Mark Anthony Neal's Blog, page 781

When it's Time to Have 'The Talk' with Black Children

The Root.com
In this preview of the next Left of Black, host Mark Anthony Neal is joined by Cora Daniels and John L. Jackson Jr. to talk about teaching our children about sex, black masculinity, and state violence against black men. Daniels and Jackson recently co-wrote Impolite Conversations: On Race, Politics, Sex, Money and Religion (Atria Books). Daniels is an award-winning journalist and author. Professor Jackson is a cultural anthropologist, filmmaker, and the Dean of the School of Social Policy and Practice at the University of Pennsylvania.

Scholars Under Attack: American Studies Association to Document Assaults on Academic Freedom

ASA Launches Nationwide Initiative to Document Assaults on Academic Freedom and Higher Education Los Angeles, CA – The American Studies Association (ASA), one of the leading scholarly communities supporting social change, today announced at its annual conference a nationwide effort to document and publicize instances of assaults on academic freedom, faculty profiling, widespread dismantling of academic programs in American Studies (as well as Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies, Ethnic Studies, and other allied programs), access to education, and hostile environments on many campuses for faculty and student labor organizing and protest. “Against a backdrop of rapidly changing economics in higher education, it’s clear that university scholars and students in America are increasingly under attack,” said ASA President Lisa Duggan of New York University. “From elimination of tenure, to the expansion of a precarious class of adjuncts and instructors with neither the benefit of academic freedom nor the basic dignity of a living wage, to a burgeoning cohort of students drowning in debt, these assaults on higher education are part and parcel of political and economic privatization efforts that will have devastating long-term effects.” The effort, called Scholars Under Attack, will document examples of assaults on academic freedom, program cuts, labor organizing and political protests, and instances of faculty profiling. The following examples have occurred just in the past few months: ·      In August 2014, Steven Salaita, a former tenured professor at Virginia Technical Institute whose tenured job from the University of Illinois in Urbana-Champaign (UIUC) was rescinded when UIUC decided statements he made on Twitter about Israel and Palestine were “uncivil” and made him inappropriate for the classroom. ·      In Spring 2014, University of Southern Maine announced a plan to cut dozens of tenured and untenured faculty and staff, as well as several masters and undergraduate programs. Faculty members disputed the university president’s claim that the cuts were financially necessary. The Board of Trustees approved the elimination of 50 faculty members, which made up almost 20 percent of its total, and a number of departments, including American and New England Studies. English, philosophy and history departments would be collapsed into a single humanities department. ·      In October 2014, Utah State University received an email threatening a mass killing if the school did not cancel Anita Sarkeesian’s lecture.  Although Sarkeesian, a video game critic and feminist, requested metal detectors and pat downs, she was forced to cancel the event because it is illegal to restrict the possession or use of firearms in Utah.
“In addition to methodically documenting and raising awareness, it is our goal with Scholars Under Attack to build a more systemic response to these issues and moving forward begin to reverse these trends for the sake of America’s scholars, students and renowned system of higher education.” About the ASA
Chartered in 1951, the American Studies Association has 5,000 members dedicated to promoting meaningful dialogue about the United States, throughout the U.S. and across the globe. Our purpose is to support scholars and scholarship committed to original research, critical thinking, and public discussion and debate. We hold in common the desire to view US history and culture from multiple perspectives. In addition to being the oldest and largest scholarly association devoted to the interdisciplinary study of US culture and history in a global context, we are also one of the leading scholarly communities supporting social change.

"Make Yours a Happy Home"--Gladys Knight & the Pips (from 'Claudine', 1974)

Diahann Carroll and James Earl Jones are brilliant here, in this film written by Tina and Lester Pine and directed by John Berry. The joy of the film is witnessing the lives of a working poor Black family, who were not spiritually, culturally or politically impoverished.

Music by Gladys Knight and the Pips; written and produced by Curtis Mayfield.

