Mark Anthony Neal's Blog, page 936

Filmmakers at Google: The Central Park Five

AtGoogleTalks 
Co-directed, written and produced by Ken Burns, Sarah Burns & David McMahon.

In 1989, five black and Latino teenagers from Harlem were arrested and later convicted of brutally beating and raping a white woman in New York City's Central Park. New York Mayor Ed Koch called it the "crime of the century" and it remains to date one of the biggest media stories of our time. The five each spent between 6 and 13 years in prison before a shocking confession from a serial rapist and DNA evidence proved their innocence. Set against a backdrop of a decaying city beset by violence and racial tension, THE CENTRAL PARK FIVE tells the story of how five lives were upended by the rush to judgment by police, a sensationalist media and a devastating miscarriage of justice.

Join author and filmmaker Sarah Burns for a sneak preview and discussion of her film The Central Park Five & her book on the same subject. We'll have a short preview of parts of the film & Q&A with Sarah.

HuffPost Live: Black Men Under Fire

Jordan Davis is the latest unarmed young black man to be gunned down, like Trayvon Martin. But why are young black men still targeted as armed and dangerous?
Originally aired on December 4, 2012
Hosted by:
Marc Lamont Hill
GUESTS:
Jeffrey Johnson (Baltimore, MD) Critic, BET personality @jeffsnation Joshua Correll (Boulder, CO) Associate Professor of Social Psychology at the University of Colorado at Boulder Mark Anthony Neal (Durham, NC) Professor of Black Popular Culture at Duke University @NewBlackMan Rosa Clemente (Amherst, MA) Community Organizer, Lecturer & Journalist  @RosaClemente

Left of Black S3:E12 | The Politics of Pleasure and the Power of Alternative Politics

Left of Black S3:E12 | The Politics of Pleasure & the Power of Alternative Politics
December 3, 2012
For more than twenty-years Joan Morgan, journalist, feminist thinker, and author of the classic When Chickenheads Come Home to Roost: My Life As a Hip-Hop Feminist, has been at the forefront of questions regarding the intersections of gender, sexuality and Transnational Blackness.  Morgan joins Left of Blackhost and Duke University Professor Mark Anthony Neal, via Skype, to talk about her new venture Emily Jayne Butters and Fragrances and her current scholarly work, theorizing the “pleasure principle” in the lives of Black Women.  Emily Jayne’s newest fragrance “Wench” is, perhaps, where Morgan’s two worlds, collide.
Later Neal is joined, also via Skype, by San Francisco State University Sociologist Andreana Clay, who talks about her new book The Hip-Hop Generation Fights Back: Youth Activism and Post-Civil Rights Politics (New York University Press, 2012).
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Left of Blackis a weekly Webcast hosted by Mark Anthony Neal and produced in collaboration with the John Hope Franklin Center at Duke University.
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Episodes of Left of Black are also available for free download in  @ iTunes U

Reading Rainbow Remixed | "In Your Imagination"

PBSDigitalStudios 
Reading Rainbow Remixed, by John D. Boswell, aka melodysheep, for PBS Digital Studios. If you like this video, please support your local PBS station: http://to.pbs.org/WvBbqZ

For years, LeVar Burton and Reading Rainbow have taught kids everywhere about the power of books and imagination. To this day, the show continues to encourage a love of reading and connect children to the world they live in through quality literature -- so they can "go anywhere, be anything." With this remix, John Boswell has captured those enduring lessons in song -- a fitting tribute to an important part of PBS history.

Try the all new FREE Reading Rainbow iPad App, download the classic episodes on iTunes or learn more about Reading Rainbow and all its digital products at http://www.readingrainbow.com.

"Roomieloverfriends" | Episode 8 of 9

Issa Rae 

Episode 8: "And Then There Were Four..."
SEASON FINALE: Saturday DEC.

