Mark Anthony Neal's Blog, page 720

The Life and Breath of Black Men by Mark Anthony Neal

[image error]   The Life and Breath of Black Men by Mark Anthony Neal | Mic.com

The "Pass the Mic" series showcases voices, perspectives and ideas that spark interesting conversations.

The most timeless trope of black men and boys is that aligned with their perception in the white imagination: black men who possess a level of strength, rage and pure energy that is beyond human. One need only look at the character of Gus in the 1915 film Birth of a Nation to find an image that has been continuously remixed and circulated in American culture as a stock representation of black masculinity: Gus, played by white actor Walter Long in blackface, follows Flora, a white woman, into the woods. Fearing rape by a "black man," Flora kills herself by jumping from a cliff.

Similarly, Darren Wilson described Mike Brown as a "demon" and "Hulk Hogan"-like. Perceptions like these fuel the fear of unarmed black males, as well as the fascination with elite black male athletes.
Yet, as evidenced in the cries from the late Eric Garner, "I can't breathe," such mythology obscures the fragility of black life. Black men and women's vulnerabilities remain largely unseen to the public, except as statistical data reminding us about racial health care disparities. Ironically, these health disparities suggest a crisis as threatening, if not more so, than aggressive policing. Even as we demand an end to state-sanctioned violence against blacks, we must simultaneously recognize that preventable diseases like heart disease, hypertension and diabetes are as deadly as any police officer's chokehold.
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"Her Name Sounds Like"--a film short directed by Tokumbo Bodunde

"Director Tokumbo Bodunde presents s film short that makes visual the idea that Black women are central to the all movements, including black lives matter. #sayhername is the idea that black women who have been the target of police/state brutality must have their names spoken by us all. This piece includes an excerpt of a poem performed by Aja Monet Bacquie at a #sayhername demonstration in New York City. Performance artist kenya.robinson is shown in this piece clapping to make sound visible." Her Names Sounds Like from Tokumbo Bodunde on Vimeo.

#WeSeeYou: In Response to Attacks on Black Progressive Thought and Culture

"Who's Afraid of Aunt Jemima"--Faith Ringgold, 1983#WeSeeYou: In Response to Attacks on Progressive Black Thought and Cultureby A Committed Group of Black Cultural and Thought Workers | NewBlackMan (in Exile)
We write today as a group of over 100 black writers, readers, artists, thinkers committed to justice and intellectual inquiry. We have taken time away from our scholarship, research, teaching, activism, and other life-affirming practices to assist in smothering the fire that threatens to engulf the entire academic industry. We are wholly aware that the American surveillance and discipline of black bodies and expression extends to cyber space.
This recognition has been reinforced by recent circumstances involving our colleague, Zandria Robinson. We write to thank Zandria for stating firmly and thoughtfully positing that blackness is a critical creative politico-cultural formation, and for pushing us to question the particular ways black southern lives have mattered in the face of brutal physical and discursive violence.“This is a moment to have a discussion about black southern identity,” Zandria recently wrote, “and not white southern identity, which is remarkably unchanged just like the whiteness upon which it is and has always been and will always be based. This is a moment to center blackness in our discussions of America, the South, freedom, and the future, not to talk about what black people should do, but to learn from what black people have been and are doing in this centuries-long battle against whiteness.”Some of us teach Zandria Robinson’s work. Others of us actively read her work. She is the now and future of intellectual freedom fighting, for her work is rooted in ritual, black southern communal love and real intersectionality. It is in the spirit of Zandria’s community based intellectual work that we band together in the knowledge that in coming for Zandria, particular forces of white heteropatriarchal supremacy and anti-blackness are coming for all of us. We know that radical surveillance and disciplining are a constituent element of American terror. Like many of our ancestors, and most recently like Bree Newsome, like Zandria Robinson, we will not be afraid to step through fear into justice.Social media, and particularly personal facebook and twitter pages, are now recognized as but one of the current battle grounds where whiteness as power labors to adversely impact black people’s reputation, finances, access to healthy choice and influence. Not unlike the case of Palestinian intellectual-activist Steven Salaita, the overseers who patrol the public-private thoughts of academics will find, isolate, and publicly interpret snippets of people’s frustrations, thoughts, and theories in an effort to condemn an entire body of work, a literature, a field, a community. This has deep and penetrating consequences for individual thinkers, public fields of inquiry, the academic industry, and, indeed, the very American ideal of freedom of expression and dissent. While we welcome conversations about the range of expression teachers can and should offer on their pages, we will not do so in a vacuum. We cannot talk about the responsibilities of teachers and professors until we first scrutinize and hold accountable the policies, practices, and projects of the neoliberal university and its appendages in publishing, media, and government.We say to any person, publication, organization, institution trying to violently undermine the work of loving, curious geniuses like Zandria Robinson, we see you. We know your labors intimately, as we write and live it everyday. We will not accept these aggressions in silence; we instead will rally our collective energies of exposure and critique, coalition and mobilization, in order to protect our minds and bodies and work toward the ideals that animate our collective visions for justice.With Love and Justice,A Committed Group of Black Cultural and Thought Workers

