Mark Anthony Neal's Blog, page 998

Jim Crow University?: The State of Racial Tolerance on America’s Campuses

Jim Crow University?:  The State of Racial Tolerance on America’s Campuses by David J. Leonard | NewBlackMan
Racial slurs; racist graffiti; taunts and jeers; nooses hanging from doors; and blackface.  No, I am not talking about the South circa 1960, but the climate of America’s colleges and universities.   If you look around the country, it would seem that some want to take our colleges back to the Jim Crow era when schools and curriculum were white only.
In the last two months of the mockery of post-race America has been quite evident.  The “N word” was scrawled on a dorm room and a bathroom at Fordham University. That same month, students at University of Wisconsin-Madison hurled bottles and racial slurs at two African American students who had the audacity to walk past THEIR fraternity house on THEIR campus. At Cornell University, black students walking through campus faced a barrage of racial epithets, flying bottles and catcalls of “Trayvon.”  At the Ohio State University, since April, racist and anti-religious epithets have been found on a dorm room door and within the community, including the defacement of a mural of President Barack Obama.  These incidents followed the appearance of “Long Live Zimmerman” on a campus building. 
For white students the college experience is defined by parties, football games, and new experiences; for students of color it is one often defined by hostility, racist violence, and the same old experiences.  Last year, “All N-word's must die” was found at Williams College.  At University of Alabama, a white student screamed a racial slur at a white student, with slurs popping up on campus sidewalks.  At Murray State, a faculty member chastised a black student for arriving 15 minutes late to a film screening, noting, “slaves never show up on time.”  And the list of incidences goes on and on.  This is the sort of racism and violence that has become all too common at America’s liberal institutions of higher education, those places often praised as the breeding ground for the post-racial millennial generation. 
Latinos, Asian Americans, and Native Americans also face an increasingly racially hostile environment evidence in cowboy and Indian parties, anti-immigrant chants at basketball games, and countless other examples. While certainly more visible as a result of the power of social media, racism is obviously nothing new to America’s colleges and universities.  Whether looking at the history of integration or the practice of “ghetto parties,” institutions of higher education have a long history of racial injustice. 
Students of color and faculty of color experience this history each and every day.  According to Howard J. Ehrlich, director of The Prejudice Institute, between 850,000 and one million students (roughly 25 percent of students of color and five percent of white students) experience racially and ethnically-based violence (name calling, verbal aggression, harassing phone calls and “other forms of psychological intimidation”) each year. And this only reflects what is reported and what is seen.  As Leslie Picca and Joe Feagin have discovered with Two-Faced Racism: Whites in the Backstage and Frontstage, white students use the n-word and tell racist jokes with frequency, a reality that impacts the culture and environment of America’s colleges and universities. 
The Jim Crow signs remain visible even as conservatives whine about liberal universities and the discrimination of conservative students.  I haven’t seen any Bigots and Liberal parties, or groups of conservative student subjected to catcalls and slurs.  There hasn’t been an assault on white history and literature, which remain central to the college experience. 
It is also increasingly difficult for ethnic studies, evidence in the attacks on Mexican American Studies in Arizona or the recent blog post in the Chronicle of Higher Education.  Excoriated as a “cause not a course of student,” and denounced as “promoting resentment toward a race or class of people” the white only signs are being constructed in classrooms and in college communities throughout the country.  These unwelcome signs demonstrate a lack of commitment to and value in diversity, but also how the presence of students of color and the practices of African American and other ethnic programs challenges the very privileges of whiteness. 
“What I've learned most explicitly about the often racist depictions of Back Studies at primarily White institutions, is that it is a by-product of the on-going project of the discipline to make explicit connections to the work that we do and the communities of folks that exist beyond the four walls of the classroom,” notes Mark Anthony Neal.  “Even as some Black Studies faculty are no invested in such a project--and such a project looks very different now than it did during the 1960s, Black Studies continues to reject that idea that it exists in a vacuum.”  The continued attacks on the fields of ethnic studies and students of color makes this all too clear.  
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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 in May of 2012.

Cecil Taylor: The Pianist Who's Also An Orchestra

Highlights from Tulane University's 2012 Black Women's Health Conference

Highlights from Tulane University's 2012 Black Women's Health Conference. Speakers included Takeisha C Davis, Linda Rae Murray, Maureen Lichtveld, Denise Shervington and Joan Morgan. 
The event was designed to raise awareness and start a discourse on the health disparities women of color face. Dr Nghana Lewis is the director of the conference. for more information visit www.bwhconference.com.

