The State of the Black Union concluded in Los Angeles after the input of various scholars, activists, political leaders and pundits, mixed with the fear of the recession (or depression if you're just talking about black people--economically things have been nightmarish for African Americans for some time) with the optimism of President Barack Obama's election.
Founded by author/journalist Tavis Smiley, this was the 10th year for the event where 6,000 people attended panels, networked and discussed the state of the race.
The funny thing about the state of the race: it's bad.
Which brings us back to Tavis Smiley's State of the Black Union event ... sponsored by ExxonMobile (The revolution must be financed!)
This event where esteemed people of intellect and great thought and caring and insight sat around and talked for hours upon hours is one that Smiley has made his pièce de résistance. The mantle upon which the ego is at rest.
Talk is good. We need to talk. I write. That's how I deal with my angst. That's great. Cathartic. But now what? As a non-activist, semi-satirical, novice blogger my goal is to look at something and try to find a different interpretation.
(It's what I do as an "artist.")
But I got nothing.
I got nothing but the same old same old. We sat and talked and Smiley has a book to sell about holding the president and the government accountable to the black community and it's great that we sat and talked, but now what? The NAACP is pushing to boycott the New York Post over Chimpgate. Glorious. Now what?
More and more I feel like people are fighting ghosts.
It's not that racism isn't real. It is real. It's a problem. But we often act like it's the only problem we know how to wrangle. Someone yells "nigger" in a crowded (or not so crowded) room and we have Al Sharpton on speed dial.
Case in point: the repeated sentiment I noticed from those who attended the event or watched the proceedings on C-SPAN:
"I would have gotten more out of a bit less discussion of historical context and more time spent presenting specific strategies and tactics that each and every motivated person watching the symposium could consider while working to make our country better. What should an 'Accountable' campaign look like? Technology was barely mentioned. Why not a dedicated 'SOBU Accountable' website with step-by-step, or should I say, click-by-click instructions about how to contact your congressman with a standard letter covering what needs to be said? Or a dedicated SOBU 2009 social networking site where members could share ideas about moving forward with 'Accountable' and share their personal experiences of what's working and what's not." AOL--Black Voices
Perhaps Tavis isn't the best messenger, but his question needed to be asked, if not only directed at Obama's Administration but to all Americans as well. Nobody on the national level is really talking directly about poverty - Edwards tried in the primaries but he couldn't deliver the message. Instead we're to assume that when elected officials talk about saving the working/middle class that poor folk are a part of that conversation.
Not exactly.
Academic conversations, Ivy League and otherwise, are one thing (albeit important), but direct action/advocacy work and enacting legislation with the devastatingly poor in mind is a whole other thing...
That said, I think that Obama inviting Ty'Sheoma Bethea to his SOTU speech was effective. Keep the conversation going though - let's not be afraid to use words like "poverty" and "working poor" in the mainstream.
Everyone is frustrated and tired and angry, but everyone is always frustrated, tired and angry. That's been the general consensus since we got off the boat.
Some people are waiting for a hero to come and lead us to the next phase, to the "promise land."
News flash: They ain't coming.
The problems have evolved. Sadly, the people doing the most talking have not. It's going to take a little more fortitude and a lot more self-determination to break through this present corporately-sponsored malaise. Brought to you by a pack of Kools, BET and "apathy," I present to you the Post-Civil Rights Era, full of opportunities knocking, but no one going in. Books are great if the people you're trying to reach actually read. But the work of a Paperback Prophet is never done, so Smiley leaves his conference prepared to go on the road to sell his book "Accountable" across the nation.
You don't have to be Martin Luther King, Jr. You don't have to be Jesus laid up on a cross to die to save black people. Even during the Civil Rights Movement not everyone was cut out to march.
That's why the Obamas easily captured so many blacks' imaginations. Suddenly black people with degrees and jobs who marry and are successful and have children aren't myths, they aren't unicorns. They're real. And suddenly, they were everywhere. Wow. Little faces everywhere of successful black people. Where had these people been, one wondered? Had they been hidden in plain sight all along?
