Mark Anthony Neal's Blog, page 966

Li’l Wayne and the New Politics of Cunnilingus in Hip Hop

Li’l Wayne and the New Politics of Cunnilingus in Hip Hop by Heidi R. Lewis | special to NewBlackMan (in Exile)
When I was growing up, I remember receiving strong messages from hip hop that black men do not, for any reason, eat pussy.  One of the most famous examples has to be “Can I Eat It?” (1995) by DJ Quik.  Over a funk-laden sample of One Way’s “Don’t Fight the Feeling,” Quik declares, “You can keep that salmon sandwich to yourself!”  The chorus, heavily auto-tuned in the vein of Roger Troutman, more pointedly instructs, “Don’t eat eat the cooch!  Don’t eat the coochie!”  Well, okay, then.  Duly noted.
To be clear, DJ Quik is far from being the only rapper to declare a disdain for eating pussy.  On “I Need to Be” (1997), Mase raps, “And I never eat pussy, ‘cause I’m too stubborn in my ways.”  On “Freek-A-Leek” (2004), Petey Pablo raps, “And [she] love to get her pussy licked...by another bitch, ‘cause I ain’t drunk enough to that.”  More recently, on “Royal Flush” (2009) J. Cole raps, “So that must mean you want a nigga to eat that seafood.  Baby, don’t be foolish, but call her.  I’ll watch her do it.” 
It’s not a surprise, then, that a lot of women were jumping for joy when Li’l Kim burst on the scene with “Not Tonight” (1996), on which she and a chorus of women sing, “I don’t want dick tonight!  Eat my pussy right!”  In 2001, Foxy Brown gets help from Kelis on “Candy” when she raps, “Let me know when you ready to eat!”  A year later, on “Work It,” Missy Elliott raps, “Go downtown, eat it like a vulture.”  In 2006, Khia also rocked the hip hop world when she released “My Neck, My Back,” rapping, “Lick my pussy and my crack!”  As you can see, female rappers have been outright rejecting the “don’t eat pussy” narrative in hip hop for some time. 
The anti-cunnilingus stance in hip hop can most definitely be attributed to heterosexual black male politics.  In short, black men who claim they don’t eat pussy do so because it’s not “manly” to do anything sexual that is not pleasurable for the man, even though you know that’s not true if you’re a grown up.  This is why a lot of mainstream male rappers are lyrically all about getting their dick sucked, running trains, participating in threesomes or various other kinds of sexual orgies, and so on.  For those guys, it’s all about busting a nut, not making sure the woman they’re fucking gets hers.  You might be tempted to counter that these politics are not exclusive to black communities or even hip hop.  Well, you’d be right, but these issues do manifest themselves uniquely in black communities for several reasons.  For brevity’s sake, I’ll just suggest that you read up on the Buck and Jezebel stereotypes for more context.
So, what does this have to do with Li’l Wayne?  Intellectuals—academic or otherwise—have too easily dismissed Li’l Wayne as problematic along many lines.  We’ve heard and/or read it all before.  He’s an admitted drug addict.  He’s said terrible things about dark-skinned black women.  He arguably does not have any talent, even though it’s also been claimed that he doesn’t even write his own raps.  He’s a misogynist, sexist.  There’s enough of this floating in the air that I won’t spend a lot of time detailing those arguments here.  I’m more interested in nuancing existing conversations about Li’l Wayne, because someone needs to recognize the fact that Tunechi has recently, in some ways, begun to redefine hip hop masculinity by taking a stance that is extremely pro-cunnilingus. 
