Mark Anthony Neal's Blog, page 954

Elizabeth Warren and the Politics of Racial Passing

Elizabeth Warren and the Politics of Racial Passing by Marcia Dawkins | HuffPost Black Voices
This year's election season is "the battle of the racial passers." While many have fixated on the authenticity of a multiracial President Obama and a Latino Mitt Romney, questions of racial identity and passing have taken center stage in the Massachusetts Senate race between GOP incumbent Scott Brown and Democratic challenger Elizabeth Warren as well.
To put it bluntly, Brown is accusing Warren of "passing," or representing herself as a member of a different racial group than the one to which she belongs. These accusations are to be expected, as I wrote in my new book, Clearly Invisible: Racial Passing and the Color of Cultural Identity , which deals with how people from all walks of life reconcile who they are with who society tells them to be in a society where racial definitions are constantly changing.
Brown resurrected the theme of racial passing last week when his campaign released an ad called "Who Knows," which is a mashup of television reports featuring Warren being grilled about her claim to Native American heritage. "Elizabeth Warren is trying to put questions about her heritage behind her," announces the newscaster in one of the clips.
Brown underscored the ad's message with his opening remarks at last week's debate. He said, Warren "checked the box claiming she is Native American, and clearly she is not."
Translation: Don't be duped. Warren is a deceptive passer. I know this because I can see race. I know a Native American person when I see one and I'm not seeing a Native American person when I see Warren. Therefore, you shouldn't either.
Brown followed up his questions about Warren's racial identity by questioning her "character," asserting that she passed as Native American in order to take advantage of affirmative action. Apparently, Warren benefited from unfair advantage as a racial minority at Harvard Law School. Three messages are being sent here. The first is: If we can't trust Warren's outward appearance then we can't trust her actions either. The second is: Trust me!! I'm not a passer!! I am who I say I am and my appearance confirms it. Remember (a white male) appearance is a trustworthy measure of character. The third is: White (male) people are now members of a disadvantaged racial group because of programs like affirmative action.
Warren responded via a statementprovided to the Boston Globe after the debate. "Growing up," Warren explained, "my mother and my grandparents and my aunts and uncles often talked about our family's Native American heritage. As a kid, I never thought to ask them for documentation - what kid would? - but that doesn't change the fact that it is a part of who I am and part of my family heritage."
Some of Brown's campaign staffers weren't convinced by the candidate's testimony, which could explain why they took to the streets making Native American "war whoops" and doing the "tomahawk chop" at a campaign rally in Boston over the weekend.
When the votes are counted this November, Warren's racial identity will be less significant than the fact that questions about her identity persist as means of disqualification. Such questions demonstrate the ongoing problems of racial identification in the twenty-first century.
But, if we're willing to get past the noise and listen to Warren, we may also find some answers. Answers to questions like: What are you? Who is most qualified to respond? What evidence can be considered? Warren's identity also provides a new answer to the old question about the definition of race. Is race real? Is it biological? Is it sociological? For Warren the answer is complicated. Race is clearly invisible -- a fact of life that may also be, to some degree, a fiction.
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Marcia Alesan Dawkins, Ph. D.is Clinical Assistant Professor, USC Annenberg School of Communication. Dawkins is the author of Clearly Invisible: Racial Passing and the Color of Cultural Identity (Baylor University Press, August 2012) and Eminem: The Real Slim Shady (Praeger Press, 2013). She writes on race, diversity, media, religion, and politics for a variety of high-profile publications, including The Huffington Post, Truthdig, The Root and Cultural Weekly.
Follow Marcia Dawkins on Twitter: www.twitter.com/drdawkins09 [image error]

School Segregation Persists, New Report Says

HuffPost Live: Reverend Jesse Jackson Shares His Concerns For The Upcoming Election

HuffPostLive  Josh, Alicia and Reverend Jesse Jackson discuss what concerns the Reverend has entering the 2012 election.