Lisa Price aka 'Carol's Daughter' on Black Enterprise Business Report

BEMultiMedia  Black Enterprise talks to Carol's Daughter founder Lisa Price on Black Enterprise Business Report, with Caroline V. Clarke.

Noam Chomsky: Occupy Movement "Has Created Something That Didn't Really Exist" in US

DemocracyNow.org
Noam Chomsky says the Occupy movement has helped rebuild class solidarity and communities of mutual support on a level unseen since the time of the Great Depression. "The Occupy movement spontaneously created something that doesn't really exist in the country: Communities of mutual support, cooperation, open spaces for discussion ... people doing things and helping each other," Chomsky says. "That's very much missing. There [has been] massive propaganda going on for a century, that you really shouldn't care about anyone else, just yourself ... To rebuild [class solidarity] -- even in small pieces of society -- can become very important, can change the conception of how society ought to function." Chomsky also gives his assessment of President Obama, whom he says has attacked civil liberties in a way that "goes beyond George W. Bush."

Remembering the Father of Go-Go | NPR Music Tiny Desk Concert: Chuck Brown

Chuck Brown (August 22, 1936 – May 16, 2012)

Blues and the Spirit III: A Symposium on Race, Gender and The Blues

Symposium ProgramPlease check back for program updates and participant additions!Friday, May 18, 20124:00-6:00pmRegistration
Symposium Check in (Shaffer Silveri Atrium/Parmer Hall)
Lodging Check in (Coughlin Commons)6:00-7:30pm  Opening Plenary (Shaffer Silveri Atrium/Parmer Hall)  WelcomeJanice Monti, Blues and the Spirit Director and Professor of Sociology, Dominican University  InvocationJacob Schulz, Blues Vocalist and Undergraduate Student, University of Illinois Chicago  Blues Summit on the State of the Music TodayParticipants: Sugar Blue, Billy Branch, Matthew Skoller, Deitra Farr, Sharon Lewis, Barry Dolins, Wayne Baker Brooks, Billy Boy Arnold; Lincoln T. 'Chicago Beau' Beauchamp, Brian Lukasavitz, Sterling Plumpp, David Whiteis7:30-8:00pm  Presentation of 2012 Blues and the Spirit AwardsRecipient: Marie Dixon (Widow of Willie Dixon and President of the Blues Heaven Foundation)Presenters: Donna Carroll, President, Dominican University; Janice Monti, Director, Blues and the Spirit Symposium, Dominican University; Robbi Byrdsong Wright, Assistant Dean for Academic Success Services and Diversity, Rosary College of Arts and Sciences, Dominican University8:00-8:30pm  
Reception (Shaffer Silveri Atrium/Parmer Hall)
Music by Fernando Jones, Director, Blues Ensemble, Columbia College, Chicago, IL
Vendors and Poster Presentations
8:45-9:00pmBoard Bus for Harlem Avenue Lounge9:00pm-1:00am   An Evening with Chicago's Blues Divas Featuring Deitra Farr, Peaches Staten, Nellie Travis and Sharon Lewis (Special guest, Jacob Schulz, representing the new generation of Chicago Blues performers)(Wristbands required for this event) Saturday, May 19, 20128:30-11:30amRegistration
Symposium Check in (Shaffer Silveri Atrium/Parmer Hall)
Lodging Check in (Coughlin Commons)
10:00-11:15am  Keynote Address (Martin Recital Hall/Fine Arts Building): “Gotta Sing on the Beats They Bring Us”: Gender, Class, and 21 st Century Blues Women’s Epistemology
Keynote Speaker: Zandria F. Robinson, Assistant Professor of Sociology and James and Madeleine McMullan Assistant Professor of Southern Studies, University of Mississippi
Discusant: Chavella Pittman, Assistant Professor of Sociology, Dominican University11:30am-12:45pm  
Panel (Bluhm Auditorium, 108 Parmer Hall )
Ladies Sing the Blues: The Lived Experience of Chicago's Blues DivasParticipants: Deitra Farr, Sharon Lewis, Peaches Staten, Nellie Travis
Discussant: Jane Hseu, Assistant Professor of English, Dominican University
1:00-2:00pm  Lunch Panel (Bluhm Auditorium, 108 Parmer Hall) Cultural Tourism and the Blues
Participants: Barry Dolins, former Director of the Chicago Blues Festival, Dorothy Coyle, Executive Director of the Chicago Office of Tourism and Culture (COTC), Scott Barretta, Mississippi Blues Trail Heritage Marker Initiative (Brown bag lunch provided)Discussant:  Bryan Froehle, Professor of Sociology and Theology, Saint Thomas University, Miami, FL2:15-3:30pm  Panel (Bluhm Auditorium, 108 Parmer Hall)
What the Music Says: Reflections on Blues and Hip-Hop Intersections Participants: Gil Cook, Dominican University, Ernest Gibson, Rhodes College, Stephany Rose, University of Colorado at Colorado Springs, Robert Hanserd, Dominican University, Nick Krebs, Purdue University3:45-5:00pm  Multimedia Presentation (Martin Recital Hall/Fine Arts Building) :
Ebony and Ivory:  A Musical Journey to Two AmericasStephanie Shonekan, Assistant Professor of Ethnomusicology and Black Studies, University of Missouri, Columbia5:15-6:30pm  Closing Keynote (Martin Recital Hall/Fine Arts Building) : Naming Evil in the World: Hip-Hop's Blues Footprints Mark Anthony Neal, Professor of African and African American Studies, Duke UniversityDiscussant:  George Bailey, Professor of English, Columbia College Chicago6:45-8:30pm  Closing Reception (Shaffer Silveri Atrium/Parmer Hall)Music by the Copeland/Brown Duo 
Vendors and Poster Presentations8:30-8:45pmBoard Bus for Rosa's Lounge9:000pm-2:00am  Bus Exursion to the After Party at Rosa's Lounge, Chicago , IL Sugar Blue and Friends Celebrate the Blues Legacy (Wristbands required for this event)
$75 registration fee includes two receptions, participation in all sessions and panels, and transportation to and from the Friday and Saturday after party events and club cover charges. A small number of no-frills but very affordable dormitory-style rooms on campus will be available for those who register early. (Singles at $50; doubles at $90 and suites for up to four people for $160 per night). Register now.