Jazz Vespers: Where Jazz Improvisation Meets Vespers with Luke Powery + The John Brown Big Band | 11/13

A collaboration between Duke Chapel and the Duke Jazz Program , this "Jazz Vespers" worship service combines the form of the traditional evening vespers service with the musical improvisation of jazz. 
Chapel Dean Luke Powery will offer prayers and readings during the service, John Brown's Big Band will provide musical leadership.
Vespers is an ancient Christian service with chants, anthems, prayers and scripture reading. 
The John Brown Big Band is a professional large jazz ensemble, specializing in performances of traditional compositions from the Great American Songbook as well as contemporary arrangements. 
This service will merge the two traditions -- vespers and jazz -- for a contemporary expression of thanksgiving to God. Co-sponsored by the Duke Jazz Program. 
All are welcome to attend.

Picking The Locks: Redefining Copyright Law In The Digital Age

Off Color Comedy: Issa Rae

New York Times Video

The Misadventures of Awkward Black Girl , a popular web series, made Issa Rae an online star. Now this writer-producer is hoping fans will follow as she tells her unconventional stories elsewhere.  with Tanzina Vega.

Black-owned Funeral Homes Face Existential Challenge

Dwayne Bickham, an attendant at Bowman and Young who has worked there since he was 17. Marketplace APM
The funeral, or “death-care” industry, brings in an estimated $20 billion a year in the U.S., but the industry is changing. There’s been a shift towards chain funeral homes, and more people are choosing cremation. In some U.S. cities, that has black-owned funeral homes particularly worried about staying above ground.

Res--"Dreams" (2013) from 'Refried Mac' (the songs of Fleetwood Mac)

Res performing "Dreams" from her Refried Mac EP

What Hollaback’s Viral Video, George Zimmerman’s Trial & Twilight Have in Common

What Hollaback’s Viral Video, George Zimmerman’s Trial, and Twilight Have in Commonby Kimberly B. George | @kimberlybgeorge | special to NewBlackMan (in Exile)

By now you, like 27 million people, have probably seen the video: a woman walking around for 10 hours in New York. It’s a deeply painful video to watch—painful for several reasons. 

At one level, the video has provided a media space for women to have mirrored back to us how violent is the world of patriarchy we walk around in everyday. We know this truth in our guts and our bodies and minds, but staring at the evidence like this awakens critically important conversations, processes of grief and anger, and demands for this reality to change.

That said, there is another layer of violence in this video, and it’s racial and classed violence. White men were edited out of the video, and thus the harassment toward “women” (read white woman, not the diverse category that actually is women) is portrayed as violence perpetuated by black and brown men.  

The harassment in this video is part of a system of violence toward women. But the racism and classism in this video is part of a system of racialized and classed violence. There is a lot to grieve here, for the video follows a logic of white supremacist hetero-patriarchy that saturates much of our dominant cultural narratives about race and gender. 

Here are a few examples we might read alongside this video, to help us unpack the danger of these representations and how they operate:

Consider that when George Zimmerman was on trial for the murder of Trayvon Martin, the jury was made of all women—5 white women and one woman of color.

In the course of Zimmerman’s trial, which really became a trial for Trayvon Martin, the defense put a young, white, blonde-haired woman on the stand to testify that black men had been breaking into houses in her neighborhood. The implication,  being, that Trayvon Martin could have been one of these scary black men, and that white women like her needed “protection.” Enter Zimmerman: the patriarchal protector of white womanhood.

It is important to note that Zimmerman himself is actually a light skinned Hispanic man—he’s Peruvian and he also has white privilege. Amidst the complexities of his  race and ethnicity, what is clear is that the logics of white supremacy were operating and being manipulated through and through this trial. Blackness was still being made criminal and abject; and I would argue that Zimmerman was implicitly whitened.

The racist logic thus unfolds this way: that Zimmerman read Martin’s black body as a danger was perfectly reasonable. This wasn’t murder, then—this was a well-intended man protecting property and white womanhood! 

It is not inconsequential that this logic was sold to a jury of almost all white women.  

White women in the U.S. are taught to fear black and brown men. They are taught that men with dark skin are the danger, the ones who will harass them and rape them and the ones who will commit “terror.” How are white women taught this white supremacist ideology?  Through news stories. Through the ways in which the crimes of white men are let off the hook or rendered invisible. Through the most commonplace stories circulating in hearts, minds, and unconscious lives. 