France Urges Military Intervention in Mali

AlJazeeraEnglish  Ban Ki-moon, the UN secretary-general, has reacted cautiously to a call from French President Francois Hollande for military intervention in Mali. That West African country has been in political disarray since March, when a military coup pushed the last president from power. Then in early April, the main Tuareg separatist group, the National Movement for the Liberation of Azawad (MNLA), declared independence in the north. But it was pushed out by armed groups Ansar Dine and a local branch of al-Qaeda. They began destroying religious shrines and arresting women for not wearing the veil. And just three days ago, the West African regional bloc ECOWAS agreed on a deployment of troops to help Mali's government reclaim the north, however, there are still no boots on the ground. 
Al Jazeera's Hashem Ahelbarra reports.

"It's Not Easy Being Green": Lena Horne & Kermit the Frog

Alice Walker reads from 'Their Eyes Were Watching God'

GreeneSpaceNY  After 75 years, Zora Neale Hurston's novel, Their Eyes Were Watching God, still resonates in the hearts and minds of contemporary audiences, but it had particular significance for black women writers and artists who were working at the time of its rediscovery. The Greene Space convened three luminaries who are all intimately connected to the novel -- Alice Walker, Sonia Sanchez and Ruby Dee -- to share their stories and describe how they saw Janie and Zora's horizons on their own journeys. Zora Neale Hurston's niece Lucy Anne Hurston, author of Speak, So You Can Speak Again: The Life of Zora Neale Hurston, served as the evening's moderator.

Here, Alice Walker reads her favorite excerpt from the novel.

Left of Black S3:E2 | The Imagery of African American Identity and Raising Black Daughters in the Obama Era

Left of Black S3:E2 | September 24, 2012
The Imagery of African American Identity and Raising Black Daughters in the Obama Era
Host and Duke University Professor Mark Anthony Nealis joined in the Left of BlackStudios by Maurice O. Wallace, Associate Professor of English and African-American Studies at Duke University.
Neal and Wallace discuss his new book Pictures and Progress: Early Photography and the Making of African American Identity (co-edited with Shawn Michelle Smith), raising Black daughters in the Obama era and the politics of “Professorial Style” in the contemporary academy.
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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 HD @ iTunes U