In Israel, African Migrants Under Attack

The Stream |Al Jezeera English
Recent attacks against African asylum seekers in Tel Aviv are raising important questions for the state of Israel.
Advocates say the migrants are victims of racism, discrimination and decades of poor policy.
But some citizens and politicians argue the rising number of "infiltrators" – as they call them – is leading to crime and a fall in living standards.
In this episode of The Stream, we speak to journalist Mya Guarnieri; Sanjeev Bery, Middle East Director at Amnesty International; Yohannes Bayu, Founder and Executive Director for the African Refugee Development Center; and David Sheen, Israeli filmmaker.

Jay Z Weighs in on Same-Gender Loving Americans

EMOTIONAL JUSTICE UNPLUGGED: ‘BLACK LOVE: A RE-IMAGINING’ Love: Lessons, Legacy, Loss, Learning

EMOTIONAL JUSTICE UNPLUGGED
In partnership with WBAI99.5FM
presents

‘BLACK LOVE: A RE-IMAGINING’ Love: Lessons, Legacy, Loss, Learning
A Conversation with Marc Lamont Hill & Robert Cornegy Jr
Moderated by Esther Armah
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There is nothing more revolutionary than black love.
How do you define love? How have men, women, lovers, parents, friends influenced and impacted how you love? How has the way you love shaped your relationships: work & love? How has rejection, abandonment and loss shaped how you love? How does the way you love shape your masculinity? What lessons have you learned? What do you need to unlearn? What legacy has the way you love created for you? What lessons would you share? Where do you need healing? Join the conversation, re-imagine love.

Panelists
Marc Lamont Hill: Activist Scholar, Author, TV Host, Political Commentator. Associate Professor of Education @ Columbia University; TV Host of Our World with Black Enterprise, Author The Classroom & The Cell: Conversations on Black Life in America
Robert Cornegy Jr: State Committeeman/District Leader 56th AD, Adjunct Professor of Marketing at Brooklyn College, Husband and father of 6
Moderated by
Esther Armah: NY Radio Host, Playwright, National Best-Selling Author

DATE: WEDNESDAY MAY 16TH 2012
TIME: 7.00PM TO 9.30PM
VENUE: The Brecht Forum, 451 West Street between Bank & BethuneSubway: A, C, E to 14th Street & 8th Avenue
ADMISSION: $10 cash only; first come, first served

Plus book signing: 'The Classroom & The Cell: Conversations on Black Life in America'
Twitter: @estherarmah[image error]