Mark Anthony Neal's Blog, page 774

'Kara Walker: An Audience" (Trailer, 2014)

Sikkema Jenkins & Co., New York
Kara Walker: An Audience, runs at Sikkema Jenkins & Co., through January 17, 2015 as part of Afterword which elaborates on the creation and aftermath of Kara Walker’s monumental installation at the Domino Sugar Refinery in Williamsburg, Brooklyn this past summer.

Lesley McSpadden: “My Son Was Running for His Life”

Charlie Rose
The mother of Michael Brown, Lesley McSpadden, speaks about the accounts she's heard of her son's death, and about having 'the talk' with him about what to do when confronted with authorities. 

"My 1st Song" | Sugar Ray Robinson

"My 1st Song"-- Shawn Carter

It's my life
It's my pain and my struggle
The song that I sing to you is my everything
Treat my first like my last, and my last like my first
And my thirst is the same as when I came
It's my joy and my tears and the laughter it brings to me
It's my everything

A 'Nigger' Un-Reconstructed: The Legacy of Richard Pryor

A Nigger Un-Reconstructed: The Legacy of Richard Pryorby Mark Anthony Neal | abridged from Popmatters.com
“Unreconstructed black men don’t have the manners of their reconstructed ‘Negro’ brethren, who are always trying to put a ‘civilized’ face on their blackness, especially in the company of white folks.” — Quincy Troupe
When Richard Pryor began to work the chitlin’ circuit in the early ‘60s and later the clubs of New York City’s Greenwich Village, he worked amongst a generation of black entertainers, who took seriously the charge of putting the “best face of the race” forward, as black political activists in the South sought to directly challenge the legalities of racial segregation. For many black performers, the point was to use their talents to appeal to the common humanity shared between blacks and their white audiences.
But for all of those black performers who sought to make themselves palatable to whites, there were other examples of folk, who poet and Miles Davis biographer Quincy Troupe describes as “unreconstructed”; folk who never sought to remix blackness for white comfort or consumption. While such “unreconstructed-ness” is largely a myth—we all capitulate to the so-called “white gaze” in one form of another to gain access to institutions we deem important to our well being—it helped create mythic icons, which became synonymous with not dancing the dance of racial ingratiation. Miles Davis is the most visible example of this.
What Pryor understood perhaps better than anyone as the Civil Right Movement waned, was that the “unreconstructed” black was as much an insincere performance of blackness as the “ready for integration players” (to turn a phrase from that other black trickster from the era) . When Pryor put “little Cosby” to rest in the late ‘60s—dramatically walking off stage muttering “what am I doing here?”—he did so because of those memories of the black underground in Peoria.
Pryor re-emerged in 1971 from a self-imposed period of isolation; hanging out in Berkeley, reading the Autobiography of Malcolm X, listening to Marvin Gaye’s What’s Going On, and reflecting on his youth in Peoria. He did so as a social commentator, using his talents to speak to the realities of race in America and class within Black America. In his autobiography, Pryor Convictions and Other Life Sentences (Pantheon, 1997), Pryor says “There was a world of junkies and winos, pool hustlers and prostitutes, women and family screaming inside my head, trying to be heard.”

The voices that Pryor heard in his head—the “niggers” in his head—were the same “niggers” that both the Civil Rights guard and the Black Power elite had a vested interest in killing-off (think about The Last Poets’ “Niggers Are Scared of Revolution”). Pryor knew better; he had long known better. Those “niggers” were the salt of the earth and he suggested as much during the 1973 concert documentary Wattstax, where he describes “niggers” as the “best of people who were slaves.” In a collection of ground-breaking and award winning albums throughout the ‘70s, including That Nigger’s Crazy (1974) and Bicentennial Nigger (1976), Pryor brought his “niggers” to life—and these were “niggers” unreconstructed with no allegiance to looking good for the race or for the cause.

"This is Your Life" (1971) -- Happy 80th Birthday to Mr. Billy Paul

Best known for the classic "Me and Mrs. Jones," Billy Paul is a sophisticated balladeer ("Love Buddies") and politically astute vocalist ("Am I Black Enough for You?") who many mistakenly believe was a one-hit wonder.  One of the quintessential voices of the Philly Soul Sound, here Mr. Paul interprets Jimmy Webb's "This is Your Life." 