Yes! Yes, they were! They were always there. But how could you notice them when you're too busy ignoring that alarm blaring in the background? STATE OF EMERGENCY! It screams with nothing but bad, bad news. When all your energy is spent on looking down, because ... STATE OF EMERGENCY! You're too afraid to look up and see the problems, the big, scary, impossible looking problems.
Of course, you find yourself collecting pictures of Michelle Obama and looking up adoringly at the president. Someone, and I don't know who (maybe a parent, teacher or society), told you that this wasn't for you and now you're just learning that it is and it is wonderful. So, pardon you, if your mind was blown and the opportunities that were there, yet not there because you didn't know, are now real to you. That you now, in the most wonderful and Disney and clichéd way, finally "believe."
But now that you have gotten a good look at the potential. Now that you can hear the knocking over the blaring. Now that you've gotten a good earful of the speech. Now that you've gotten your latest inoculation of scholars and politicians and activists and paperback prophets talking about your present state of emergency LOOK UP!
For God's sake, look up.
The world is bigger than you. It's time to start acting that way.
Brother to Brother is a film written and directed by Rodney Evans and released in 2004. The film debuted at the 2004 Sundance Film Festival before playing the gay and lesbian film festival circuit, with a limited theatrical release in late 2004. Art student Perry (Anthony Mackie) befriends an elderly homeless man named Bruce Nugent (Roger Robinson), who turns out to have been an important figure in the Harlem Renaissance. Through recalling his friendships with other important Harlem Renaissance figures Langston Hughes (Daniel Sunjata), Aaron Douglas, Wallace Thurman and Zora Neale Hurston, Bruce chronicles some of the challenges he faced as a young, black, gay writer in the 1920s. Perry discovers that the challenges of homophobia and racism he faces in the early 21st century closely parallel Bruce's.
it was almost as though it had journeyed to meet him...think...the dulcet clear tone of a blue like night...if colors could be heard he could paint most wondrous tunes...symphonious...but soon the moon would rise and then he would clothe the silver moon in blue smoke garments...truly smoke was like imagination........
The strongest link that I see between Ntozake Shange'sFor Colored GirlsWho Have Considered Suicide When the Rainbow Is Enufand August Wilson'sThe Colored Museumis that both of these plays challenge the idea of a formulaic black/African American play. Their dramatic forms stray so far from convention in language and structure that theyexpand the realm of possible expression for other black playwrights. Both of these plays also suceed in addressing social issues through their work so that their experiementation with theatre conventions is not so much for the sake of being avant-garde, but instead, an attempt to question archaic stereotypes, myths, and behvaviors in black communities by avoiding the use of traditional theatrical elements that may have locked these same ideas into black dramatic forms. For Colored Girls abandons all rules of standard English grammar, punctuation, and spelling. In this refusal to abide by the rules, Shange gains the authority to empower women through their own language of sisterhood, pain and love. With so much power placed onto the page by Shange, the performances, I imagine, are like stepping into the emperor's clothes. Even when pieces deal with such painful subjects as abortion or reclusiveness or infanticide, the capacity to speak the pain, to purge and share with other women, takes away the power that silence gives to their oppressors. The voices of women that are heard in Shange's choreopoem are unlike many of the voices we have heard thus far in women's theatre, in that these women speak outside of existing only in support of men, whether they be mammies holding the black family together or the black woman concerned with her texture or skin tone in front of the male gaze. Shange says that all "colored" women shared a bond of sisterhood and those ties bind us and help heal us from the wounds of the world. Wolfe does something very similar in The Colored Museumin that he deliberately satirizes tropes of black theater and history by creating "exhibits" that chronicle the shifting identities of black in the United States. Whereas Shange used her non-traditional form to empower women, Wolfe uses his to dramatize the importance of self-identification in black communities. Many of the exhibits are centered on African Americans who are denying, questioning, proclaiming, or unaware of their identity. What Wolfe also does is call attention to the formulaic nature of those "black gems" of American theatre such as Raisin in the Sun. Something else I find very interesting about The Colored Museum is how he uses the social codes of language within black communities to make it relevant to black audiences. He touches on very serious subjects but uses humor and wit to make it more comfortably acessible in performance. Ultimately, both of these works are great examples of the limits that can be pushed within black theatre.
