Mark Anthony Neal's Blog, page 796
September 14, 2014
On Being: Imani Perry Talks 'The Fabric of Our Identity'
On Being with Krista Tippett
The first in a four-part series on "The American Consciousness."Imani Perry is a scholar of law, culture, race — and hip hop. She acknowledges wise voices who say that we will never get to the promised land of racial equality. She writes, “That may very well be true, but it also true that extraordinary things have happened and keep happening in our history. The question is, how do we prepare for and precipitate them?” We took her up on this emboldening question at the Chautauqua Institution, on the cusp of yet a new collective reckoning with the racial fabric of American life.
Joe Sample & The Soul Committee - Mystery Child (1994) | Aaron Douglass - "Aspects of Negro Life" (1934)
Aaron Douglass--"Aspects of Negro Life: From Slavery to Reconstruction"
Duke To Host 30th Anniversary Of ‘The Cosby Show’ Discussion
Duke University
Duke To Host 30th Anniversary Of ‘The Cosby Show’ Discussion
DURHAM, NC - To commemorate the 30th anniversary of the debut of the landmark television sitcom The Cosby Show, Duke University will host a roundtable discussion on the significance of the program in American culture.
"The Cosby Show at 30: Reflections on Race, Parenting, Inequality and Education" will be held at 7 p.m. Sept. 18 at the John Hope Franklin Center at Duke (2204 Erwin Road). It is free and open to the public. Free parking is available in the Pickens Clinic lot.
The event is sponsored by the Center for Arts, Digital Culture & Entrepreneurship (CADCE) at the Duke Consortium on Social Equity, in conjunction with the John Hope Franklin Center.
The roundtable participants are Natalie Bullock Brown, chair of the Department of Film and Interactive Media at Saint Augustine’s University; Blair LM Kelley, associate professor of history and assistant dean for interdisciplinary studies and international programs at North Carolina State University; Joshua L. Lazard, the C. Eric Lincoln Minister for Student Engagement at Duke Chapel; and Wahneema Lubiano, associate professor of African and African American Studies and literature at Duke. Mark Anthony Neal, a professor of African and African American Studies and CADCE director, will moderate.
The Cosby Show, starring Bill Cosby as Dr. Heathcliff Huxtable, and Phylicia Rashad, as his wife Clair Huxtable, debuted on Sept. 20, 1984. The Huxtables were two highly educated, upper middle-class African-American parents raising five children.
"Black audiences greeted The Cosby Show with a certain amount of euphoria, simply because it was regular opportunity to see black life portrayed in a 'responsible' manner," said Neal, noting that the show debuted before the re-election of Ronald Reagan and ran until 1992, just months before Bill Clinton took office. For five straight seasons, from 1985 to 1990, it was heralded as the most popular television show in America.
"The root of hip-hop generation displeasure with The Cosby Show was not simply that the show wasn’t political, but rather the show served the political function of diverting attention away from the harsh realities of Reagan-era social policies," Neal said. "In effect, the Huxtable family was posited as the 'model' black family, overriding the legitimate criticisms of Reagan-era attacks on social policies that were enacted to address social inequities the show helped obscure."
September 13, 2014
September 12, 2014
“Like the Memory of My Nigga Biggie”
“Like the Memory of My Nigga Biggie”
by Mark Anthony Neal | NewBlackMan (in Exile)By the fall of 1994, I was an official Hip-Hop snob. If Primo, Ali Shaheed or Pete Rock hadn’t blessed it—with their curation of the Hard Bop grooves of my daddy’s generation—I wasn’t much interested; such was the case with Ready to Die.
To be clear, it’s not that I was unaware of The Notorious B.I.G.—there were star-turns throughout 1993 on Heavy D’s “A Bunch of Nigga” (Blue Funk) and on the remix to Super Cat’s “Dolly My Baby” (with Mary J Blige singing the hook). I wasn’t trying to pay much attention, though, I’d be lying if I said I ever turned the radio dial when “Juicy” came on.