Let me give you some examples that are sure to have you clutching your pearls.  On “Upgrade” (2007), he raps “Let me just taste you.  We can fuck later.”  On “Time for Us to Fuck” (2007), he raps, “I’m on a strict diet.  I can only eat you.”  On “Pussy Monster” (2007), he raps, “When I lift my top lip, I could still smell you.  When I swallow my spit, I could still taste you.  Put that pussy in my face every time I face you.”  On the “Lollipop” remix (2008), he raps, “That pussy in my mouth had me loss for words.”  On “Mr. Carter” (2008), he raps, “I suck a pussy, fuck a pussy, leave it there.  Long hair don’t even care.”  On “She Will” (2011), he raps, “I like my girl thick, not just kind of fine.  Eat her ‘til she cry.  Call that wine and dine.”  On “So Special” (2011), he raps, “Just sit on my grill.  That’s that tailgate for ya.”  I’m wiping the sweat beads from my forehead as I type.
Let me simmer down so I can get back to the point.  To be fair, not all male rappers before or after Wayne have been unequivocally anti-cunnilingus.  On “If You Believe in Having Sex” (1989), 2 Live Crew chants, “All hoes suck dick!  All niggas eat pussy!”  On “Put It in Your Mouth” (1996), Akinyele features Crystal Johnson singing, “You can just eat me out!”  On “I’m Not a Player” (1998), Big Pun raps, “’Scuse me for being blunt, but I been eatin’ cunts since pimps was pushin’ Caddies with the fish tank pumps.”  On “What Means the World to You?” (2000), Cam’Ron features Keema rapping, “Sex is sweet with a cat who eat!”  On “Eat Pussy” (2007), N.O.R.E. raps, “I eat the pussy.  I’m a man about it.”  On “Prostitute” (2008), Juelz Santana raps, alongside Li’l Wayne, “I’ll eat that pussy up like a plate of food, and baby you make me wanna lick my fingers after.”
So what’s different about Wayne?  Well, eating pussy has become like a calling card for him, part of his signature style.  If you listen to an entire Li’l Wayne album released in the past 5 years, official or mixtape, you will hear references to eating pussy at least 5 times, probably more.  If not, I’d be willing to give you at least some of my next paycheck.  Some.  I still got bills, you know.  To be serious for a minute, though, the raps in which we can find these lines from Wayne are still chock full of traditional hip hop masculinity.  Even the pussy-eating lines are, a lot of times, linked to hypermasculine bravado, braggadocio, and ego. 
For example, on “Ain’t I?” (2008), he raps, “But I don’t pizza.  I eat pussy when he wouldn’t.”  Here, the woman’s pleasure is still tied up in competition between men—I eat her pussy when you won’t, and I do it better than you.  On the other hand, there’s a lot of mutual satisfaction going on in Li’l Wayne raps that we’d be remiss to ignore.  On “My Birthday” (2011), he raps, “I gotta wipe my diamond grill with a tissue.  I talk too much shit.  I eat pussy, and you suck dick.”  On the “Lollipop” remix, he also raps, “The middle of the bed…givin’, gettin’ head.”  On “Wayne on Me” (2009), he raps, “She kiss me mine.  I kiss hers back.  If she a bad bitch, she deserve that.”  Now, yes, there’s that whole thing about what kind of woman does and doesn’t deserve to “get head” from Wayne—again with the policing of women’s sexuality.  Still, it’s especially interesting that, at least for Li’l Wayne, it’s no longer just about having the biggest dick or best stroke.  It’s also about being able to serve your woman up with fierce tongue action.  Huh?  Tell me that’s not different.
So, what do we do now?  I’m not asking that we slap a feminist label on Li’l Wayne, even if we only slap it on his willingness to pleasure a woman sexually.  Throwing around the feminist label is not the best use of my intellectual time and energy—at least not right now.  However, recognizing the ways in which Li’l Wayne challenges hegemonic black masculinity is just as important as thrashing his ass when he subscribes to and reinforces those very ideals.  And don’t come for me with that, “It’s just sex!” line.  Patricia Hill Collins already schooled us on the importance of examining, challenging, and revising black sexual politics.  Along those lines, Li’l Wayne is openly calling out his hip hop brothers out on their sexual immaturity.  Eating pussy may not be for every brother, but if that’s the case only because you think it makes you less of man, you need to grow up and take a cue from the President of YMCMB:

“Imagine if I did that—put your pussy on my tongue!”
***
Heidi R. Lewis is an Assistant Professor of Feminist & Gender Studies at Colorado College.  Her teaching and research focuses on feminism, gender and sexuality, women’s writing, African American literature and culture, Critical Race Theory, Critical Whiteness Studies, and Critical Media Studies. 

Hey White Guys: Violence

from ExplodedView MEF

Exploded View is a project of the Media Education Foundation -- visit us at www.exploded-view.org.

Jackson Katz on Masculine Politics

from ExplodedView MEF

Philosopher Alva Noë: How Do We Perceive Color?

Big Think
Isaac Newton defined the optical spectrum, but it was Goethe who first understood that color is more than just a physical problem. In Theory of Colours (1840), the German writer and painter examined phenomena like colored shadows, refraction, and chromatic aberration, as well as the psychology of color, "marvelling at color's occurrences and meanings" and hoping to uncover its secrets. His great insight: color vision is shaped as much by human perception as it is by mechanical functioning.

He was a man of poetic sensibilities. He was also right. Today, neuroscientists believe that your eye doesn't see color at all -- your brain creates it and constructs it through neural processes. Different features including color, shape, location, and velocity are picked up by different regions of the brain and then integrated into a holistic perception of an object.

"This is a wonderful area where both science and philosophy have tended to really collaborate, have been in dialogue with each other. In many cases the leading philosophers have also been the leading scientists thinking about this," says the philosopher Alva Noë, a former fellow of the Oxford Centre for Cognitive Neuroscience.

Directed / Produced by
Jonathan Fowler and Elizabeth Rodd

Ratchetpiece Theater | Episode 3: Trina (Da Baddest B*tch)

actingrl112:  A bi-weekly vlog that highlights some of my favorite ratchet songs, from past to present. Featuring my sister, @damnsheDIDthat (http://twitter.com/damnshedidthat)

SONG: "Look Back At Me" - Trina (feat. Killa Mike)
[http://bit.ly/QIjbWZ]

an Issa Rae production
http://issarae.com

Where She Entered: Remembering Dr. Aaronette White and Doing the Work of Feminism

Where She Entered: Remembering Dr. Aaronette White and Doing the Work of Feminism by Stephanie Troutman | special to NewBlackMan (in Exile)
It was with great disbelief, followed by sadness that I encountered the news of the untimely passing of scholar and activist, Dr. Aaronette White. Her scholarship focusing on feminism, critical psychology of race, trauma, and masculinity(ies) is her legacy to the academic community.
Upon entering The Pennsylvania State University in Fall 2006, I registered for Dr. White’s WMNST 501: Feminist Pedagogy and Research course. While I was impressed with her audacious brilliance, I cannot say that the road with Dr. White was an easy one. When I reflect upon my time spent in her graduate seminars, I think of the many challenges, gauntlets, and outright confrontations encountered in that space. However, older now—and hopefully wiser—I now recognize the deeper issues that drove Aaronette’s (as she insisted on being called by her students) passion and commitment to feminism and social justice. Myself, now struggling to make a life in the academy as what some consider to an ‘outspoken Black woman’, I look back on the times I spent with Aaronette with compassion, empathy and a greater sense of appreciation for all that she was striving to do with her feminism, her scholarship and her pedagogical practice.
Hers was what we might characterize as a ‘tough love’ approach to the realities of navigating the terrain of often hostile, institutional environments.  However, in spite of departmental drama (as she held multiple appointments and line structures) she was steadfast in producing critical, groundbreaking work. She remained committed to activism. She shared boldly, generously—and controversially, from her own personal experiences, demonstrating that the personal is indeed political. She made it clear early in the course (a 6-person graduate seminar) that she was a stickler for timeliness and deadlines: no exceptions. She openly spoke of her decision not to have children, and of her unwillingness to change the rules for those who did. At the time, as a single-parent graduate student and mother of two—a toddler and a newborn—I experienced this information as an affront to my own choice of motherhood.