One cannot go a day without hearing news of some type of international crisis, in fact, it has been a rather saddening signifier of our times but when did it become the International Criminal Court's responsibility to scapegoat the African continent as the only place their jurisdiction seems to find a function. Serving as the permanent tribunal to prosecute individuals for genocide, crimes against humanity, war crimes and crimes of aggression, it has only officially opened investigations against Northern Uganda, the Democratic Republic of Congo, the Central African Republic and Darfur. Hmm? Any person who keeps up with the Jones' of international affairs could easily name several other places where their arms of justice could extend but as of July 1 2002, the date it's treaty the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court came into being, only African states have been addressed. Now, I am not saying that a court with this type of power should not go after dictators who abuse their power and resources to perputrate crimes against humanity, but I am saying that this type of scapegoating and fear-mongering, and, dare I say, 20th century colonialism, simply sets the stage for bringing more chaos into the already unstable Darfur region. Isn't it supposed to be about bringing justice in the name of peace/humanity/civility, not justice in the name of creating an international laughing stock of unstable African and Arab countries as a polical ploys. So far, it has issued 13 warrants of arrest but has only four suspects in its cells while seven remain free. All the suspects in ICC cells are from Africa. They are Thomas Lubanga, Germain Katanga, Mathieu Ngudjolo Chui, Jean Pierre Bemba and ex-Liberian President Charles Taylor, who is being tried under the Special Court for Sierra Leone. As I mentioned earlier, my beef with this whole situation is not that he's being served with the warrant, it's the timing of the warrant given the Sudan's precarious state and the history of the ICC investigations. This same sentiment can be heard from the many African and Arab states and ministries that have spoken out against the warrant, that have invited the President to their countries (Egpyt, Eritrea, Libya, Saudi Arabia, the Arab League meeting in Qatar), and have also refused to acknowledge the authority of the ICC. Four major global organisations: the Arab League, the African Union, the Organisation of the Islamic Conference, and the Non-Aligned Movement are all against the Bashir warrant. In diplomatic terms, the UN Security Council cannot ignore even one of these organisations. Bashir has been very adamant in not letting the warrant affect him but I think it's a serious matter when an international court issues the arrest warrant of the 1st sitting head of state. And I wonder--if they were to prosecute, strip Bashir of his position, jail him, would their be as much effort to reform from the same international communities that called for his dismissal. Bashir feared that certain foreign aid groups in Sudan were spying and collecting information for the warrant so he removed them--this neither helped him, the country or the people. This is the type of chain reaction that has to be prevented. It's common knowledge that African states are continously going through evolution seeing as how the whole continent has faced the wrath of European and Arab imperialism and colonialism. This evolution has to be taken into account with situations such as what do with heads of state of war torn countries. I don't believe, given their histories, that it will ever been taken likely when a European based organization tries to exert authoritative force on African countries so maybe serving warrants should be left up to a humanitarian court serving the African and Arab countries of the continent. Just a thought.
What would happen if Black families across America made real commitments to support Black businesses and professionals? How many jobs would be created? How many homes would be saved from foreclosure? How many new role models would our children have? How much would we improve the quality of life of the average American Black family? How much can we do on our own, together, united … without a government program? What if we could prove – again – that this community can defy history and improve the future by just believing we can and believing in one another? And what if the world was watching us do it? The Ebony Experiment Foundation's focus is research and education concerning economic empowerment in underserved communities. The Foundation's research is based on the Andersons' pledge and experiences finding and supporting Black businesses, professionals and products created by Black manufacturers, as the Black community is a historically underserved community. The Foundation will also study the impacts of a year-long national economic development campaign aimed at promoting and stimulating enhanced entrepreneurship and self-help economics in the underserved Black community. The Foundation will collect data from this campaign to create a new body of knowledge about the power of self-help economics for revitalizing underserved communities. The purpose of the research, the national campaign, and the resultant study is to measure the economic impact of self-help economics and increased entrepreneurship in economically deprived communities.
