Mark Anthony Neal's Blog, page 673

#Chasing50: The Bucket List by Mark Anthony Neal

#Chasing50: The Bucket List
by Mark Anthony Neal | @NewBlackMan | NewBlackMan (in Exile)
“My bucket-list?” I repeated to the 13-year-old She in response to her query, inspired by some car-talk with her mother the day before.  Before I could answer (and not that I had an answer readily available) her mother--my wife of 24-years--chimed in, “daddy doesn’t need a bucket list--he does whatever he wants.”  
Shade acknowledged, there’s some truth to my wife’s claim; I’ve largely been able to do what I wanted…professionally; I live to climb into my head, and have managed to choose a career that allows me to do so--and importantly, still support a family.
Truth be that the very concept of a bucket-list is some esoteric shit to me, as one might expect being of a generation of Black Men, who real or imagined, never thought we’d reach the age of 21. Cornbread and Edmund Perry, where born of the same myth and reality; Tamir never had the chance to dream of one.
That me and the first generation bestie Frank Jr.--working class kids, who had parochial school educations, two-parent households, and access to one of the best public high schools in New York City, approached our everyday lives with a trepidation born out the the randomness of it all, is the needle drop that ordered our lives and our imaginations.  It’s hard to dream--even of the way to get out--if it seems you’re always running for your life, real or imagined. (remember that day in 8th grade, on Fulton avenue Frank Jr?).
My 21st birthday remains a blur; I track time through my emotions, not necessarily by what I’ve done or achieved.  I don’t remember my 21st birthday, because I had no idea how to feel about something that was tied up in so much ambivalence and anxiety, real or imagined.
A bucket-list? That I’m alive on the eve of my 50th Birthday and can be asked that question.

#TheRemix: A Voice Supreme--A Conversation with Ursula Rucker

On this episode of #TheRemix, host James Braxton Peterson talks with artist Ursula Rucker  about her music, poetry, the role of the storyteller in hip hop and about her upcoming album--her first since 2011.

Breaking Down the Difference between Real Solidarity and "Ally Theater"

'Cultural critic and commentator April Scissors joined us in studio to talk about the cultural phenomenon called "ally theater." The discussion was sparked by a recent article written by Mia McKenzie on Black Girl Dangerous. We discuss the difference between "ally theater" and actual solidarity.' -- Vocalo

Sonic + Visuals: Alabama Shakes--"Sound & Color"

Sonics and Visuals of the title track from Alabama Shakes' Sound & Color directed by James Frost.


 

“An Open Letter of Love” to Our Students

“An Open Letter of Love” to Our Students
“The ultimate offense of it all—the contorting of body and behavior to offset the deficit in another. There is a spiritual injustice in the adjustment. But now young black folks are refusing alteration or the mollification of conformity and are simply demanding justice.”—Charles Blow
Inspired by the events on Duke’s campus, and Rae Paris’ “An Open Letter of Love to Black Students,” we write to mark our solidarity with calls for fuller accountability on matters of social justice at Duke.
“We’re writing to tell you we see you and hear you.”
We write too to tell you that we see and hear your sense of injury in the face of events of the last year and more—the racist and mortally threatening Sigma Alpha Epsilon chant reportedly directed at a black student; the hanging of a noose outside the Bryan Center; Jerry Hough’s (James B. Duke Professor of Political Science) ill-informed published comments on a May 2015 New York Times editorial, “How Racism Doomed Baltimore”; and the defacement of the Patrisse Cullors #BlackLivesMatter poster this term—injuries that have come into public view that cannot stand. We also know there are countless other such injuries that remain in the shadows, unknown to us, that make you feel unsafe and harmed as black students on Duke’s campus.
Anti-black racism at Duke is not of course isolated. You surely have friends, siblings, cousins and other loved ones who attend other Predominantly White Institutions—whether Yale, Georgetown, the University of Missouri (“Mizzou”) or indeed Northwestern—and feel themselves to be too often in harm’s way as well.
We know there are hostilities and aggressions that likewise organize the experiences of many other kinds of students on Duke’s campus. These include the Kappa Sigma Fraternity’s 2013 “Asia Prime” Party; campus sexual assault; the preclusions to reporting; the threats to life and bodily and emotional integrity that come with homophobia and targeted declarations of mortal harm to specific students, not least to Jack Donohue; as well as the fears of many Muslim students—these and many other anti-sentiments organize aspects of your time here. These are the ones we know about. There are surely others.
Whatever the race, religion, (trans)gender, sexual orientation or indeed class position of students, we know that such differences—differences that ought to be celebrated, differences that make for the richest of both emotional and intellectual experiences on campus—can, and often do, place you in harm’s way. These harms are psychic and physical, deep and painful and take on significance in the living out of daily life on campus. We feel compelled to say, again, “We see you and hear you.”
But what can we do for you and with you? You expressed your outrage during the Friday, November 13, 2015, noon conversation with senior Duke administration. Black folks, queer folks, many folks “are refusing alteration or the mollification of conformity and are simply demanding justice.” These sentiments extend to your allies. Allies likewise feel that the demand of conformity is no longer reasonable, permissible, livable. As faculty, we want you to know that you should feel you can lean on us, rely on us, demand things of us. We hope you will see us as providing a safe space, and that whatever tools we have at our disposal, in the cause of social justice, are your tools too.
That Duke is one among many institutions that must confront the fact of racism, homophobia, sexism, classism and sectarianism and do so now, suggests that we stand at a threshold, a moment of opening, of possibility for us all.
This column is collectively authored by the Department of Cultural Anthropology.