In spite of this, she went on to professionalize me in other ways, proving that feminism is not about being all things to all people, but that Black female scholars can support each other with other resources. Recognizing the dearth of Black female graduate students in the Women’s Studies program at Penn State, she helped me prepare materials for application to the Dual Doctoral program. She spent time showing me how to do more efficient research on areas that interested me. In fact, the research skills she helped me to cultivate lead to a successful final paper in her class, which would later become the basis and material of my first peer-reviewed journal publication. Dr. White also made recommendations for coursework with other professors who became instrumental in my development as a feminist scholar.
Dr. Aaronette White’s work was always stellar and her uncompromising nature, I now understand to be the culmination of the treatment Black women are too often subject to when we dare to talk back and refuse to retreat. In reminiscing with a few from my Penn State cohort who were in Dr. White’s class, upon the news of her death, I was reminded of how her model of difficulty met with varying degrees of classroom success: sometimes her methods, intended to encourage a healthy stretching of boundaries, left those boundaries shattered instead. She not only assigned the text Teaching to Transgress (bell hooks, 1994) but insisted upon transgressive behavior through praxis: a lifelong commitment to the interrogation of the psychological possibilities of feminism toward changing interpersonal relationships and social institutions. Intellectually excellent, her course curriculum was demanding, achieving both depth and breadth—leaving no stone unturned, no argument unexamined.
Dr. White’s research spanned the disciplines of Psychology, African-American Studies, and Women and Gender Studies. She was beyond well versed in each of these fields and their subfields. Her commitment to the publication of her book, Ain’t I A Feminist?, was her primary concern during the time I was student at Penn State. Published by SUNY Press in 2008, Ain’t I a Feminist?: African American men Speak Out on fatherhood, Friendship, Forgiveness, and Freedomis a one of a kind book that explores masculine identity work across a variety of sexual orientations through the lens of critical feminist psychology. Ambitious in scope, the book also queries and exposes the multiple social and interpersonal ways in which Black men understand and practice forms of feminism.  While Dr. White published numerous articles across the fields of African-American Studies, Women’s Studies, and Psychology, Ain’t I a Feminist? is, definitively, her academic swan song. It is a contemporary classic with relevant ongoing implications for studies in Black masculinity and Gender and Feminist Studies.
I remember when the book was released; I pre-ordered it in spite of some of the difficult moments I’d had with Aaronette…why? Because of her scholarly acumen; because of my own commitment to finding solidarity on the other side of conflict and disagreement; because as a feminist scholar I was beginning to understand that when she had spoken in class of the challenges associated with securing a book contract, it was for my future benefit- so I would know what the road ahead might hold for me. I thought a lot about the tense moments in class; in retrospect I realize that Dr. White’s transparency about her own personal/professional (the line often blurred) struggles was her way of showing vulnerability. So much of her life at that time was dictated by institutional drama, the demands of going up for tenure, and finishing the book. Ultimately, Dr. White was unable to resolve issues at Penn State, and in 2008 she accepted a position at UC Santa Cruz.
On some days, like for most scholars, the professor-grind was clearly weighing on her and weighing her down. But at her best (which is how I prefer to remember her) she was an energetic, unyielding feminist scholar unlike any other I have met. She encouraged her students to “not wait to start speaking up and speaking out,” warning us that as women (and women of color) the academy is all too prepared to silence us as graduate students, then again while waiting for tenure, and again while waiting for the next promotion or for the move into administration, etc. She also acknowledged that fierce dedication to speaking one’s truth has consequences: that liberation comes with a price.  I will never forget how she defined herself on her own terms. She shared once in class, that when one of her doctoral committee members asked her whether she intended to be an activist or a scholar, she boldly stated, “I didn’t know the two were mutually exclusive.” True to form, she remained dedicated achieving feminist praxis through her anti-rape, activist work on sexual violence against women and through her research and scholarship.
From what I can ascertain, Dr. Aaronette White shares one of her most significant and abiding truths with us in the in the conclusion of Ain’t I Feminist?, stating that “…a feminist is not just someone you are automatically; it is a type of person one must continuously become.”
***
Stephanie Troutman is Assistant Professor of Women & Gender and African-American Studies at Berea College, Berea, KY. 