“We See You”: In Response to Attacks on Black Progressive Thought and Culture

"Who's Afraid of Aunt Jemima"--Faith Ringgold, 1983“We See You”: In Response to Attacks on Progressive Black Thought and Cultureby A Committed Group of Black Cultural and Thought Workers | NewBlackMan (in Exile)
We write today as group of over 100 black writers, readers, artists, thinkers committed to justice and intellectual inquiry. We have taken time away from our scholarship, research, teaching, activism, and other life-affirming practices to assist in smothering the fire that threatens to engulf the entire academic industry. We are wholly aware that the American surveillance and discipline of black bodies and expression extends to cyber space.
This recognition has been reinforced by recent circumstances involving our colleague, Zandria Robinson. We write to thank Zandria for stating firmly and thoughtfully positing that blackness is a critical creative politico-cultural formation, and for pushing us to question the particular ways black southern lives have mattered in the face of brutal physical and discursive violence.“This is a moment to have a discussion about black southern identity,” Zandria recently wrote, “and not white southern identity, which is remarkably unchanged just like the whiteness upon which it is and has always been and will always be based. This is a moment to center blackness in our discussions of America, the South, freedom, and the future, not to talk about what black people should do, but to learn from what black people have been and are doing in this centuries-long battle against whiteness.”Some of us teach Zandria Robinson’s work. Others of us actively read her work. She is the now and future of intellectual freedom fighting, for her work is rooted in ritual, black southern communal love and real intersectionality. It is in the spirit of Zandria’s community based intellectual work that we band together in the knowledge that in coming for Zandria, particular forces of white heteropatriarchal supremacy and anti-blackness are coming for all of us. We know that radical surveillance and disciplining are a constituent element of American terror. Like many of our ancestors, and most recently like Bree Newsome, like Zandria Robinson, we will not be afraid to step through fear into justice.Social media, and particularly personal facebook and twitter pages, are now recognized as but one of the current battle grounds where whiteness as power labors to adversely impact black people’s reputation, finances, access to healthy choice and influence. Not unlike the case of Palestinian intellectual-activist Steven Salaita, the overseers who patrol the public-private thoughts of academics will find, isolate, and publicly interpret snippets of people’s frustrations, thoughts, and theories in an effort to condemn an entire body of work, a literature, a field, a community. This has deep and penetrating consequences for individual thinkers, public fields of inquiry, the academic industry, and, indeed, the very American ideal of freedom of expression and dissent. While we welcome conversations about the range of expression teachers can and should offer on their pages, we will not do so in a vacuum. We cannot talk about the responsibilities of teachers and professors until we first scrutinize and hold accountable the policies, practices, and projects of the neoliberal university and its appendages in publishing, media, and government.We say to any person, publication, organization, institution trying to violently undermine the work of loving, curious geniuses like Zandria Robinson, we see you. We know your labors intimately, as we write and live it everyday. We will not accept these aggressions in silence; we instead will rally our collective energies of exposure and critique, coalition and mobilization, in order to protect our minds and bodies and work toward the ideals that animate our collective visions for justice.With Love and Justice,A Committed Group of Black Cultural and Thought Workers

Big Think: Tamir Rice's Death and the Myth of Meritocracy

In the aftermath of the killing of unarmed 12-year-old Tamir Rice at the hands of Law Enforcement, Clint Smith suggest that the US needs to be honest with itself about cultural myths around meritocracy and equal treatment by authorities. Smith is National Poetry Slam champion and doctoral candidate at Harvard. 