#TheGlobalAfrican:The Black Panthers--A Revolution In Review

'Bill Fletcher, Jr., host of The Global African sits down with acclaimed director Stanley Nelson to talk about his film, Black Panthers: Vanguard of the Revolution, and the relevance of the Black Panthers today. We also remember Treston Faulkner, American activist and organizer with Jobs for Justice.' 

Vicktor Taiwo--"Digital Kids" [feat. Solomon]

"Digital Kids" from Nigerian artist Vicktor Taiwo featuring Solomon from his EP JUNO .

It Is What It IS: The Backlash Against Talking Rape & Violence on College Campuses by Stephane Dunn

I (hoe signature) allow Graves resident (Your name) in Room (Room #) to perform any and all sexual behavior on me from the time I walk in (time) til I leave and visitation is over. By signing this I (hoe signature) will not spread misleading truths...--Excerpt from Morehouse College Graves Hall resident, “Graves Sexual Consent Form” November, 2015
It Is What It IS: The Backlash Against Talking Rape & Violence on College Campuses   by Stephane Dunn | @DrStephaneDunn | NewBlackMan (in Exile)
He was someone I knew and had come to really, really like a lot. I was neither high nor drunk, never drank or did drugs no matter how live the party – just wasn’t my thing. I went to his dorm one late semester afternoon to talk about us and if memory serves me correctly, it was a co-ed dorm though not mine. We were not sexual partners, but he had been in pursuit of me for some time. I was flattered and like I said, I had come to like this charismatic, popular guy who was kind of like this romantic movie come alive, with me cast as THE GIRL the guy would do anything to get as his girlfriend. There was a definite serious attraction.
But I did not go there to have sex. If anything I felt safe, protected, and desired with him. Over weeks that semester, he’d made his affection clear, and I was beginning to return it. We’d shared a hug and slow dance or two and I can still remember that one was a song by Prince.
I don’t remember how things got out of hand. Time and discomfort have made me all but shut it out, because he was not a stranger. He was actually a boy I’d come to care for. A friendship had begun to evolve between his persistent pursuit and time spent talking a lot to each other and mostly just hanging out in a group of mutual friends.
I remember sitting -- fully clothed the both of us -- on his bed talking. He turned on some music. I remember kissing then this weird slow shift, being pressed firmly down on the bed, he on top of me, my brain and body panicking, me pushing at his chest, saying something like, ’get up,’ ‘don’t,’ and from him pleading and words of affection but mostly there was his kiss which had turned too hard, and his body so heavy with me pinned beneath him.  He was saying things, how much he cared and how long he’d waited . . . I remember his arms stretching mines out until my hands were pressed into his down into the mattress over my head, he the eagle and me something less. I squirmed trying to get free. He cupped my face, trying to kiss and calm me, then his hand raising my shirt and a leg squeezing in between mine.
I remember not wanting to fight him, this boy I knew and liked romantically, but I pushed and pushed at him with wild arms. How heavy he was  . . . how weak my arms seemed. I remember my voice turning into a scream then a knock at the door then me, free and jumping up – the boy breathing hard and looking, when I think back to it now, a mix of things  --  shocked, mad, embarrassed. I did not stop to investigate but fled that dorm room, breathing just as hard, horrified.
I ran down stairs; his room was maybe on the second or 3rd floor. I remember going down those stairs and reaching the ground floor. Someone, an acquaintance, maybe the one who’d knocked at the door, who knew us both, stopped me right before I hit the lobby and asked if everything was cool. I must have answered, must have assured him I was fine, before running out of the same dorm doors I’d entered, maybe an hour or less before, my heart thumping wildly, tears wet on my cheeks as I flew back to my own dorm just down a long sidewalk.
I did not speak about it to anyone for years. Even then, I’d only say I was kind of almost the victim of a date rape if I happened to be speaking to another woman one on one about rape on college campuses. He and I never had a conversation about what had happened, what almost happened that day in his room.  We ended up being something less than boyfriend and girlfriend but more than just friends and never in that situation again throughout our college years, but as much as we came to know each other more over years, we still never went back to discuss that afternoon.