When asked, "How do you know your not a transsexual?" by her friend Grant, Jess replies, "I don't feel like a man trapped in a woman's body. I just feel trapped." It may be that Jess feels trapped, but because we receive her answer through the filter of a gender binary, it is difficult for us to comprehend the true meaning of her response. According to the concept of definite gender that requires attributing gender to a specific body, if Jess is in a female body, then she is female. However, in a system that only recognizes male and female biological gender, Jess, who does not identify herself as either gender, will be forced to either accept the dichotomous gender structure or be punished for violating it.
Stone Butch Blues, by Leslie Feinberg, narrates the story of Jess's "decision" to deviate from the dichotomous gender system. From the start of the novel, Feinberg reveals that flaws of the gender system for the purpose of proving that the system in itself assumes gender to be wholly visible. It is not possible for Jess to develop a healthy gender identity in a society that does not recognize her ambiguity. Speaking on her childhood Jess says, "No one ever offered a name for what was wrong with me. I only came to recognize its melody through this constant refrain: "Is that a boy or a girl?" Before she even understood the concept of gender, Jess was beginning to understand that whatever the rules were, she was not abiding by them. Furthermore, she did not have the answer to that constant refrain. She could not even anser that question for herself. The significance of including Jess' childhood is to show that her later feelings of being trapped are not self-imposed, but an accumulation of questions, regulations, and punishments that were suppose to force her into accepting her role as a female in a dichotmous gender system.
Despite society's strong influence on Jess, she does not allow society to assign her a generic sexuality and gender that is not a true representation of herself. Jess even rejects the term transsexual which means having the physical characteristics of one sex and the psychological characteristics of the other. Those who do not understand Jess' gender identity crisis offer the possibility that Jess could be a transsexual. Biologically, she is a woman, and while she does live the lifestyle of a butch (tends to denote masculinity displayed by a female beyond that of what would be considered a tomboy) with a sexual orientation for women. With so many possibilities available that could solidify Jess' gender identity, why does she feel trapped? Because Jess developed accostumed to being trapped, attributing a label to her ambiguity would only reinforce her entrapment. She would be expected to abide by the rules of her label although she doesn't believe in them, because even though the gender system is extremely unstable, the rules that uphold it are intended to be followed rigidly. Just as she cannot simply pick a gender identity from a hat of options, Jess knows that she will be equally punished for not choosing. This is evident from the criticisms fo other gender variants like Milli, who leaves Jess because she exhibits behavior uncharacteristic of a butch, and of bigots like Roz, who harasses Jess because she looks like a man. Through Jess, Feinberg is attempting to prove that transsexual may be the termt hat describes a person's identification with the opposite gender, whih appears to be Jess' identity in that she looks and behaves like a conventional man, but it does not define Jess' lack of definitive identification. For Jess to claim the orientation of transsexual would mean fortifying her feelings of being trapped.
While it may be true that Feinberg is showing the distinction between what Jess feels herself to be and transsexuality, the novel is also explicitly showing the connection between Jess' feelings of being trapped and the phenomenon of being "stone." In nature a plant is turned into a stone when it it infiltrated with water and mineral particles. In the same way, being stone butch in the novel refers to weathering the elements, (assault, discrimination, injustice) to the point of petrification, creating a new identity within the same body. To be stone, rather than to be transsexual, appears to be a more accurate depiction fo the way in which Jess has developed. Over the duration fo her life Jess has been ostracized by her famliy for "walking a difficult path in life," attacked and raped by men, mainly police officers who serve as enforcers of the gender system, for threatening their status as "authentic men," and emotionally and psychologically scarred by her relationships with femmes for not being a consistent butch.
During a conversation, Angie discovers the depth of Jess' "stone-ness." "Who hurt you, baby? The cops? Who else? Aw, baby, you're already old too." This part of Angie's talk with Jess shows that Jess has become stone much earlier than other stone butches. "Do you open up to your girlfriend? Have you ever had a girlfriend?" At this point Jess has never had a girlfriend and she implicitly says that if she did she would not be able to open up to her. Despite Jess' status as "a good-looking young butch" her being stone has affected the way in which she behaves in intimate relationships with people. She has been hurt so much in her life that even the love of another person is threatening to her. Angie sees that Jess has built a wall inside herself, one that intended to protect her from all potential danger. Because of the betrayal of her family and the cruelty of strangers, Jess finds it hard to trust anyone. Lastly, Angie asks, "How many times you been busted, baby?" For Jess, and other stone butches, stone is measured by the number of attacks they have lived through, each one adding a brick to the wall.