"Reagan is the Prez, but I voted for Shirley Chisholm"

The Honorable Shirley Chisholm (born November 30, 1924 - 2005) -- Representing New York's 12th Congressional District (then BK) for seven terms from 1969 to 1983. 

Ferguson's Despair and the Devastation of White Privilege

Ferguson's Despair and the Devastation of White Privilege by Heather Ann Thompson | Huffington Post
All day people gathered, waiting, daring to hope, that maybe this time black lives would matter. Minutes passed. Then hours. And, as darkness descended on the streets of Ferguson, Missouri, the now enormous crowd continued to wait patiently -- trying its best to remain optimistic. Perhaps, despite so many decades of history, black people really could find justice in the American legal system.
That such a faith still flickered was, itself, remarkable. Everyone standing outside of the Ferguson police station awaiting news on whether the grand jury would indict police officer Darren Wilson well remembered what happened on February 26, 2012 when Trayvon Martin was killed. Nothing. They also had noticed that, though Martin's killer went free, in the very same state, black mother Marissa Alexander was sentenced to 20 years in prison merely for firing a warning shot at her abusive husband. And, of course, they had just heard, only two days earlier, that yet another black child, this time 12-year-old Tamir Rice, had also been shot to death by the police.
But having faith and clinging to hope is what it means to be human. Even when the past, as well as most recent present, tell people that optimism is wholly unfounded and that they should be realists not romantics, somehow they still believe.
And then they don't.
At 9:00 p.m. on November 24, 2014, St. Louis County Prosecutor Robert McCulloch stepped to the podium and explained -- in fact, explained better than most any defense attorney ever could -- why Darren Wilson would not, and in fact, should not, be indicted for killing unarmed 18-year-old Michael Brown on August 9, 2014.
Hope then became despair. And despair then became all-consuming and almost impossible to contain. For some it took the form of uncontrollable sobs. For others it was expressed through screams. And for still others it erupted in smashing and burning things inanimate. In its various articulations, though, it was a despair that would fill any parent's heart, and spread like fire through any parent's veins, if their child had been shot to death and no one cared.
And yet too many Americans -- overwhelmingly white Americans -- didn't remotely recognize, let alone understand, Ferguson's despair. Why? Because, at the end day, they don't see this nation's black children -- its Trayvon's, Michael's, and Tamir's -- as their children. Indeed they find it hard to see black children as children at all.
But while so much of white America couldn't relate to the utter anguish of Ferguson's black community it certainly worried mightily about how community members might react to the news that Michael Brown's killer would not face trial. This reaction, whites knew, could be potentially disruptive to both privilege and power. And so they tried to contain this torment with tanks and tear gas.
And, when even these military measures couldn't keep people from expressing their grief, and indeed only deepened their misery, these same white Americans began the shaming process. They began wondering publicly, shaking their heads most disapprovingly, why blacks can't express their feelings more suitably, in a more appropriate way. They wished, loudly, for this grief to be less raw. They called for it to be far more civil. They desired it be expressed with greater decorum.
But this kind of distress, parental yet powerless, can't possibly be proper or polite. It is perpetually provoked, it is historically-bound, and, thus, it is bone-deep.
This is a desolation born of the fact that we remain, and have always been, a nation in which only some parents, specifically the parents of America's black and brown children, must continually suffer loss with no justice. From the parents of Emmett Till, to the parents of Medgar Evers, to the parents of Rodney King, to the parents of Sean Bell, to the parents of Yvette Smith, to the parents of countless other African Americans, justice is rarely served and, therefore, black pain and sorrow are ever-present.
To be sure, since white Americans haven't experienced this long history of being terrorized by racist mobs and, today, don't live in continuous fear of having their sons and daughters felled by police bullets, this ever-present pain may indeed be difficult to grasp. But for them to imagine it to be illogical or irrational is, in fact, more devastating to the future of this country than any on-the-ground expression of black distress could ever be.
After all, it is this sort of dismissal of palpable pain -- a blindness and coldness to black humanity -- that has caused so much trauma and tension in the first place. Indeed, if this nation ever hopes to make good on the promise of "justice for all," and if it has any hope of actually giving every person in this country a rational reason to believe in the future, then America's white people must reckon with their own power and privilege.
In fact, white people in this country are very well-aware that their kids are not assumed to be criminals as they walk down the street. They also well know that their kid's skin color alone means they are unlikely to be shot to death by the police -- even if they are suspected of committing a crime. And, here is the real point: were their children to be unarmed and yet killed with impunity, America's whites would be sobbing, smashing and, yes, screaming for justice.
And, so... it is time for white Americans to stop shaming and to speak out against the killing of black children too.
***
Dr. Heather Ann Thompson is a native Detroiter and historian at Temple University who has written numerous popular as well as scholarly articles on the history of mass incarceration as well as its current impact. She recently completed Blood in the Water: the Attica Prison Uprising of 1971 for Pantheon books and the author of Whose Detroit: Politics, Labor and Race in a Modern American City. In 2015 Thompson joins the faculty at the University of Michigan.

