionality will save the feminist movement.' -- +Chicago Reader   

Three Reasons Why Folks Tried to Take Away My Black Card and One Reason They’ll Never Get It by Law Ware

Three Reasons Why Folks Tried to Take Away My Black Card and One Reason They’ll Never Get It by Lawrence Ware | @Law_Writes | NewBlackMan (in Exile)
It’s usually threatened whenever there is a cultural milestone that you’ve failed to accomplish. Perhaps you’ve never seen the original Roots or have not fully memorized the entire catalog of Luther Vandross. When those around you discover this lapse in your black cultural conditioning, the threat is issued: “We’re going to revoke your black card.” That is, your inclusion in the collective black community is going to be rescinded.Mine has been threatened for a number of reasons: I haven’t seen every episode of Good Times; I didn’t like hot sauce until I was in my mid-30s; I think John Singleton’s Baby Boy is an earnest yet overrated film—and those are the minor offenses. There are three main reasons why my black card has almost been revoked, and one reason it’ll never be taken away.I’m not a fan of Anita Baker’s music.I see that she is talented. I recognize and respect her unique voice. Her music just comes off as so damn … old. The lush instrumentals and, in my eyes, excessive vocalizations rub me the wrong way. I don’t begrudge anyone who is a fan; it’s just not for me.When listening to Anita Baker, I feel as if I should be wearing a leather baseball hat while rocking a velour sweatsuit and Stacy Adams shoes. I also feel the need to say things like, “What y’all young bucks know about this?” and comment on how a person wearing a finely tailored suit with matching shoes is “suited and booted” while I make my way to the driveway to play basketball in the aforementioned dress shoes. Y’all can have Baker. I validate her as a national treasure; I just don’t want to listen to her music.Popeyes Chicken is overrated.I didn’t say “bad”—I said “overrated.” Look, if I want some fried chicken, more often than not I’m going to visit a local black church and buy one of their fried-chicken dinners. They sell them every other week, and it’ll probably come with green beans, mashed potatoes and a roll. If that fails, I’ll go to Popeyes. Not because it’s great—just because it’s there.My theory about why Popeyes is so popular is simple: Black folks are able to get the flavor of hot sauce on decently seasoned chicken without actually having to put hot sauce on the chicken. Now, to be sure, there are many who still put hot sauce on Popeyes spicy chicken, but I hold to my hypothesis.I hate Tyler Perry’s films.Hate-watching is defined as watching something for the sake of the enjoyment one derives from mocking or criticizing it. I’ve seen every single Tyler Perry movie (save for Madea’s Christmas—I just couldn’t bring myself to sit through that one), and I’ve hated every one except Daddy’s Little Girls—and that was only because of the all-consuming charisma of Idris Elba.Perry’s films are not just bad; they are case studies in horrific filmmaking. He uses good actors, but he fails them with poor editing, bad scripts and one-dimensional characters. He is an auteur in the worst-possible way: His films are almost uniformly bad. His moralizing is also off-putting. One need only watch Temptation to see how this impulse hurts his filmmaking.While my articulation of the above has often put my black card in danger, it has never successfully been taken away, for one simple reason:Black people are not monolithic.Contrary to white supremacist narratives about what it means to be black, we, as a people, do not all like the same things. There are black comic book readers, like Deborah Whaley, who were once on the margins of black culture but are now in the mainstream. There is the Afropunk band Rough Francis, who took up the mantle of the underappreciated Detroit black proto-punk band Death. There is even the brilliant Chance the Rapper, who brings his nerdy, gospel-influenced sensibilities to bear upon postmodern hip-hop.Blackness is no one thing. We are a complex, beautiful people. The next time someone tries to take away your black card, ask that person if he or she has read Frantz Fanon or W.E.B. Du Bois or Ralph Ellison or Richard Wright or Kiese Laymon, or if he or she has seen Charles Burnett’s Killer of Sheep or Julie Dash’s Daughters of the Dust. You’ll discover that we all have cultural blind spots—or things about which we disagree. We should celebrate our variations instead of seeking uniformity … unless you don’t like Prince. Then we’ve got problems.A version of this article originally appeared on The Root.
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Lawrence Ware is a philosopher of race at his day job and writes if the kids go to bed on time. He is a contributing editor of NewBlackMan (in Exile) and a frequent contributor to The Root and VSB. He has been featured in the New York Times and you can sometimes find him discussing race and politics on HuffPost Live and Public Radio International. He is the kind of Steelers fan that enjoys watching the Cowboys lose.

Left of Black S7:E20: #BlackGirlMagic and the Genius of Duke Ellington

Left of Black S7:E20: #BlackGirlMagic and the Genius of Duke Ellington
On this episode of Left of Black, classically trained vocalist Candice Hoyes joins host Mark Anthony Neal and a live audience at the John Hope Franklin Center at Duke, for a discussion of the continued relevance of the music of Duke Ellington and Black Musical traditions. A graduate of Harvard and a veteran of Jazz at Lincoln Center, Hoyes latest recording On a Turquoise Cloud -- independently released -- is a collection of rare Ellington compositions, written for women singers such as Adelaide Hall, Kay Davis, and Alice Babs.

Left of Black is a weekly Webcast hosted by Mark Anthony Neal and produced by Catherine Angst of the John Hope Franklin Center at Duke University and in collaboration with the Center for Arts + Digital Culture + Entrepreneurship (CADCE) and the Duke Council on Race + Ethnicity
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Follow Left of Black on Twitter: @LeftofBlack

Why There Is No Alternative to Publicly Funded Science Research

'Avideh Zakhor is a Hertz Foundation Fellow and recipient of the prestigious Hertz Foundation Grant for graduate study in the applications of the physical, biological and engineering sciences. Here, she illuminates the difference between 'big science', which draws multiple billions in funding, versus 'little science', which are the seed ideas for our future technology — and the ones that are suffering from science funding cuts. Zakhor insists that Capitol Hill, not Silicon Valley or venture capitalists, must fund little science as the government is in a better position to foster long-term innovation.' -- +Big Think  

BookTV -- Erica Armstrong Dunbar on 'Never Caught: The Washingtons' Relentless Pursuit of Their Runaway Slave, Ona Judge'

'Erica Armstong Dunbar, history and Black American Studies professor at the University of Delaware, recounts the life of Ona Judge, a slave owned by George and Martha Washington, whose escape initiated a manhunt ordered by the first President. Armstrong Dunbar is the author of ' Never Caught: The Washingtons' Relentless Pursuit of Their Runaway Slave, Ona Judge .' -- +BookTV  

Art Basel Hong Kong: In (and out of) Frame -- Africa in Perspective

'This conversation considers creative practices from within and around Africa, bringing together scholars, curators and artists to shed light on the way in which contemporary art practices are growing and developing within and across the continent; shedding stereotypes, exploring meeting points between tradition and modernity, and engaging with the effects and legacies of globalization; With N’Goné Fall, Independent Curator, and Co-Founder, GawLab, Paris; Lee Garakara, Founder, Mwimbi Fine Art, Hong Kong; John Owoo, Editor, Arts Ghana, Accra.' -- +Art Basel
 

Activating Marginalized Histories: Museums as Catalysts for Social Change

'Jennifer Scott is an anthropologist and public historian. She serves as faculty in the graduate program of Museum and Exhibition Studies at the University of Illinois, Chicago and as a professor at The New School for Public Engagement in New York City. She is a facilitator and editor for the National Council for Public History Working Group, Museums and Civic Discourse: Past, Present and Emerging Futures.' -- +Duke Franklin Humanities Institute