By the end of the novel, we see that stone is a lifestyle for Jess just as much as it is a condition that she had no choice in developing. Stone butches are frigid, give no response to touch, arousal, or sex and are emotionally withdrawn. This behavior is exhibited by butches because sexuality is not learned in a healthy way, instead it is through a series of events that are not consential. By having to regulate her desires and curiosities for the demands of the gender system, Jess as a result finds herself at the end of the novel identifying more with being stone, a lifestyle that was socially constructed.
Interview with Joan Roughgarden, author of Evolutions Rainbow. This brilliant and accessible work of biological criticism has the potential to revolutionize the way readers conceive of gender and sexuality in the natural world. Roughgarden, a professor of biology at Stanford University and a member of the Academy of Arts and Sciences, argues that the diversity of gender and sexuality one finds in many species suggests that evolutionary biologists of a strictly Darwinian bent are often misguided, since, according to Roughgarden, they erroneously assume a universally applicable gender binary in all species.
i'm beamin up to scottie scottie saturn of the 7 seas ozzie need to retire cuz the prince of darkness be me.
i was that daemon in your ghetto with the snow white smile spook by the door, i been evil for awhile. and mama always told me i was crazy and i'm thinking just maybe
but deamons say i'm hot but i say naw bitch i'm blazin like what the fuck you expect i'm a muthafuckin naga
into fire you may send us, there we stand when it subsides the way it speaks to us you can feel it from inside
blue-shifting to infinite infinite and beyond its time for saturn's return can you feel the chemical bonds?
cuz our connections to nature got them straight geekin they rebel against the goddess and she sends her dark legions
children of the night they shiva-vishnu-like dancing celestial libations to bring that black hole sun light
and there we'll stand at the beginning of the end serpents of wisdom must we do this again
Annemarie Bean says that "minstrelsy can be said to have given American culture two legacies: one of creativity and one of resilient stereotypes" (Black Minstrelsy and Double Inversion 177). I believe Bean is speaking of the paradoxical representations of blacks that exist in the American imagination: one of gifted and innovative performer and one of cautious critic, always questioning the reason for the laughter or applause or critical acclaim from white audiences. This sense of having a double consciousness as a black performer has its foundation in minstrelsy as we see the first images of blacks being created by white bodies signifying what blackness is through speech, dress, mannerisms, and a literal blackening of the body. Through the legacy of minstrelsy audiences have been conditioned to see and read the humorous aspects in black impersonations so much so that these behaviors and creations shape the performances of black artists. So how does one create an "authentic" black representation when these strong stereotypes still exist in present reality? Is it possible?
I think so but the black artist has to have a layered consciousness to avoid falling into the trap of encouraging the re-surfacing of these stereotypes in the national imagination unless it is for subversive reasons or for the purpose of understanding present politics of performativity and representation. I think the latter is what we see in Spike Lee's "Bamboozled" as he modernizes the minstrel show to call attention to how these stereotypes are functioning today through what Bean calls "well-established types of humor or nostalgia" (Black Minstrelsy and Double Inversion 177). Time may have been displaces but the collective memory of these images is still present and operating as the New Millennium Minstrel Show becomes a hit in the ratings and a mainstay on televisions across America in both black and white households. I think this mentality of Delacroix's character when he is thinking of the project is one shared by many today--that blackface minstrelsy is archaic and could not resurface with as much popularity as it did at its inception. But like Delacroix we underestimate the staying power of these stereotypes. Bean sites James Weldon Johnson as saying, "Minstrelsy was, on a whole, a caricature of Negro life, and it fixed a stage tradition which has not yet been entirely broken" (Black Minstrelsy and Double Inversion 177). And what Spike posits in "Bamboozled" is that the mask is no longer needed because these stereotypes and images are operating without the deliberate creation of a minstrel. Mainstream Hip Hop is his main focus but they also operate in other facets of mainstream culture: television, cinema, and advertising.