More than a Gesture: St. Louis Rams -- #HandsUpDontShoot

Stedman Bailey + Tavon Austin + Jared Cook + Chris Givens + Kenny Britt  of the St. Louis Rams

Ferguson and the Path to Reparations by Charles Bane, Jr.

Ferguson and the Path to Reparationsby Charles Bane, Jr. | special to NewBlackMan (in Exile)
On May 11, 1960, agents of Mossad, the Israeli intelligence service, in a daring and secret raid, captured Adolph Eichmann in Argentina. Eichmann was the high ranking Nazi most responsible for the extermination of six million Jews, and all thirty members of the team sent to capture him alive and bring him to Israel for trial, were willing to place their lives in jeopardy to accomplish their mission. After his trial for war crimes, he was hanged. Eichmann had told one of his Israeli guards that he missed his sons. When the guard reminded him that he was directly responsible for the death of hundreds of thousands of children, Eichmann looked at him blankly, then said, "But they were Jews."--"The Hardest Thing I've Ever Had To Do."
On August 9, 2014, Officer Darren Wilson emptied his revolver into an unarmed Michael Brown on a street in Ferguson, Missouri. Brown's death followed a pattern of fatalities among Black males at the hands of police officers. Darren Wilson received financial reward from the majority community that mirrors the bounty paid for runaway slaves.
What is most remarkable about the aftermath of Brown's death is that it has served to highlight to other nations that African Americans are not protected by American law and that Black communities, themselves the remnant descendants of the Mid- Atlantic Holocaust are an ongoing target of ethnic cleansing that violates international law.
These violations are manifest in the historic relationship between the United States government's complicity or inability to reverse the campaign. An African American President, and Attorney General were powerless before its force. But the events in Ferguson were noted by the governments and press of Great Britain, China, Germany, Egypt, Spain and others, all of whom have seats in the United Nations.
As outlined by Ta- Nehisi-Coates in "The Case For Reparations" in The Atlantic in June, 2104, there is precedent for reparations paid to whole Peoples, as was paid to survivors of the Holocaust by Germany for a moral debt that is equal to the debt owed to Black America by a nation which built its foundation of wealth on the backs of African slave labor.
On December 6, 2005, the General Assembly of the United Nations formally adopted basic principles and guidelines for remedy and reparations for victims of gross violations of international human rights law. These compensations are all- encompassing and further require a public apology to People who have been systematically wronged, and memorials and tributes paid to their victims. Michael Brown is deserving of this.
***
Charles Bane, Jr. is the American author of The Chapbook (Curbside Splendor, 2011) and Love Poems (Kelsay Books, 2014). His work was described by the Huffington Post as "not only standing on the shoulders of giants, but shrinking them."  Creator of The Meaning Of Poetry series for The Gutenberg Project, he is a current nominee as Poet Laureate of Florida.

Black Friday Protesters Demand Police Reform

Fusion
A group of 200 people shut down a St. Louis County mall on Black Friday, demanding police reform and protesting the grand jury decision not to indict Ferguson police officer Darren Wilson. The protests at the Galleria Mall in Richmond Heights, Mo., ended peacefully and no arrests were made.