Mark Anthony Neal's Blog, page 73

Fatoumata Diawara: Tiny Desk (Home) Concert

'Fatoumata Diawara is a true multi-hyphenate – an esteemed Malian singer, songwriter and actress who left her home country at 19 to pursue her artistry in France. By way of Como, Italy, she delivers a riveting performance alongside her bandmates, many of whom have toured with her since 2018. The guitarist and keyboardist here – Yacouba Kone and Arecio Smith – both contributed to her Grammy-nominated album, Fenfo. Rich, textured guitars complement her native Bambara vocals and bring a contemporary feel to her traditional Malian sound. These renditions are sonically disparate from her album versions. On "Kanou Dan Yen," Fatoumata's captivating and calming aura is as contagious as her electric smile. "Nterini" is a touching ode to her lover about how distance creates enormous heartache. Fatoumata ends her set on a vibrant note with "Negue Negue," an uptempo Afrobeat jam with rambunctious rhythm and spirit.'

Rights & The Humanities: Critique, Scholarly Authority, and Academic Freedom with Professor Joan Scott

'The enormous changes that have overtaken universities in the last fifty years have undermined the ability of academic freedom to protect free expression. Professor Joan Scott raises questions about whether notions of consensus are still possible or if academic freedom has become a synonym for the individual right of free speech. Joan Scott is professor emerita in the School of Social Science at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, New Jersey. The author of the now classic Gender and the Politics of History, her most recent books are Knowledge, Power, and Academic Freedom and On the Judgment of History.'

The Racial Capitalism of Care: A Conversation on Inequities in Medicine and Child Welfare

'U.S. society is marked by deep inequities in the distribution of care, from unpaid care work inside the home to the disparate treatment and impact of various government agencies and programs. This Boston Review event, moderated by Ruha Benjamin, examines how racial capitalism—the intertwined operation of race and class—shapes two major systems of care in the United States. Drs. Michelle Morse and Bram Wispelwey discuss their advocacy work on racial inequalities in medicine, while Dorothy E. Roberts discusses her new book on the child welfare system, Torn Apart. Together, they ask how we got here and how we can build a more just world.'

Tara Betts in The Black Writer's Studio

'Tara Betts is the author of Break the Habit (Trio House Press, 2016), Arc & Hue (Willow Books, 2009), and the forthcoming Refuse to Disappear (Word Works Books, 2022). In addition to working as an editor, a teaching artist, and a mentor for other writers, she has taught at several universities. She was the Inaugural Poet for the People Practitioner Fellow at University of Chicago and founder of the nonprofit Whirlwind Learning Center. Her poetry has appeared in numerous anthologies and journals, including The Breakbeat Poets, Poetry Magazine, and Essence magazine, which named her as one of their "40 Favorite Poets" in 2010.'

PJ Morton feat. Stevie Wonder & Nas - Be Like Water (Official Video)

Stevie Wonder and Nasir Jones join PJ Morton in this animated video for "Be Like Water" from Morton's Watch the Sun (2022).

Brown v Board of Education: When the Supreme Court Rejected a Racist System by Ben Jealous

Brown v Board of Education: When the Supreme Court Rejected a Racist System  

by Ben Jealous | @BenJealous | special to NewBlackMan (in Exile)

 

The U.S. Supreme Court wasn’t always a threat to civil rights. 

 

Almost 70 years ago this month, the Court issued its ruling in Brown v. Board of Education, one of the most important in our history. It was unanimous. And it was a glorious moment. Our highest court affirmed the constitutional promise of equality. 

 

In Brown, the court rejected the “separate but equal” doctrine that some states used to justify legally enforced racial segregation in public schools.  

 

But defenders of Jim Crow’s separate schools for Black and White children rallied to defend the racist system. Opposition was particularly strong in Virginia. One of the cases the court combined as it heard Brown v. Board of Education had come out of Virginia. After they lost in court, state officials organized a campaign of “massive resistance” to the ruling. 

 

The state legislature even rejected a local control option that would allow school districts to decide that Black and White students could attend schools together. But under the state’s massive resistance plan, public schools were closed to avoid complying with court orders to desegregate. Some county officials just shut down their public schools completely. The state even funded the establishment of private schools that were only open to White students. It took years, and more Supreme Court rulings in 1964 and 1968, for desegregation to take hold across the state. 

 

But resistance did not end there. 

 

When the federal government moved to deny charitable tax status to private “segregation academies,” many southern White evangelical leaders were outraged and began mobilizing to build political power. And build it they have. 