Déjà vu: Jordan Davis and the Danger of American Racism

<!-- /* Font Definitions */ @font-face {font-family:Times; panose-1:2 0 5 0 0 0 0 0 0 0; mso-font-charset:0; mso-generic-font-family:auto; mso-font-pitch:variable; mso-font-signature:3 0 0 0 1 0;} @font-face {font-family:"ＭＳ 明朝"; mso-font-charset:78; mso-generic-font-family:auto; mso-font-pitch:variable; mso-font-signature:1 0 16778247 0 131072 0;} @font-face {font-family:Cambria; panose-1:2 4 5 3 5 4 6 3 2 4; mso-font-charset:0; mso-generic-font-family:auto; mso-font-pitch:variable; mso-font-signature:3 0 0 0 1 0;} /* Style Definitions */ p.MsoNormal, li.MsoNormal, div.MsoNormal {mso-style-parent:""; margin:0in; margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:12.0pt; font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-ascii-font-family:Cambria; mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-fareast-font-family:"ＭＳ 明朝"; mso-fareast-theme-font:minor-fareast; mso-hansi-font-family:Cambria; mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font:minor-bidi; mso-fareast-language:JA;} a:link, span.MsoHyperlink {color:blue; text-decoration:underline; text-underline:single;} a:visited, span.MsoHyperlinkFollowed {mso-style-noshow:yes; color:purple; text-decoration:underline; text-underline:single;} @page Section1 {size:8.5in 11.0in; margin:1.0in 1.25in 1.0in 1.25in; mso-header-margin:.5in; mso-footer-margin:.5in; mso-paper-source:0;} div.Section1 {page:Section1;} </style> <br /><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;"><b><span style="font-family: Times;">Déjà vu: Jordan <span style="font-size: small;">D</span>avis and the Danger of American Racism</span></b></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Times;">by David J. Leonard | <b>NewBlackMan (in Exile)</b></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Times;">Sadly, as I look back at a piece I wrote about Trayvon Martin, I find myself wondering, if I could simply replace Trayvon with Jordan, Martin with Davis.  I don’t say this to mean their lives were interchangeable nor do I want to erase their individuality or uniqueness.  Yet, American racism brings them together; the daily realities of violence, stereotypes, demonization and differential values ascribed to different brings them together; they are brought by together by what Imani Perry identifies the <a href="http://rorotoko.com/interview/2011100... between American ideals and our social reality.”</a></span><span style="font-family: Times;">  </span></span></div><a name='more'></a><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Times;"></span></span><br /><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Times;">I grew up in segregated Los Angeles.  While often celebrated for its diversity, Los Angeles is an immensely segregated community.  Divided by freeways, inequalities, and policing, the Los Angeles I remember was defined by its segregation.  For middle-class white kids such as myself I was in constant ignorance about the persistence of inequality and differential opportunities.  I never thought a second about leaving my house to buy a bag of Skittles; I never contemplated how others – teachers, employers, and even the police – might interpret my saggin’ pants or my hoodie; I did not even give a second thought when I showed up to play basketball at my local park with my hair in braids.  The ignorance about privilege and the power of whiteness defined my youth.  Yet, the privileges of whiteness were not simply in my head but conferred each and every day.  I was able to move throughout the city without fear from driving while white, and without fear of being suspicious, because in America “<a href="http://www.thenation.com/article/1668... assumption is that the natural state of black men is armed and dangerous.”</a></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Times;">It took my leaving Los Angeles, and ironically going to the Pacific Northwest, to truly understand the nature of American racism.  Not a week passed during the 20 weeks I attended the University of Oregon where the walls of “colorblindness” and “we are all treated equally” did not crumble before my privileged feet.  Walks to the store, to dinner, or to class with several African American friends often resulted in company; followed by the police, stared at by others, and under varied levels surveillance, my presumed to be innocent strolls to buy a pack of candy were met with suspicion – of them rather than me.  It was a lesson in the ways that blackness equals suspicion and unwantedness whereas whiteness protected me from such prejudgments.  Racism wasn’t just the daily violence of dreams deferred but the presumed innocence and invisibility of whiteness.  It was in the parties never broken up; it was the loud music blasting from cars and frat houses that were not even heard.</span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Times;">Looking back, these experiences taught me lessons beyond racial profiling and the commonality of WWB (walking while black), but the inherent contradiction in an integrated post civil rights America.  Several of my friends at University of Oregon at the time were student-athletes (the fact that a disproportionate number of African Americans on campus were student-athletes is a telling reminder of the persistence of segregation); on campus, these young men and women regularly experienced praise and adoration while on the court.  Celebrated as heroes, cheered as superstars, and anointed as celebrities, these “athletes” were desired, wanted, and cherished while performing on the court.  Yet, while walking the streets, while eating at restaurants, while in class, and while attending various parties, the desirability was replaced by suspicion, contempt, and surveillance. </span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Times;">The murder of Jordan Davis is emblematic of the manner in which all African Americans, superstar athlete or not, celebrity or not, president or not, are seen as criminal.  Seen as suspicious and undesirable, the increased visibility of prominent African Americans has not changed these dangerous stereotypes.  It also reflects the contradictory place of blackness.  </span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Times;">His murder amid the assumed celebration of a post-racial America; his murder as yet another killing that happens <a href="http://mxgm.org/report-on-the-extraju... 36 hours</a>, is a stark reminder that black president or not, black superstars or not, America continues to be unsafe for African Americans.  As <a href="http://thegrio.com/2012/12/01/melissa... Harris Perry</a> noted, it was yet another reminder,</span><span style="font-family: Times;"> “that this is no country for young black men.”</span><span style="font-family: Times;">  </span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Times;">In America, even while black athletes, entertainers, and even the President of the United States can be found on posters throughout America, blackness remains undesired and suspect.  Even as millions of fans announce their love for Kobe and LeBron, even as tens of millions voted for Barack Obama, even as a growing black middle-class has made inroads throughout society, the likes of Trayvon Martin, <a href="http://politic365.com/2012/03/19/tray... Grant, Sean Bell, and countless others</a> remind us about the dangers of living while black in America even in 2012.  Essex Hemphill, in his brilliant poem “<a href="http://www.nexuslearning.net/books/ho... Hero</a>” describes a world where black men can simultaneously be celebrated for dunking a basketball during a globally televised basketball game while just miles a way a young black male is dying at the hands of George Zimmerman and the violence of American racism: </span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 0.5in;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Times;"><br />Squinting, I aim at the hole <br />fifty feet away. I let the tension go. <br />Shoot for the net. Choke it.<br />I never hear the ball <br />slap the backboard. I slam it <br />through the net. The crowd goes wild <br />for our win. I scored <br />thirty-two points this game<br />and they love me for it. <br />Everyone hollering <br />is a friend tonight. <br />But there are towns, <br />certain neighborhoods<br />where I’d be hard pressed<br />to hear them cheer<br />if I move on the block. </span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Times;">Jordan <a href="http://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blog..." name="_GoBack"></a>Davis will never be able to hear our cheers, or our tears; he will never be able to turn his music loud again, he will never be able to feel the music.  Yet, amid the collective silence of the nation and the demands for justice (and change so that we must demand to make sure there are not anymore Trayvons and Jordans), lets turn the music up for him; lets join together to “<a href="http://www.actionnewsjax.com/content/... up the music for Jordan Davis</a>.” I can hear it now, a nation demand justice and change, accountability and transformation, with Marvin Gaye blasting the background:</span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 0.5in;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Times;">Mother, mother<br />There's too many of you crying<br />Brother, brother, brother<br />There's far too many of you dying<br />You know we've got to find a way<br />To bring some lovin' here today – Ya</span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Times;">I wish Jordan could hear the music; I wish we could all hear the message.</span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Times;">***</span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;"><b><span style="font-family: Times;">David J. Leonard</span></b><span style="font-family: Times;"> is Associate Professor in the Department of Critical Culture, Gender and Race Studies at Washington State University, Pullman. He is the author of the just released <a href="http://www.sunypress.edu/p-5321-after... Artest: Race and the War on Hoop</a> (SUNY Press) as well as several other works. Leonard is a regular contributor to NewBlackMan, layupline, Feminist Wire, and Urban Cusp. He is frequent contributor to Ebony, Slam, and Racialicious as well as a past contributor to Loop21, The Nation and The Starting Five. He blogs @No Tsuris.</span></span></div><div class="blogger-post-footer"><img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com...' alt='' /></div>