White Denial and Black Middle-Class Realities (Pt. 1)

White Denial and Black Middle-Class Realities (Part 1) by David J. Leonard | HuffPost Black Voices
The denial of racism is an obsession of white America. In what has become a holy trinity of sorts - accusing others of playing the "race card;" noting the election of Barack Obama; and citing the success of the black middle class and/or the black elite - the denial of racism and the demonization of those who demand that America fulfill its creed of equality plagues contemporary racial discussions. It is a rarity to witness a conversation about race, whereupon this holy trinity isn't deployed, derailing the conversation before it even begins. Whether highlighting segregation or inequality in access to education, health care, or countless institutions, whether noting the realities of stop-and-frisk or daily confrontations with American racism, the response is often the same: denial, denial, denial.
In an effort to have an honest conversation and to push the conversation beyond this myopic fantasy, I thought I would give the denial crowd some facts. This is for those who like to cite the black middle class as evidence of a post-racial America; this is for those who cite the black middle class (likely never having a meaningful conversation with a person of color of any class status) as evidence that poverty rates, incarceration rates, educational inequality or health disparities is the result of faulty values or a poor work ethic. This is my response to those who dismiss the injustice and inequality endured by poor communities of color – the working poor – by noting the purported American Dream experienced by the black middle-class. For all of them, here is a little dose of reality.
Wealth
Despite the continued invoking of the black middle-class, the realities of inequality and persistent wealth disparities within the middle-class reveal a different reality. In other words, the wealth on the ground reveals a reality rather entirely different from this white fantasy. According to a 2011 study from Pew Research Center, whites possess 20 times more wealth than African Americans and 18 times that of Latinos. More succinctly, whereas the average white family had $113,149 dollars of wealth, "the typical black household had just $5,677 in wealth (assets minus debts) in 2009, and the typical Hispanic household had $6,325 in wealth." As of 1999, whites and blacks similarly situated within the "educational middle class" live in distinct wealth words. Whereas whites possessed $111,000 in median net worth, black families had only $33,5000 dollars; in terms of assets the disparity with $56,000 to $15,000 (Shapiro, 2004, p. 90-91). If we look at "the occupational middle-class" an equally pronounced gap is visible: whites had only $123,000 in median net worth and $60,000 in median net financial assets compare to $26,500 and $11,200 for African Americans. Across the various categories that comprise the middle class, white families possess "between three and five times as much wealth as equally achieving black middle class families." (Shapiro 2004, p. 90-91)
While persistent wealth disparities stratified along racial lines are nothing new, the Great Recession has worsened this divide. According to Algernon Austin, director of the Economic Policy Institute's Program on Race, Ethnicity and the Economy, "In 2009, for every dollar of wealth the average white household had, black households only had two cents." Wealth is not only transferable from generation to generation, but wealth is what allows people to generate more wealth, to invest, to borrow money for education, to pay for gymnastics or swimming lessons at some elite school, or to otherwise invest in the future. And the ongoing history of discrimination is systematically destroying the black middle-class. "History is going to say that the black middle class was decimated" during the first half of the twenty-first century, notes Maya Wiley, director of the Center for Social Inclusion. "But we're not done writing history." One reason we are not done writing this history is because for too many Americans, this history and this reality is both denied and obscured.
According to Melvin Oliver and Thomas Shapiro, "Blacks' claim to middle-class status is based on income not assets. . . . "Without wealth reserves, especially liquid assets, the black middle class depends on income for its standard of living" (p. 97). A job loss, a health crisis, depleting housing values, a desire to go back to school or worse a global recession undermine the value in this position, since there are few/no wealth assets or wealth reserves to "fall back on."
Employment
While monthly newscasts spotlight the nation's unemployment rate, the gross disparities across racial lines are often obscured from national conversation. In June 2012, black unemployment reached 14.6%; only 62% of African Americans have a job or actively searching for paid work. When we look at specific cities, we see a dire situation: in 2010, black unemployment in Los Angeles (19.7%), in Las Vegas was 21.4%, and in Detroit 24.7%. The situation for the often- cited black middle-class is equally dire. Whereas whites possessing a college degree face unemployment rates in the 4% range, African Americans graduates face 7% unemployment. Attributable to segregation, the practice of locking African Americans out of networks, a diploma isn't a pathway to the middle-class, challenging the adage that education is the great equalizer.
In 2003, Marianne Bertrand and Sendhil Mullainathan, both professors of economics at the MIT, found that applicants with "white sounding names" were 50% more likely to receive a callback after submitting a resume than were those with "black sounding names." In stark terms, whiteness was worth 8 years of work experience, revealing how it is determinant of one's job future; race impacts the prospect of being unemployed, a member of the "working class" or the "middle-class."  In their study, "Are Emily and Greg More Employable than Lakisha and Jamal? A Field Experiment on Labor Market Discrimination," the authors argue: "While one may have expected that improved credentials may alleviate employers' fear that African-American applicants are deficient in some unobservable skills, this is not the case in our data.
Discrimination therefore appears to bite twice, making it harder not only for African-Americans to find a job but also to improve their employability" ("Employers' Replies to Racial Names" 2003). In "Names Make a Difference," researchers at the Discrimination Research Center identified racial discrimination as a significant obstacle within the contemporary labor force. Researchers sent out 6,200 resumes to temporary employment agencies throughout California. Each applicant possessed similar qualifications. Applicants with Latino and white "sounding names" received callbacks more frequently than those presumed to be African American or South Asian/Arab American, who were called back the least frequently (Miller 2004).
I guess it is difficult to build a middle-class when its prospective members are not employable; when middle-class status doesn't preclude discrimination in employment. The same applies when searching for housing (as I will discuss below). I guess qualifications and experiences mean something different when as revealed by Devah Praeger whites with felony convictions are more likely to be hired than African Americans without any criminal background. You can wish away these facts, and erase these experiences, but denial and silence will not lead to change. In part 2, I will return to this discussion in looking at housing and segregation.
***
David J. Leonard 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 After Artest: Race and the War on Hoop (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.