Ultimately, I think to combat the frivolous re-surfacing of these images and stereotypes there has to be an awareness and realization that these representations are dangerous for when a race of people are infantilized, over-sexualized, criminalized in the national imaginations it limits their humanity which leads to social, political, economic, and cultural violence.
Works Cited
Elam, Harry J.; Krasner, David. African American Performance and Theater History. Oxford Press: New York 2001. 177.
Violent hearted Elementals breaking the Dawn of Peace.
Descendants of warlocks, witches with ill glitches--
The ones who do Revolts, Rebirths and Resurrections.
Charmed ones with ancient Grammar.
--Scottie Saturn
I'm starting to see this blog as a type of creative project of sorts so I thought it necessary to provide a little statement, of sorts:
Vilem Flusser writes that we find ourselves in a period of expulsion, to survive we must take the chaos around us and interpret it as data—a conversion synonymous with creation. This act of conversion is the primary subject of my art making practice. The illusion of “home” and the fabrication of desire inform my work both conceptually and formally.
Since moving to southern California, I have been particularly drawn to the alienating quality of the suburban landscape. I am interested in the fantasy of escape and how westward expansion has created sites of excess made to entice. Man’s desire to control and confine nature versus the desire to ‘return to nature’ creates formidable tension. Through a lens of female subjectivity I examine this desire for the landscape to be something it isn’t. Through my art I construct narratives and imagined realities.
I explored this desire to create imagined narratives and realities during the process of directing play by Suzan-Lori Parks entitled The Death of the Last Black Man. Innovative and occasionally controversial, Parks is one of the most highly acclaimed African-American woman playwrights in contemporary theater. Her use of “rep & rev” (repetition and revision) to re-examine and reconfigure eurocentric historical episodes is lauded for providing an afrocentric history and identity—elements that are largely missing from the eurocentric historical record. Parks uses language reminiscent of African-American dialects and vernacular to give multiple meanings to the spoken word and expose the hidden message behind the dialogue of her characters. Often depicting and exaggerating black stereotypes, Parks draws attention to their invalidity and the ignorance upon which they are based. Parks's plays are noted for their originality, non-linear progression of time, poetic dialogue, political and social agendas, and depiction of the search for identity.
She speaks of the Hole of History, both an imaginary empty space on stage which is then filled with the action of the place, and also a very literal place created from the fragmented, distorted, and plagarized history of African Americans and the diapora.
I find that in my work I like to explore this hole, this chthonic realm where the bones of history are buried. And as Suzan says in the introduction of her anthology of plays The American Play and Other Works:
"One of my tasks as a playwright is to locate the ancestral burial ground—dig for bones, find bones, hear the bones sing, write it down."
Here is a clip from an HBO series called Blacklist
Saw this trailer when I went to see Tyler Perry's Madea goes to jail. Looks like a nice picture. And newcomer Nicole Beharie has been getting critical acclaim for her role.
"They ain't gonna leave me alone unless I plead guilty and I ain't doing it."
President Barack Obama waves to a group of happily surprised NBA fans at the Washington Wizards v.s Chicago Bulls Game on Friday night in Washington D.C.
The President was pulling for Chicago of course (who ended up losing), but happily greeted audience members that approached and spoke with him. President Obama Is the first president to attend a Wizards game since Bill Clinton in 2000.
Michelle Obama’s first official portrait as first lady was released by the White House Friday.
According to Us Magazine, she is wearing a Michael Kors black shift dress and the photo was taken in the famed home’s “Blue Room” by White House photographerJoyce N. Boghosian.
According to various sources inculding People. come and Us Magazine, Rihanna and Chris Brown have reunited and are staying at one of Didddy's spots in Florida. We will probably hear more of this story as the tragic mulattos scenario has become Hollywood celebrity gossip and
great for sculpting those age old media stereotypes. But it all has its place. They do look rather good together.