Charleston, Dolezal & the “Possessive Investment in Whiteness” by Cherise Smith

Adrian Piper, Everything (2003)Charleston, Dolezal & the “Possessive Investment in Whiteness”by Cherise Smith | @cherisesmith8 | special to NewBlackMan (in Exile)
The tragic event at the Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal in Charleston, South Carolina has eclipsed the news surrounding Rachel Dolezal who, Americans learned a couple of weeks back, assumed a black identity. And, for good reason: that nine African Americans were killed by Dylann Roof, a young man with an allegiance to white supremacy, has startled the nation—there’s no sense to be made of the violence or of Roof’s catastrophic acting-out.  Still, I would venture that lessons from the Dolezal case can shed some light on the situation in Charleston.
You will recall: Dolezal, the former head of the Spokane, Washington chapter of the NAACP was called out by her parents, exposed for constructing a web of lies about who and what she is.  The media questioned: "Why would she or anyone pose as black when they are not?" "Is the outrage equal to the 'crime'?" Reactions were swift and ranged from "She can't be trusted" and "She is a storyteller" to "[Black women] need allies not replacements" and "This is what liberals have created."  
Such comments reveal little about Dolezal and much about their speakers and their regarding positions regarding ethno-racial politics. More appropriate questions might have been: Why do so many people care about how one woman, who runs a small organization in a small city, self identifies? And why has this captured the imagination and attention of the American public?
But, to my mind, the most important issue at stake was and continues to be: why are Dolezal's parents invested in exposing what they, and others, call her "lies"? The answer, to borrow from the title of George Lipsitz’s groundbreaking book, is their “possessive investment in whiteness.”
Passing Strange
By now, the larger American population has come to understand that passing is when a person temporarily or permanently identifies as or switches to a different ethno-racial category.  In the 19th and early 20th centuries, people chose to pass for advantage.  For example, light skinned African American people disappeared into the white world to seek economic and social mobility, and some Jewish individuals undertook a similar change when they changed their names, switched religious traditions, and other cultural attributes to become 'non-ethnic' white and flee anti-semitism. Classic fictional instances can be found in Frances Harper's Iola LeRoy or Shadows Uplifted (1892), Nella Larsen's Quicksand (1928), and Imitation of Life (1934 and 1959). Such identity performances underscore the importance of racial divisions and reinforce the power of the dominant group--whites.  
This type of passing is easy for Americans to understand because it falls in line with our by-your-boot-straps mentality.  Our belief in American meritocracy means that no matter how humble your beginnings [including your ethno-racial, religious or class backgrounds], you can overcome them with hard work and grit.  The idea that follows--more privilege is always better--means that everyone would be rich and white, if given the choice.
What is infinitely less easy for Americans to comprehend is passing in the opposite direction: when an individual takes on a less privileged and more markedly raced position. The assumption seems to be, why would anyone in her right mind choose to be black?  Of course, this is the position in which Rachel Dolezal finds herself.  
She's Not Alone
Over the last forty years, a fair amount of visual art has been created to explore this type of racial play.  In 1988, artist and philosopher Adrian Piper produced Cornered, one of the single-most heady artworks to take up the topic.  The focus of her installation is a video in which the artist confronts viewers about their assumptions about her racial identity.  She expects that viewers assume she is white, but she declares, "I am Black. Let's deal with that fact."  She proceeds to construct a philosophical decision-tree that undermines the assumption that everyone would be white if given the choice and suggests that a large percentage of Whites are not as "pure" as they think.  
About ten years earlier, Eleanor Antin took on the identity of a black woman ballerina called Eleanora Antinova.  During the three week long performance, Antin experienced as an undesirable "other" which, one could argue, allowed her to better understand herself as Jewish.  At the turn of this century, artist Nikki S. Lee crossed a host of ethno-racial and class boundaries when, in her Projects series (1998-2001), she assumed the role of (African American) hip hop denizen; (white) trailer inhabitant; and (Asian American) skateboard kid among others.  The breakneck pace with which she switched identities suggested that identity is as much about what one consumes as it is about what one looks like.  