 

After years of litigation, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in 1982 that the federal government had the authority to revoke the charitable tax status of fundamentalist Bob Jones University over the school’s racially discriminatory policies. That was an 8-1 ruling.  

 

The one dissenter from the Bob Jones ruling was Justice William Rehnquist. In 1986, President Ronald Reagan nominated him to become Chief Justice. From that position, Rehnquist helped lead the Court in a harmful shift toward the Far Right.  

 

Today, the long-term legal and political movement of the Far Right has delivered us a Supreme Court majority indifferent, if not hostile, to voting rights. We have a Supreme Court majority shaped by a movement that looks longingly back to the days when “states’ rights” to discriminate trumped the federal government’s ability to protect civil rights and address issues like education and poverty.  

 

Today’s Supreme Court majority is on the verge of overturning the nearly 50-year-old ruling in Roe v. Wade. That will let states make criminals out of people seeking abortions and the caregivers who serve them. We all know who will suffer the most: vulnerable people of color, LGBTQ people, those without the time and money to find care far from their homes. 

 

Roe is not the only precedent the far right-wing legal movement is planning to reverse. And the Supreme Court is not the only place we are hearing echoes of massive resistance. 

 

Politicians like Glenn Youngkin, Virginia’s new governor, are building power by generating distrust and hostility toward public schools over teaching about racism. On the campaign trail last year, Youngkin embraced a dishonest far-right scare campaign against “critical race theory.” When he took office, his first executive order was to ban “inherently divisive concepts” from public schools – shorthand for truth telling about our history and our present.   

 

Across the country, far right-wing political groups are working overtime to mobilize fear and resentment as political weapons. They are running candidates to take over local school boards. They are passing laws to whitewash our past, restrict teaching, and shut down efforts to make our schools safe and welcoming places for all students. They want to divert public education funds into private religious schools and conservative homeschoolers. 

 

We cannot allow them to win. 

 

Brown v. Board of Education is an important part of our history. So is the shameful campaign of massive resistance to equality. So is the persistence of the brave students, parents, and advocates who kept up the fight for fairness and educational opportunity in the 1950s and 1960s—and are still doing so today. 

 

Our students deserve to learn the truth about our history—and our present-day inequities. And all of us deserve political leaders and courts that will uphold our rights. Whether we get them is up to us.  

 

***

 

Ben Jealous serves as president of People For the American Way and Professor of the Practice at the University of Pennsylvania. A New York Times best-selling author, his next book "Never Forget Our People Were Always Free" will be published by Harper Collins in December 2022.

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Left of Black S12 · E23 | Anthony Reed on the Soundworks of Poetry & Music in the Black Arts Era

When you think of Langston Hughes, does Charles Mingus come immediately to mind? What music do you hear when you think of the words of Amiri Baraka? Poetry and music have long commingled to produced provocative and innovative pairings in the Black Arts era. Vanderbilt University Professor Anthony Reed joins Left of Black host and Duke University Professor Mark Anthony Neal to discuss his latest book, Soundworks: Race, Sound, and Poetry in Production published by Duke University Press. 

 

Conversations in Atlantic Theory • Michael L. Dickinson on 'Almost Dead: Slavery and Social Rebirth in the Black Urban Atlantic, 1680-1807'

'This discussion is with Dr. Michael Lawrence Dickinson, an assistant professor of African American history at Virginia Commonwealth University. He was a 2019-2020 Barra Sabbatical Fellow at University of Pennsylvania's McNeil Center for Early American Studies. His research interests include enslaved black life, comparative slavery, Black Atlantic studies, and urban history. In this conversation, we discuss his book Almost Dead: Slavery and Social Rebirth in the Black Urban Atlantic which was published in 2022 by the University of Georgia Press as part of its Race and the Atlantic World Series. Our conversation here focuses on the key concepts and arguments in the book where he argues how the Black Urban Atlantic remained spaces for Black oppression and resilience.'

In Her Shoes: Symone Sanders

'No, You Shut Up author, youngest national press secretary on record, and host of a new show on MSNBC- this heady resume belongs to the one and only Symone Sanders. Host Lindsay Peoples Wagner is joined by Symone for a discussion on boundaries, maintaining hope in politics, and their own relationships with ambition.'

Into America: Patrisse Cullors on Making Mistakes

'Patrisse Cullors opens up to Into America host Trymaine Lee about leadership, accountability, and the allegations plaguing her time with the Black Lives Matters Global Network Foundation.'