To this day, it’s still hurtful and complicated. I still don’t really want to probe it or think badly of him for his behavior or myself for being in a situation I could not maintain control of, for being almost a victim in a way that would have surely shifted my view of life, myself, and him, terribly, forever. 
Here in the 21st century on college campuses and beyond them, including where I call professional home the AUC Center, Morehouse College and Spelman, Clark, and Morris Brown, it’s difficult to know where men and women still are in relation to our understanding of appropriate conduct and of rape – which somehow ‘date’ rape almost makes sound like something less than actual rape.
The Graves Hall Sexual Consent Form with it’s ‘Hoe signature’ here lines, penned by a Morehouse freshman days after Vice President Biden’s campus chat about sexual violence, and circulated on social media, should devastate us. It does not merely speak to a singular individual ‘s bad taste and cannot be dismissed as a lapse in judgment and moral compass, or merely a matter of immaturity though it is all of those things.
Culturally, we continue to overtly and subtly encourage sexual aggressiveness and sexual conquest as true hallmarks of ‘real’ masculinity and manhood, as some natural overwhelming force in men they can’t altogether control and to orient both men and women to this romanticized idea that women both want to be and are supposed to be literally and figuratively conquered, that stalking like behavior and even outright physical violence are somehow inspired and justified by emotional and sexual passion, that sexual lust derives folks of their moral conscience and ability to practice restraint and common sense, that women sober or drunk just need to be kissed or fucked out of their qualms, out of saying some ‘good girl no’s’  or their  outright verbally and/or physically expressed reluctance to go further than they want because deep down they supposedly really do want to.
Self and community responsibility, actively challenging and reconstructing, and reorienting thinking and behavior takes real work going on all the time to prevent incidents rather than constant reaction to them. ‘Just say no’ and cute tags ‘Consent is Sexy’ don’t teach self-respect and how to respect and care more for individuals, know them well or not, sober or drunk, than for satisfying ego and sexual desire.
After that afternoon in the young man’s dorm room, we should have talked about what did happen and what almost happened. I should have confronted it.
+++ Stephane Dunn, PhD, is a writer and professor and the director of the Morehouse College Cinema, Television, & Emerging Media Studies program. She is the author of the 2008 book, Baad Bitches & Sassy Supermamas: Black Power Action Films (U of Illinois Press). Her writings have appeared in Ms., The Chronicle of Higher Education, TheRoot.com, AJC, CNN.com, and Best African American Essays, among others.

#DukeYouAreGuilty: Students Walk Out in Protest

"On November 13, 2015, Duke University's President Dick Brodhead convened (yet another) "community conversation" following a number of racist and homophobic hate crimes, or so-caled "recent incidents" on Duke's campus. Yet, Duke is yet to fulfill at least 25+ demands made by students over the last five decades, ever since Black students occupied the Allen Building in 1969.

We walk out in protest. We salute student protesters around the country and the world, and we stand in solidarity with you.
We won't be placated by "forums," "task forces," or "town halls." We demand institutional changes NOW.

We are here and we are watching."

dukeenrage.tumblr.com MIC CHECK

Let it be known that on this day
Duke administrators still refuse to name
the violent, racist, cissheterosexist
acts against marginalized people
on this campus
as anything more
than “recent incidents”

Hate crimes need to be addressed
with institutional changes
not “community conversations”
or fruitless investigations
We are tired of being targeted
Of telling you why the campus
that you run is unsafe
As if this hasn’t happened before
You should know better

You use our faces on brochures
Pretend diversity means safety
You have created a space
For us to fear for our lives
And you continue to maintain that space
DUKE YOU ARE GUILTY 

Reimagining the Mainstream: A Celebration of 2015 Pulitzer Prize-Winning Poet Gregory Pardlo

'The Graduate Center presents an evening of readings and a conversation on the importance of diversifying literary culture, featuring poets Gregory Pardlo (Pulitzer Prize-winner and GC doctoral student), Saeed Jones, Willie Perdomo, and Cate Marvin. Moderated by GC English professor Robert Reid-Pharr.'