'Thriller' Turns 30; Siedah Garrett Remembers

'Thriller' Turns 30; Siedah Garrett Remembers
Tell Me More w/ Michel Martin | NPR 
November 30th marked the 30th anniversary of the release of Thriller. Michael Jackson's blockbuster sold more than 100 million copies. Songwriter Siedah Garrett worked side by side with Jackson on his next album Bad, and co-wrote the song "Man in the Mirror." She talks with host Michel Martin about her memories of the King of Pop, and her own career.
Listen HERE

Filmmaker Lee Daniels: “I’m Not Just Homo, But I’m Ghetto and I’m Euro”

CharlieRose 

Director Lee Daniels discusses his film "The Paperboy"

Hundreds of Fast Food Workers Strike for Living Wage, Inspired by Wal-Mart Strike

Democracy Now
Fast food workers walked off the job New York City Thursday to hold a series of rallies and picket lines in what has been called the largest series of worker actions ever to hit the country's fast-food industry. Hundreds of workers at dozens of restaurants owned by McDonald's, Burger King, Taco Bell and others went on strike and rallied in a bid for fair pay and union recognition. Organizers with the Fast Food Forward campaign are seeking an increased pay rate of $15 an hour, about double what the minimum-wage workers are making. Workers and their allies demanded a wage that would let them support their families. Democracy Now! co-host Juan González spoke to many of the striking workers for his latest New York Daily News column, "One-day strike by fast-food workers at McDonald's, Burger King and other restaurants is just the beginning."