At best, such racial performances, including Dolezal’s, flaunt racial divisions, allow individuals to exercise choice in matters of identity, undermine the casual and easy assumptions made about peoples' appearances, and interrogate white privilege.
Dolezal and the above artists encourage us to forget what we know about how we think black people are supposed to look and be like.  Black looks as different as there are numbers of black people.  You will find people who identify as black who look like Dolezal in her "before" picture when her parents say she was "White", just as you will find people who identify as black who look like her "after" pictures (with braids or curly hair).
Simply put, skin color, eye color, hair texture, lip dimensions, and nose presentation are not adequate predictors of how someone identifies herself. Conversely, an individual's physical signs can sometimes be a window onto how she is perceived by others. More often than not, these two identities--how one identifies herself and how one gets identified by others--do not align.  
Furthermore, it emphasizes how porous are the boundaries between races.
To be sure, Dolezal is not the first nor will she be the last person to change her racial self-designation. Before "anti-miscegenation" laws prohibited racial mixing were struck down, someone who wanted to marry an individual from a different race would merely change what they called themselves in order to skirt these discriminatory laws.  Similarly, parents of bi-racial children will sometimes change their racial self-identification as a means to lay claim to family and show solidarity with the experiences of their children and partners.
More common in our cultural moment are white mothers who want their children to identify as they do and to claim a mixed-race or bi-racial identity.  Their reasoning, they say, is that they want their own ethno-racial background to count and not just that of the darker parent.  More likely, they want their children to reap the privileges and advantages they have because of their own whiteness, and they want their children not to experience discrimination because of their non-white blood. It seems clear, parents seem to want their kids to identify as they do.
Is that why Dolezal's parents revealed what they might call their daughter's 'true' racial identity? Their answer to that question seems to be, we don't want to participate in or perpetuate Dolezal's lies.
By turning her back on the ethno-racial designation they gave her, Dolezal has turned her back on her parents.  That must have hurt. From that point of view, it makes sense that Dolezal's parents may, perhaps, feel disappointment with their daughter.  It may be a parental prerogative to correct one's child, even when she is an adult.  Given the calamitous episode in Charleston, we must see that there is more to it than that for Dolezal's parents—it is about protecting the boundaries of white identity.    
The outing of Dolezal by her parents is, in fact, about them and decidedly not about her.  They are, effectively, policing her identity as a way to protect their own.  Are they afraid that Dolezal's blackness will taint their whiteness?  Rather than hide behind a generic "white" identity, they pulled out their ethnic particularities: "we are Czech, Swedish, and German," they said.  The little bit of “Native American” was thrown in for good measure, amplifying their white bona fides.  In showing their white credentials, they broke down the monolith that is whiteness into its constitutive parts.  
This rare occurrence is a letting down of the wall of whiteness, showing momentarily that it is not seamless and all-powerful.  It was, however, re-erected quickly so as not to diminish its power.  In this context, Roof’s actions should be viewed as an irrational display of white power in face of its faltering borders.
With the increasingly visible instances of racial violence being perpetrated against black people, it is little wonder that the boundaries between the made-up categories that we call “race” are being policed so stringently. Performances such as Dolezal’s have the potential to undermine racial divisions and contribute to the end of the senseless discriminatory acts that follow.
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Cherise Smith is author of Enacting Others, a book that explores across-race performance.  She is Associate Professor of African and African Diaspora Studies at the University of Texas at Austin where she directs the Warfield Center for African and African American Studies.  She is a Public Voices Fellow.

#TheRemix: Race, Gender and the Politics of Police Violence

#TheRemix host James Braxton Peterson is joined by Drexel University Law Professor Donald Tibbs in a discussion of police violence, viral videos, race, gender and how the criminal justice system is failing communities of color.