Oak Creek and the End of Civil Society

Oak Creek and the End of Civil Society by Anoop Mirpuri | special to NewBlackMan (in Exile)
The media’s coverage of the murderous shooting rampage at a Sikh temple in Oak Creek, Wisconsin has garnered a significant amount of well-deserved criticism.  From the tendency to explain the killings as “senseless” and “random,” to the unwillingness of the media to pay attention at all, we have witnessed a massive failure by those we rely on to frame and contextualize events that, however tragic they are, define us.
In a thoughtful piece in The New Yorker blog, Naunihal Singh, comparing Oak Creek to the recent shootings in Aurora, Colorado, adroitly points out the media’s unwillingness to treat Oak Creek as “a tragedy for all Americans.”  What is it that has made Oak Creek less important to the public? Why have Americans understood the shootings as something that happened to “other people” rather than “us”?
On one level, at least, we know the answer (though we have difficulty admitting it).  Sikhs are thought of as “foreign.”  Most Americans cannot even say what Sikhism is, much less differentiate someone who identifies as Sikh from those of other religious and cultural traditions in South Asia and the Middle East.  As many have pointed out, in a society that grounds its supposed “exceptionalism” on the premise of multicultural inclusiveness, this treatment should give us pause. 
However, Singh argues that the public’s failure to treat the Oak Creek shootings as a tragedy for all Americans was not a foregone conclusion.  I like to think he is right, and he offers a variety of narrative framings that could have made Oak Creek into a powerful story that touched the lives of all of us.  But if the story of Oak Creek has been “ghettoized” as an event that affects a small, unremarkable group, rather than the nation as a whole, it’s not only because the victims are viewed as “foreign.”  As Vijay Prashad has powerfully argued, the unpleasant fact behind this claim is that certain lives are simply valued less than others.  Racialized embodiment is a powerful thing. 
But it might just be the case that understanding our response to Oak Creek has as much (if not more) to do with our relation to the shooter—Wade Michael Page—as it does with the victims.   In today’s America, as counterintuitive as it sounds, it’s much more likely that the public would come to identify with the Sikh victims than with Page—and this, precisely, is what is at issue.  It’s the treatment of Page as, in a sense, “foreign,” that disallows us from seeing Oak Creek for what it is.  Singh argues that the fact that Page was an avid white supremacist could function as the central point in a narrative that unites multicultural America against those elements of hate and intolerance that threaten civil society.  
But I want to question whether this is really the narrative of Oak Creek that we need.  And I’m questioning it because it is, at its root, dishonest.  It asks us to disidentify with Page, to treat him as something other than us.  In attempting to unite Americans against terrorism perpetrated by those committed to hate and intolerance, treating Page as someone that opposes everything that America stands for denies the long and well-established tradition of “domestic” terrorism native to our own soil.  It absolves us of any connection to Page and any responsibility for the murders.  Page was a madman, an aberration, it tells us.  Which is to say that refusing to recognize the American roots of these murders cuts both ways: it may foster a greater identification with the Sikh victims, but it is just as likely to facilitate a blindness as to who we really are as Americans and how a shooting like this could have happened in the first place. 
In order to really recognize Oak Creek as a tragedy for all Americans, we might have to do something far more dangerous to our collective psyche than simply integrate the shootings and their protagonists into pre-arranged narrative of “friends” and “enemy.”  This isn’t just about making the argument that Sikhs are us.  Equally important—even more important if we are to understand the shootings as anything other than “random,” “senseless”—is to recognize Wade Page as one of us.  To do so would force us to place this horrific event within a singular history of American racial violence and domestic terrorism, which began with the Indian wars and the slave trade, but continued and morphed into the twentieth and twenty-first centuries as a repertory of tactics intended to draw the boundaries of civil society and designate those who may be abandoned to its outside: lynching, race riots, firebombing, vigilante “border control,” the neighborhood watch, stop and frisk, and mass incarceration.  
The point is that recognizing this long history of terror and exclusion forces us to view civil society as a privileged domain, the protection of which has facilitated literally unspeakable violence, even as it functions ideologically as that realm of inclusion that guarantees peace and order.
What critical commentary on Oak Creek has so far failed to recognize is that this tragedy is symptomatic of how central the discourse of disavowal is to American life.  To be more specific: the disavowal of racism.  (What’s remarkable is that we still need to make enormous efforts to say the word racism and defend its usage in a society obsessed with race, racism, and with their (nominal) eradication.)   Put differently, what our treatment of Oak Creek bespeaks is that Americans need to use all their effort to deny the persistence of white supremacy just to get on with their everyday lives.  This is especially revealing, not only of the paucity and poverty of American cultural discourse, but of the extent to which struggles against racism across the twentieth century have impacted the collective psyche of modern Americans. 