School Closings and Public Policy—The Anatomy of A Catastrophe

School Closings and Public Policy—The  Anatomy of A Catastrophe by Mark Naison | special to NewBlackMan (in Exile)
School closings, the threat of which hang over Chicago public schools, and which have been a central feature of Bloomberg educational policies in New York, are perhaps the most controversial features of the Obama Administration’s “Race to the Top” initiative. The idea of closing low performing schools, designated as such entirely on the basis of student test scores, removing half of their teaching staff and all of their administrators, and replacing them with a new school, often a charter, in the same building, is one which has tremendous appeal among business leaders and almost none among educators.
Advocates see this policy as a way of removing ineffective teachers, adding competition to what had been a stagnant sphere of public service, and putting pressure on teachers in high poverty areas to demand and get high performance from their students, once again based on performance on standardized tests.
For a “data driven” initiative, school closings have produced surprisingly little data to support their implementation. In New York City, there has been no perceptible decline in the test score gap between Black and Latino, and White and Asian, since the school closings were initiated ( more than 140 schools in NYC have been closed). More tellingly the percentage of Black and Latino students in the city’s specialized high schools, admission to which is based entirely on test scores, is the lowest in the city’s history, prompting a lawsuit from the NAACP.
But the opposition to the closings is not just based on lack of “hard” evidence to support their implementation. It is based on three broadly observed consequences of the closings- their propensity to ignore the voices of students, parents and teaches and ride roughshod over the democratic process; their creation of pressures which transform teaching into test prep and lead to the elimination of art, music, physical education and school trips; and the destabilizing of already wounded neighborhoods by undermining relationships between schools and communities and teaching staffs and families.
In New York City, where school closings have been public policy for more than four years, I know of no example where parents and students have mobilized to demand the closing of a troubled school, but many instances where they have mobilized to oppose school closings. With few exceptions, their voices have been ignored by the Panel for Education Policy, the Bloomberg controlled arbiter of school closing decisions. Test scores and Department of Education recommendations have ruled the day. With the elimination of local school boards and the imposition of Mayoral Control, there is no institutional channel that has any power to represent community interests. Children and parents are being given a devastating lesson here – that their voice doesn’t count. Only those who think the goal of public education is to create a passive , disciplined, labor force will to accept any work offered to them should take comfort in this.
A second consequence, even more devastating, is how the threat of school closings ratchets up stress levels in low performing schools. Not only has this led to epidemics of clinical depression among teachers and stress related disorders in children, it has led many schools to drastically transform their curricula to assure students pass tests. First to go are art, music, hands on science and school trips; but there have also been many instances why gym, and recess and after school programs have been reduced to make room for test prep, magnifying already serious obesity problems among children in places like the Bronx where there is little access to healthy food and few out of school opportunities for regular exercise.
The conditions I have described, in some schools, have reached levels which could best be described as Child and Teacher Abuse. It is time that those making these policies take responsibility not only for what happens when schools close, but the kind of pedagogy schools in high poverty neighborhoods implement to assure that they won’t be closed.
Finally, there is the issue of neighborhood stability. In poor neighborhoods, it is common for young people to move from household to household, sometimes from household to shelter, in response to the economic instability of their caregivers. Many children are being brought up by grandparents or other relatives; some are in foster care, some are homeless. In this situation, schools are often the main point of stability in children’s lives, and teachers important mentors. I know of many teachers in such communities who financially support their students, take them on trips, sometimes have them come to their home on weekends.
Closing schools and removing teachers undermines the critical community building function of public schools, leaving young people without an important anchor in their lives. Given this, no one should be surprised by rising levels of violence in communities where this policy is being applied. We need schools in such communities to be safe zones- not places of Fear and Dread where everyone involved is waiting for the hammer to fall on the instruction of someone downtown who has no idea what people in the neighborhoods are living through or just don’t care.
I urge all who have read this piece to think very carefully whether school closings are in fact an instrument to promote greater equity or whether they intensify the problems they were meant to remedy and create new problems in their wake.
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Mark Naison is a Professor of African-American Studies and History at Fordham University and Director of Fordham’s Urban Studies Program. He is the author of two books, Communists in Harlem During the Depression and White Boy: A Memoir. Naison is also co-director of the Bronx African American History Project (BAAHP). Research from the BAAHP will be published in a forthcoming collection of oral histories Before the Fires: An Oral History of African American Life From the 1930’s to the 1960’s.