The Speech President Obama Cannot Give by Walter Greason

The Speech President Obama Cannot Give by Walter Greason | @WorldProfessor | HuffPost BlackVoices
Healing is a painful process. Even the smallest scrapes and burns will itch intensely and scar before disappearing. President Barack Obama's eulogy for Reverend Clementa Pinckney and his spiritual family at Mother Emanuel AME Church offered a unique balm in the annals of American history. His words acknowledged arguably the worst scar on the nation's soul - white supremacy. Unlike any previous president, Obama unified nearly all Americans with a call to equal justice that no preceding generation had any realistic expectation to achieve. It was a moment desperately imagined by the voters who supported him in 2008 and 2012. It was an impossible expectation to meet. Yet, somehow, his simultaneous courage and vulnerability lifted virtually every witness to a new testimony.
For his doubters and detractors, last week was a combination of stinging political blows as the Fair Housing Act, Affordable Care Act and the sanctity of universal marriage equality all received the stamp of Constitutional legitimacy from the Supreme Court. The president extended a generous hand to his opponents in the eulogy. Against their strident cynicism, he reminded the audience about the promise of inalienable human rights. His challenge was to embrace difference and diversity in the spirit of social trust. The ongoing struggle from this perspective is the effort to balance skepticism about government with a larger civic faith in both the national and global bodies.
Most of the healing force in the eulogy focused on the grievous losses that the president's most ardent supporters have suffered - both during his time in office and for no less than 13 generations prior. The immediacy of the terrorist attack in Charleston sparked the painful reflection that burdened every word he delivered. The last three years of increasingly devastating news reports about the killing of African Americans gave way to a special outrage. For a generation whose memories of Selma, Montgomery, Birmingham, Little Rock, Wilmington and Ruleville shaped unprecedented breakthroughs in creating an inclusive society, the fresh wounds in Sanford, Ferguson, Staten Island, McKinney, Baltimore and Charleston carried a deeper trauma as young activists experienced their baleful initiation. 
The national horror from a decade in war abroad and an infamous litany of mass murders across the continent compounded the specific history of racial violence, creating a nation starved for absolution, forgiveness, mercy and grace. While prayer and faith can carry the president's supporters along the road to a better society, his eulogy challenged them to take action. In this way, he insisted on individual responsibility to create a common good. This new social contract must rely on formerly enslaved Africans creating sustainable, global cooperatives with the children of immigrants, new and old. A generation with no personal memories of the previous century must reinvigorate values and traditions. The entire Obama coalition must place new limits on the role of government in a free world, so that new freedoms may still be discovered.
This speech is the one President Obama cannot give. It is a blueprint for a divided people - both Americans and humanity everywhere. How do we fulfill the promise of the Declaration of Independence: "We hold these truths to be self-evident that all [people] are created equal?" A first step into this uncertain future is an agenda more ambitious than Affirmative Action. An executive order for equal justice - in commerce, in education, in health care and in mobility - would mark a new day that honors generations of freedom fighters from David Walker and Lucy Terry to Bree Newsome and Pinckney. 
Local and regional organizations would compile data on effective interventions to close the racial-wealth gap, to restore the excellence of public education, to guarantee sound medical practices and to secure safe travel across the G20 nations. Civil Rights organizations, school districts and universities have extensive resources to build this infrastructure by the end of 2015. Between President Obama's final State of the Union address in 2016 and the inauguration of the next president in January 2017, a global coalition can realize freedom dreams on an extraordinary scale. Neither the responsibility nor the legacy is the president's, however. They are ours.
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Dr. Walter Greason founded the International Center for Metropolitan Growth and is the author of the award-winning historical monograph, Suburban Erasure. He also is the primary instructor for the “Engines of Wealth” initiative at Monmouth University. 
 

Who Are the Death Metal Cowboys of Africa?

Profile of Death Metal bands in Botswana--via Seeker Stories.

'Dope' Director On Geekdom, The N-Word & Confronting Racism With Comedy

 Rick Famuyiwa's new film Dope is about a Black high-school student who's into 1990s Hip Hop and Japanese comic books. Famuyiwa's calls Dope a celebration of kids whose interests don't fit into pop-culture norms.