To treat Oak Creek as a "tragedy for all Americans" would require things that Americans are just not willing to do.  Such as, first, recognize that the power of racism is rooted in white supremacy—as opposed to viewing whites as the victims of racism, which has been the dominant racial narrative at least since Nixon’s “silent majority.”  But perhaps even more jarring to our sense of ourselves, it would also require us to recognize the centrality of deadly violence to the modern history of whiteness, on this continent and beyond.  Which is to say that whiteness—the domain where modern civil society has always been most developed, if not always “real”—has been created and recreated not just through law, custom, and policy, but precisely through violence.
To put it differently, it’s not so much that our collective failed response to the tragedy at Oak Creek is evidence of racism (though I can find no other word to explain the public’s inability to treat the victims as worthy of mourning).  As Nikhil Singh has trenchantly arguedin a different context, equally insidious, but more difficult to grasp, is the racism at the root of our efforts to purge American history of racial violence.
What is clear is that these shootings tear at the delicate threads holding together our very idea of civil society.  They challenge the basic assumptions of America’s commitment to a world order free from old world stigmas of racial difference and hierarchy, a commitment that supposedly undergirds our military and economic adventurism around the planet.  Most of all, they remind us of who we are and where we come from.  To borrow from David Theo Goldberg, events such as Oak Creek make us uncomfortable because they remind us “that the histories of racisms are those of terror and death, of death’s production, of terror and death in the name of identity and identification.”  It is this deep-seated fear of confronting who we are that most of all explains the failure of our response to Oak Creek, the enormous effort to not talk about the killings, and to treat all the actors in the tragic drama as ultimately different from us.
As mass shootings in America (and now Europe) continue to occur, we desperately need to ask ourselves about the future of civil society.  It’s a concept that has always been put into question by those that have not had the advantage of enjoying its privileges.  As Frank Wilderson reminds us, in the U.S., civil society for black people has more often functioned as a “state of emergency.”  In the classic book, Policing the Crisis, Stuart Hall described the reformation of civil society in Britain and the U.S. in the early 1970s in response to major economic changes that began to tear at the fabric of the postwar Keynesian state.  Deindustrialization was quickly consigning the black working class to economic redundancy, just as the civil rights platform was shifting from legal to economic justice.  In the face of these challenges, conservative politicians based their appeal to far narrower constituency, an appeal that was based on the exclusion of those deemed unworthy, who (thanks to barely concealed racial coding) quickly came to be understood as illegitimately dependent on the government, parasites on its “hardworking” (read, white) tax base. 
The state soon thereafter was figured as favoring blacks (indeed, as black in its corruption, and corrupted by blackness), even as African Americans communities were being devastated by the most massive prison-building project in the history of the world.  Over the past thirty years, we have effectively and forcibly removed from society millions of people that have represented a threat to the ability of a few thousand people to accumulate capital at an alarming and destructive rate. The level of inequality that currently divides society is the fallout of thirty years of deliberate efforts to privatize political capacity and eviscerate the government’s capability to provide for basic human welfare. As a result, even the pretense of democratic accountability is understood by large swaths of the populace as a sham. 
This is a familiar story, as is the casual xenophobia of anti-immigrant and anti-Muslim sentiment such a society has helped bring about. Less discussed is the impact that anti-statist policy, the gutting of state resources in Iraq and Afghanistan, the militarization of urban policing, and mass-incarceration have all had—on the idea of civil society, not to mention its actual existence.  Are we really getting to the point when the possibility of civilian life is now in question (unless one has the privilege of living in a fortified enclave)?  Indeed, when civil society is threatened to the extent that it is now, I wonder if any of us can still have the claim to be civilians in the most elementary sense: having the status of being protected from violence.  Aurora and Oak Creek represent just the most visible manifestations of what people experience every single dayin communities all over America. 
To be clear, I’m arguing that the disavowal of racism has been critical to making civil society into a kind of simulacrum, a powerful process that has ironically overseen the narrowing of the field of those protected by its ambit.  Until we recognize that not only is Oak Creek is a tragedy for all Americans, but that we are and have always been its perpetrators, the promise of civil society will continue to function as the handmaiden of racial violence, rather than a possible reality that acts as a bulwark against such violence.  And whatever flaws in its conception, and exclusions it harbors, that reality is worth fighting for.
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Anoop Mirpuriis Assistant Professor of English at Portland State University.