Higher Education in Mitt Romney’s America

Higher Education in Mitt Romney’s America by David J. Leonard | NewBlackMan (in Exile)
The media focus on student debt, on congressional battles over student loans, and the scarcity of jobs for college graduates obscures the racial and class dynamics that define America’s colleges and universities. With the public discourse surrounding the unfairness of affirmative action for Whites, the threat that Ethnic Studies represents to (White) America, and the absence of “White student unions” in college campuses, public discussions re-imagine Whiteness as precarious, and Whites as victim and at the frontlines of a changing educational landscape.   Despite the daily lamenting of the state and future of America’s White students, particularly those with middle and upper-middle incomes, college campuses are still White.  In fact, Whites, particularly those whose parents are part of the top 5% of the income distribution, continue to reap the benefits of privilege in (1) admittance, (2) scholarship, and (3) treatment.  Let's not get things twisted here; these colleges and universities are in America, so yes the rules of the game (racism, sexism, classism) do apply.
In 2005, less than one in eight youth from the poorest 25% of society would enroll at a 4-year college university within 2 years of high school graduation.  According to Peter Schmidt, author of The Color of Money, “a rich child has about 25 times as much a chance as a poor one of someday enrolling in a college rated as highly selective or better.”  Colleges’ overreliance on SAT scores, heightens cultural bias, and the unequal advantages resulting from SAT prep classes, which have proven to benefit Whites and the middle-class.  In addition, because admissions give credence to a school’s reputation (which cannot be seen apart from segregation, and racial and class inequality), the rules and the game of college are set up to advantage Mitt Romney’s America: the already privileged.  Worse yet, the hegemony of the narratives of meritocracy and the illusion of diversity—which Lani Guiner describes as “a leaf to camouflage privilege”—obscure  the endless privileges afforded to the members of middle and upper middle class White America, before they ever step foot on a college campus. 
This is evident as we look at the racial and class stratification of student loans and other forms of aid.  The Chronicle of Higher Education found that “colleges with more than $500 million in their endowments…served disproportionately few students from families with incomes low enough to qualify for federal Pell Grants.” In other words, the money that makes college a possibility is funneled to those whose families often have the requisite dollars to make college a reality.  Schmidt tells us that “[j]ust 40 percent of the financial aid money being distributed by public colleges is going to students with documented financial need,” adding that “[m]ost such money is being used to offer merit-based scholarships or tuition discounts to potential recruits who can enhance a college's reputation, or appear likely to cover the rest of their tuition tab and to donate down the road.”  Despite the widely circulated, albeit factually false ideas about students of color and scholarships, the vast majority of scholarship money finds its way into the pocket of White students.  Tim Wise makes this clear:
It is simply false that scholarships for people of color crowd out monies for White students. According to a national study by the General Accounting Office, less than four percent of scholarship money in the U.S. is represented by awards that consider race as a factor at all, while only 0.25 percent (one quarter of one percent) of all undergrad scholarship dollars come from awards that are restricted to persons of color alone (1). In other words, Whites are fully capable of competing for and receiving any of the other monies — roughly 99.75 percent of all scholarship funds out there for college. Although this GAO study was conducted in the mid-’90s, there is little reason to expect that the numbers have changed since then. If anything, increasing backlash to affirmative action and fear of lawsuits brought by conservatives against such efforts would likely have further limited such awards as a percentage of national scholarships.
Second, it is also false that large numbers of students of color receive the benefits of race-based scholarships. In truth, only 3.5 percent of college students of color receive any scholarship even partly based on race, suggesting that such programs remain a pathetically small piece of the financial aid picture (2). So when Mr. Bohannon walks around campus and sees students of color, he may believe them all to be wards of some race-based preference scheme; yet the evidence suggests that at least 96.5 percent of them received no race-based scholarship at all.
The money is there for White students, particularly those who already have class advantages. From access to prep classes to performative enhancing drugs, from legacies to the “donation path,” America’s colleges and universities are overpopulated by Whites, by the sons and daughter’s of the elite, not because of some level of intelligence, the requisite values, or some all-powerful work ethic, but because of the power of privilege and money.
This points to a clear conclusion: because of access to money, prep classes, or mere connections, that is, because of privilege, America’s colleges and universities, particularly the elite schools, are overpopulated with White students lacking the requisite skills to succeed within these spaces.  It is no wonder that America’s colleges and universities are increasingly the educational weight stations for the ill prepared and ill qualified.  Returning to Peter Schmidt 
Researchers with access to closely guarded college admissions data have found that, on the whole, about 15 percent of freshmen enrolled at America's highly selective colleges are White teens who failed to meet their institutions' minimum admissions standards.
Five years ago, two researchers working for the Educational Testing Service, Anthony Carnevale and Stephen Rose, took the academic profiles of students admitted into 146 colleges in the top two tiers of Barron's college guide and matched them up against the institutions' advertised requirements in terms of high school grade point average, SAT or ACT scores, letters of recommendation, and records of involvement in extracurricular activities. White students who failed to make the grade on all counts were nearly twice as prevalent on such campuses as black and Hispanic students who received an admissions break based on their ethnicity or race.