It all changed when I heard the remix to label-mate Craig Mack’s “Flava in Ya Ear.” There might be some debate about who stole the show the most from Mack’s own track; Busta Rhymes launched his solo career with his cameo and LL pulled Hip-hop’s version of a hail-Mary pass, but that Biggie verse, though: “you’re mad cause my style you’re admiring | don’t be mad UPS is hiring.”
I can remember my first sit down with Ready to Die, driving through the streets of Fredonia in the blue Integra. Wasn’t swayed much by the nihilism that Cornel West had convinced me just a year earlier in Race Matters that I should be checking for. And to be sure, there were some real head-nodding moments, that took me back to the click-clack on New York City subways—a piece of sonic nostalgia for someone who would never again live in that city.
But the moment for me, was the skit that closes “Warning”—a song that begins with the classic line “who the fuck is this, paging me at 5:46 in the mornin’”--and ends with two knuckleheads comparing the infrared dots on their foreheads. The subsequent shooting deaths of the characters—who in about 45 seconds had established themselves as the Laurel and Hardy of Hip-hop—was an afterthought, to what may be the most darkly comic moment in all of Hip-Hop. And that’s the Biggie that found my heart.
The genius of Ready to Die, was less the production or Biggie’s lyrical flow, but the way he balanced hubris with self-deprecation (“Heart throb never, Black and ugly as ever. However, I stay Coogi down to the socks”); kept saying to myself, “this is a funny mothafucka.” And indeed it was his sense of humor that endeared him to so many—thinking about that scene in Puffy’s “Can’t Hold Me Down,” where Biggie plays straight man to Eddie Griffin.
Whereas everyone could acknowledge the genius that peers like Nas and Tupac embodied, Biggie always seemed the dude that you would have wanted to chill with, regardless of whether he was the “King of New York" or not. In the end Ready to Die was like taking a trip to the barbershop with Biggie, to waste an hour or two talking shit—and laughing your ass off.
Walmart Draws Criticism for its New Dress Code
Marketplace APM
Walmart is introducing a new dress code for its employees, but they’re not calling it a uniform. And that’s got some Walmart employees riled up. The retailer says customers are having a hard time figuring out who works at the store, so it’s put in place a dress code. Employees have to wear black or khaki pants and a blue or white collared shirt. “Walmart employees are among the lowest paid in the entire country and right now,” Judith Conti of the National Employment Law Project, says. “And Walmart is asking them to buy new clothes to wear at work.”
"You F#cked Up..." -- Jon Stewart on the NFL's Handling of Intimate Partner Violence
The Daily Show with Jon StewartThe League of Exculpatory Gentlemen
Professional football player Ray Rice faces indefinite expulsion from the NFL after an explicit video emerges of him beating his then-fiancee in an elevator. The Daily Show
Get More: Daily Show Full Episodes,Indecision Political Humor,The Daily Show on Facebook
September 11, 2014
New Book: The Hip-Hop Underground & African American Culture: Beneath the Surface
John JenningsPalgrave MacmillanThe Hip-Hop Underground & African American Culture: Beneath the Surface
by James Braxton Peterson (September 2014)
The underground is a multi-faceted concept in African American culture. Peterson explores a variety of "underground" concepts at the intersections of African American literature and hip-hop culture, using Richard Wright, KRS-One, Thelonious Monk, and the tradition of the Underground Railroad, among other examples. He explores the manifestations and the attributes of the underground within the context of a more panoramic picture of African American expressivity, situated at black cultural and conceptual crossroads.
Table of Contents
1. Roots Rhymes and Rhizomes: An Introduction to the Concepts of the Underground
2. Verbal and Spatial Masks in the Underground
3. The Deep Structure of Black Identity in American Literature
4. Defining an Underground at the Intersections of Hip-Hop and African American Culture
5. A Cipher of the Underground in Black Literary Culture
6. Tears for the Departed: See(k)ing a Black Visual Underground in Hip-Hop and African American Cultures
7. The Depth of the Hole: Intertextuality and Tom Waits's "Way Down in the Hole."
Epilogue: The Ironies Underground: Revolution, Critical Memory, and Black Nostalgia
James Braxton Peterson is Director of Africana Studies and Associate Professor of English at Lehigh University.
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