'No Church in the Wild': The Youth's Unrecognized Spirituality Between Beats and Rhymes

'No Church in the Wild':  The Youth's Unrecognized Spirituality Between Beats and Rhymes by Monica R. Miller | HuffPost Black Voices
Might be a hard pill to swallow, but the rapper who reminded us that Jesus walks with pimps, hoes and crack dealers makes a timely revelation: There is "No Church in the Wild."
One of the most talked about songs off Kanye West and Jay-Z's recent collaborative LP Watch the Throne , people are calling the newly released single "No Church in the Wild" an "existential rejection of organized religion." That it most certainly is. I personally can't stop singing the chilling hook to this song. Like many young people today, West is critiquing organized religion. That doesn't mean however that neither he nor they have given up on hope and meaning.
This song foreshadows the reality of a growing rise of religious non-affiliation in our country, according to the Pew Center for the People and the Press. The USA Today recently reported that nearly one in five Americans are religiously unaffiliated -- the highest number yet.
These trends are even more apparent among young people. I've experienced this first hand on the ground interviewing youth in Portland, Ore., for my current survey project Remaking Religion.
Over the years, I have worked with countless urban youth afflicted by issues of gang violence, homophobia and class inequality. They've lamented that they don't feel accepted in dominant institutions – the school and the church included. With no place to go, many of them turn to the arts to craft meaning and find a cathartic release.
Hip hop is one of these powerful outlets in society today.
Hooked on the Hook: What We Hear
Music is a powerful force -- the hooks and lines get stuck in our heads on repeat. We hear them being blurted out on street corners on any given day. These sound bites become the "meat and potatoes" of the pop-culture world in which we live. And yet, they are lyrical vignettes creating new canons of hope in what can seem like a hopeless world.
Kanye West has done it again. His popularized song "Jesus Walks" gave rap music a liberation theological facelift reminding us what Jesus of Nazareth was really up to. Flipping dominant narratives on their heads, Kanye humanizes Jesus and reminds us that he walked and walks with the marginal. Rappers have done well with making this point -- TuPac Shakurbeing one of the most gifted at this in my opinion.
But just like popular political speeches, music is vulnerable to re-appropriation and the artist, like the politician, has little control over what people do and how people understand their content.
Historical case in point: Martin Luther King Jr. Public intellectual Michael Eric Dyson and historian Vincent Harding have extensively argued that we as a nation have capitalized on the "I have a dream" part of King's speech to support all sorts of agendas but rarely do we pair it with the "nightmare" that King unapologetically pointed out.
Recent case in point: Seen as blasphemous and disrespectful, rapper Meek Mill was recently called upon by a Philadelphia minister to apologize for the lyrics in his new song "Amen."
When it comes to hip hop, the hook can cut in many ways for many different kinds of people. The hook of "No Church in the Wild" speaks volumes to the divergent ways in which young people are finding cathartic release and social transformation in music today -- hip hop included.
A New Hook, A New Look: Meet The New 'Nones'
There's another hook that is reverberating the airwaves and causing crisis and alarm: the declining significance of institutional religion in America. Meet the "Nones" -- a growing group of the population who are religiously unaffiliated. This group continues to grow as churches struggle to keep the pews filled with young people -- the millennials.
In "No Church in the Wild," West asks, "Human beings in a Mob/What's a mob to a King?/What's a King to a God?/What's a God to a non-believer who don't believe in anything/Will he make it out alive? Alright, alright, no church in the wild."
West might be a rapper but we should don him with an honorary degree in theology or religious studies. His queries are sharp and telling -- ones that continue to baffle experts in the field today regarding the changing face of religion.
Churchesmight be empty but in the wild there is hope. Authority is at stake when Kanye asks, "What's a mob to a king?/What's a God to a non-believer?" Without God or faith institutions to whom or what will people be accountable to?
Fret not – there is hope for the concerned. In "The None Zone" I survey young adults in the "wild" -- on street corners, in tattoo parlors, parks and bars. They overwhelmingly answer to the question "In what do you find meaning? In what do you hold as sacred?" that music (hip hop often cited) provides what churches often can't afford to.
Many of the young people I encounter question the existence of God and reject the church but find hope and answers to the pressing questions of life in music, culture and the arts. No longer under the watchful eye of God youth often use lyrics and beats of artists like Kanye West and Jay-Z to spark their spiritual flame.
There may be "No Church in the Wild" for the younger demographic of the growing "Nones," but there is a new life philosophy emerging between the beats and rhymes of hip hop music that greatly influences their cultural reality, social understanding, political participation and unrecognized spirituality.
Don't get hung up on the hook – like the story, there's more to the song.
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Dr. Monica R. Miller is Visiting Assistant Professor in the department of Religious Studies at Lewis & Clark College where her research focuses on the intersections of religion & material/popular culture. Miller currently serves as a Senior Research Fellow with The Institute for Humanist Studies (Washington, DC) and is co-chair and co-founder of a new AAR consultation: 'Critical Approaches to the Study of Hip Hop and Religion.'  She is the author of "Religion and Hip Hop" (Routledge, August 2012).

Actress Carmen Ejogo Talks 'Sparkle' and Her Character 'Sister'

Reel Black 
900 AM WURD's Mid Morning Mojo Host Stephanie Renee sat down with actress Carmen Ejogo  (Boycott, Alex Cross) to discuss her role in the remake of Sparkle in this exclusive clip.