Who are these mediocre White students getting into institutions such as Harvard, Wellesley, Notre Dame, Duke, and the University of Virginia? A sizable number are recruited athletes who, research has shown, will perform worse on average than other students with similar academic profiles, mainly as a result of the demands their coaches will place on them.
A larger share, however, are students who gained admission through their ties to people the institution wanted to keep happy, with alumni, donors, faculty members, administrators, and politicians topping the list.
Given this reality, should it be a surprise that high school and college students, are popping Adderall like they are tic tacks.  Is the pressure to succeed to not only fulfill the expectations of a White middle class sensibility, but to thrive amid challenging conditions? 
It is interesting that in popular culture and popular media, we hear so much about students of color, those who supposedly are the beneficiaries of affirmative action, who struggle yet, it is White students who often lack the require scores one supposedly needs to succeed in higher education.  Makes me wonder if that is leading to a proliferation of drug use among students trying to find ways to succeed.   Between 2002 and 2005, sales of Adderall increased by 3,100%; in 2011; 34.5% admitted to using this illegal drug.  Treated as little more than a performance enhancing drugs, colleges are rife for drug abuse.  According to Linda Carroll, the problem runs deep:
At colleges across America, students are becoming addicted to a popular prescription drug — not because they’re trying to get high, but because they hope to get smarter. The drug, Adderall, is normally prescribed for kids with attention deficit disorder. But some college kids are taking the medication because it helps them focus and pull all-nighters.
One ‘A’ student at one of the nation’s top tier colleges explained the appeal of the pills kids call “study buddies.”
“When I’m on Adderall and I’m looking at the textbook I can forget about everything else around me,” she told NBC News’ Amy Robach, in a report aired on TODAY. “I figured if everyone else is doing it, why shouldn’t I get the advantage?”         
Another student, “Mike,” who asked that his real name be withheld, elaborated. “It’s given me the boost to work non-stop for 10 hours a day,” he explained. “Baseball players take steroids to be the best and students take Adderall to be the best. It’s steroids for school.”
Like football games, partying, and cheating, drugs are part and parcel of today’s college experience.  It is an epidemic, which can be partially explained by changes in technology, also reflecting the larger conditions of today’s colleges and universities.  “Yes, cheating is rampant, and for teachers the game of catch-up never stops,” notes Mark Bauerlein. “Part of the problem stems from the high-stakes system, where a bad grade can jeopardize chances for medical school. For the ‘overachievers,’ cheating isn’t a vice. It’s a survival skill.”  The work of Peter Schmidt and others points to how the “overachievers” are often White.  Should it surprise us that cheating has become part and parcel with the college experience? 
According Susan D. Blum, in My Word! Plagiarism and College Culture, close to 70 percent of students admitted lifting material directly from the Internet without citation or other forms of attribution; 75 percent admitted to engage in cheating. Copying and pasting, purchasing papers online, and other forms of cheating have become the new normal.  Keeping tests on file at fraternity houses and other forms of academic dishonesty are commonplace.  Look at Harvard, where 125 out of 250 students enrolled in Introduction to Congress (Spring 2012) have been accused of cheating. Yet, the media, including   The New York Times , have framed cheating in college campuses around athlete culture and even blackness (with picture of African American basketball players as leads to the story, for instance; see Deadspin piece for further evidence ).  The cheating scandal in Harvard is indicative of a culture that admits Whites—wealthy Whites—into  the Ivy doors irrespective of their readiness or deservedness.
What does all of this reveal?  What does the SAT scandal, where in New Jersey students hired someone to take the test for them, tells us about who is and isn’t prepared for higher education?  What does this tell us about race, class, and higher education?   Whether this represents the cause of the persistent inequality within higher education (greater access to prep course, performance enhancing drugs, money to pay for exam takers) or whether these destructive and harmful behaviors result from the unearned privileges of admission into America’s elite colleges and universities, remains in question.  What is clear is that race and class matters.
While the national press and politicians lament the status and predicament facing (White) college graduates, let us not forget the broader issues at work here. It is revealing that while the face of the aggrieved student is often White, and while the narrative of the student left behind is White, they are not the faces of those students who are getting admitted to universities without “deserving” to be there.  Whites are not the face of having easy access to financial aid; they are not the face of those who can afford to and are using drugs without being busted; they are not the face who pop performance enhancing pills; they are not the face of cheating scandals.  Yet, instead Whiteness remains the face of victimized student who deserves to be in college, who deserves to secure the American Dream.  If that is the case, I think we need to return to a basic lesson: a more accurate definition of "deserve."***
David J. Leonard is Associate Professor in the Department of Critical Culture, Gender and Race Studies at Washington State University, Pullman. He has written on sport, video games, film, and social movements, appearing in both popular and academic mediums. His work explores the political economy of popular culture, examining the interplay between racism, state violence, and popular representations through contextual, textual, and subtextual analysis.  Leonard’s latest book After Artest: Race and the Assault on Blackness was just published by SUNY Press.

Could Gay Marriage Keep Black Voters From Polls?

Islamophobic Ads Come to NYC subway

RTAmerica 
Ads with calls to "defeat Jihad" are being put up in 10 subway stations in New York City. They come from a group that's accused of sparking hate by critics, but have been given the green light to be posted by NY officials. RT's Anastasia Churkina reports on the controversial message and what this may mean at a time when unrest fuels in the Middle East.