Solange "Cosmic Journey: This girl is the definition of bad. And when I say 'bad' I mean, good. :-)
I found this article while surfing the net. It's an interview with Dambisa Moyo. I thought she had some very insightful things to about the poverty situation in many developing countries in Africa. Not only, does she offer solutions, but she has a very critical voice when it comes to analyzing Western foreign policy. Here's a synopsis of her background:
Mrs. Dambisa Moyo, Global Economist, Goldman Sacha International Dambia Moyo is a Global Economist at Goldman Sacha. She previously worked at the World Bank in Washington, D.C. A native of Zambia, Dambisa holds a PhD in Economics Forum in Davos Switzerland on issues of Aid, Debt, abd Poverty in developing countries. She is author of a forthcoming book Dead Aid: Solving the Problem of Underdevelopment in Poor Countriesm which looks at globalization and issues surrounding poverty and development in poor countries.
Interview by DEBORAH SOLOMON Published: February 19, 2009
Q: As a native of Zambia with advanced degrees in public policy and economics from Harvard and Oxford, you are about to publish an attack on Western aid to Africa and its recent glamorization by celebrities. ‘‘Dead Aid,’’ as your book is called, is particularly hard on rock stars. Have you met Bono?
I have, yes, at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, last year. It was at a party to raise money for Africans, and there were no Africans in the room, except for me.
What do you think of him?
I’ll make a general comment about this whole dependence on “celebrities.” I object to this situation as it is right now where they have inadvertently or manipulatively become the spokespeople for the African continent.
You argue in your book that Western aid to Africa has not only perpetuated poverty but also worsened it, and you are perhaps the first African to request in book form that all development aid be halted within five years.
Think about it this way — China has 1.3 billion people, only 300 million of whom live like us, if you will, with Western living standards. There are a billion Chinese who are living in substandard conditions. Do you know anybody who feels sorry for China? Nobody.
Maybe that’s because they have so much money that we here in the U.S. are begging the Chinese for loans.
Forty years ago, China was poorer than many African countries. Yes, they have money today, but where did that money come from? They built that, they worked very hard to create a situation where they are not dependent on aid. What do you think has held back Africans?
I believe it’s largely aid. You get the corruption — historically, leaders have stolen the money without penalty — and you get the dependency, which kills entrepreneurship. You also disenfranchise African citizens, because the government is beholden to foreign donors and not accountable to its people.
If people want to help out, what do you think they should do with their money if not make donations?
Microfinance. Give people jobs.
But what if you just want to donate, say, $25? Go to the Internet and type in Kiva.org, where you can make a loan to an African entrepreneur.
Do you have a financial interest in Kiva?
No, except that I’ve made loans through the system. I don’t own a share of Kiva.
You just left your longtime job as a banker for Goldman Sachs in London, where you live. What did you do there, exactly?
I worked in the capital markets, helping mostly emerging countries to issue bonds. That’s why I know that that works.
Which countries sought your help?
Israel, Turkey and South Africa, primarily.
Why didn’t you get a bond issue going in your native Zambia or other African countries?
Many politicians seem to have a lazy muscle. Issuing a bond would require that the president and the cabinet ministers go out and market their country. Why would they do that when they can just call up the World Bank and say, “Can I please have some money?”
I keep reading about a new crop of African presidents who are supposedly free-market guys, including Rupiah Banda, the president of Zambia.
There are lots who are nominally free market, but they haven’t been aggressive about implementing those policies.
What do your parents do?
My mother is chairman of a bank called the Indo-Zambia Bank. It’s a joint venture between Zambia and India. My father runs Integrity Foundation, an anticorruption organization.
For all your belief in the potential of capitalism, the free market is now in free fall and everyone is questioning the supposed wonders of the unregulated market.
I wish we questioned the aid model as much as we are questioning the capitalism model. Sometimes the most generous thing you can do is just say no.
INTERVIEW CONDUCTED, CONDENSED AND EDITED BY DEBORAH SOLOMON
I make this post because as the country continues to wage the debate for and against gay rights, I think its important to note the very critical intersections of sexuality and religion. What I find to be a common thread in many religious doctrines is the incompatibility of sex, or sexuality, and religion. And, of course, because race matters are a theme on this blog, I decided to do a post that brings the three together.