White women like me are socialized into these images from an early age.
For instance, consider the widely popular and bestselling book (and movie) Twilight. The racial politics unfold this way. The heroic vampire and lead character, Edward, is sparkling white, even “celestial.” So is Bella, his romantic partner. We are frequently reminded of her “paleness” in the text. And, as we might predict by now, the men who almost rape the very pale-skinned Bella (until the white hero rushes in to save her) are described only as “dark” men. And furthermore, Edward’s romantic rival, of course, is the Indigenous Jacob from the “rez”, who is part werewolf. 

Not only is Jacob exoticized, but he’s made part-animal. That’s clear colonial fantasy imagery.  This love story, which aroused millions of female readers, is saturated through and through with racism, white-settler colonialism, and with the images of white womanhood needing “protection.”

Whether or not white women consciously hold these fears and storylines is not, perhaps, even the most important issue. The issue is that white womanhood in the U.S. context is built upon this intersection of race and gender, which is also classed and written into heteronormative scripts.  These scripts are foundational to dominant unconscious processes, material injustice, and widespread systemic violence.

So, return again to the Hollaback video. We do need to talk about street harassment. I am a feminist and I care deeply about this kind of verbal and psychic assault directed daily at women. I do not wish to minimize at all how awful street harassment is or what this woman experienced. But, I do not want to replicate a feminism that does violence to others. And disproportionately representing black and brown men as perpetrators is violence.  That white men were edited out of the video is violence.  

These racialized representations are interconnected to histories of the lynching of African American men, of current stop and frisk policies and mass incarceration, of the murders of Emmett Till and Trayvon Martin and Mike Brown.

Furthermore, that white men in positions of power are so often able to hide their violence, sexual harassment, rape, and sexual coercion because of their status as white, wealthy men is a founding economic story of this country. 

Consider that for much of U.S. history it was legal for white, classed men to rape—they could rape Indigenous women and men, African American slaves, and their own wives, without such crimes being considered crimes. (Note: it wasn’t until the 1990s that marital rape became a crime in all 50 states.) And upper class men historically have gotten away with violence toward their employees and domestic servants (many of whom are immigrants), given the power differentials of their classed position.

So not only is representing black and brown men as the criminals to fear part of a system of white supremacist violence, the image also dangerously represses the complexity of the deeper, systemic patriarchal violence in this country.  The Hollaback video participates in that repression. 

But as women-of-color feminisms have already led the way in helping us analyze—from the brilliant work of Kimberle Crenshaw to Hortense Spillers to Andrea Smith—the task of social justice is to press toward a fuller analysis of patriarchy so we might have a fuller, collective transformation. 

***

Kimberly B. George is a creative and academic writer, a writing coach, and an innovator of online learning. She is currently a Ph.D. student in Gender, Race, Sexuality, and Social Justice at the University of British Columbia.

Left of Black S5:E7: Crowdfunding Black Creative Vision

Left of Black S5:E7:  Crowdfunding Black Creative Vision
Left of Black host and Duke University Professor Mark Anthony Neal is joined via Skype by Felicia Pride, writer and producer of the short film The End Again, which stars Columbus Short and Tanee McCall-Short. The film is a prequel to the feature length film OpenEnded, also written by Pride.
“I was working in book publishing and marketing and I really felt that book publishers were missing the boat a little bit, because they were s0 fixated on format versus content” Pride says of her early adoption to multi-platform digital content.  The author of two books including the To Create: Black Writers, Filmmakers, Storytellers, Artists, and Media-Makers Riff on Art, Careers, Life, and the Beautiful Mess in Between, Pride is director of the storytelling  institute StoriesLead and the founder of  The Create Daily.
Left of Black is a weekly Webcast hosted by Mark Anthony Neal and produced in collaboration with the John Hope Franklin Center at Duke University and in conjunction with the Center for Arts, Digital Culture & Entrepreneurship (CADCE).*** Episodes of Left of Black are also available for free download in @ iTunes U*** Follow Left of Black on Twitter: @LeftofBlackFollow Mark Anthony Neal on Twitter: @NewBlackManFollow Felicia Pride on Twitter: @FeliciaPride
Follow ‘The End Again’ on Twitter: @OpenEndedFilm