The Jataka relates how the bodhisattva (the Buddha before he attained supreme perfect nirvana) was said to be attended by a handsome male disciple lovingly devoted to him. Referred to by the name Ananda, this disciple was the Buddha's constant companion on the road toward supreme enlightenment.
The following readings may be of some interest to you. All cover the subject of the Buddha being an actual African man:
Same-sex activity is rarely given attention in the Buddhist canon. Even in the teachings of Buddha himself, the subject is rarely a topic separate from the broader concerns of correct conduct. In general, regardless the gender of the partner, sexual relations undertaken for simple pleasurable experiences is assumed to hinder one's spiritual progress toward nirvana.
Buddhism is regulated according to five moral precepts of which the third is governed by sexual conduct. Under the third precept, it is important for believers to observe principles of mutual consent, honesty and restraint. Sexual relations in general without a partner also consenting to the activity (where there is no freedom of choice) is demonstratively frowned upon.
In Buddhist text narrating the past lives of the Buddha --the Jatakas-- same sex desire in is delineated between those living as a "monk" or living a monastic life and those those living a non-monastic life. In both, intimacy and love between males is extolled. Especially for monks, male same-sex desire is believed to enhance a sense of moral obligation and spiritual duty. "Monastic desire" is absent of sexual relations. The Vinaya, the code of discipline directing monastic life, demands monks be celibate. Prohibited is any sexual activity were a sexual member enters any orifice of a partner. Those living a non-monastic lifestyle , moral disapproval is expressed toward the one man who plays the passive role (or pandaka meaning eunuch but also passivity during sexual relations). Passive gay men were banned from entering monastic life because they were believed to lose their maleness during intimacies.
Overall, in Buddhist canon, abstinence is to be preferred to sex whether between men and men or men and women.
Even through her naïveté, Miranda, daughter of Duke Prospero, understood that the world was much vaster then she could conceptualize from her sheltered existence in exile. Once exposed to the larger world and overwhelmed by the emotions that accompanied her awareness of the levels of freedom for mankind, she exclaims her recognition of the world “that has such people in’t.” Much like Miranda, epochs of humanity have attempted to understand the world and its “many goodly creatures”, its free, its bonded, and its in-between. From these brainstorms of existence myth was created as a meta-narrative for the paradoxes of life and freedom. Much like Miranda, many other characters in Shakespeare's The Tempest are enslaved throughout the play, such as Caliban and Ariel, and this theme of reconciling a world of freeman and slave is indeed what is confronted in the course of a myth, albeit on a grander scale of fatal mortal and supernatural God.
Indeed, many definitions of myth exist; however, for the purpose of illustrating a more utopian rather than dystopian vision for a Brave New World, an America where civil dialogue, cooperative economics, and effective domestic public policy in the wake of globalization is maintained, there has to be a shrinking of the gap between lower and working class blacks and the black middle class and elite to ensure fair participation in a growing multicultural world. We will consider a two-part definition that is constructed from the point of view of the community and then the individual. I posit the duty of the cultural worker. These people may or may not be creating for money, but claim the duty to better society. They insist that the practices and outcomes of the creative businesses they build be harmonious with public good, even when it is perfectly legal and more profitable to do otherwise.For our purposes the cultural worker will be the musician/artist/poet as the creators of the matrix of determinism which can bridge this gap, not only for the economic, social, and cultural liberation of more blacks of the underclass, but also for many other marginalized societies such as immigrant Americans, ethnic Americans, the LGBT community, and those of varying faiths. This matrix of cultural liberation is what I believe has the potential to help prevent what Jerome Schiele calls domination by seduction, wherein the dominant culture promotes clandestine modes of domination. This will be discussed later in “The Rub” section.
Myth
As mentioned above, the community and individual that will be addressed is the African American community and the President of the United States, Barack Obama. So many questions have been raised regarding the possibilities of his administration and what it could mean for all Americans, but for the sake of analyzing present myth creation, we will focus on the relationship between Obama and the black community. Historically, African Americans in the United States—during slavery, Jim Crow, and Reagonomics—have created myths around themselves and individuals in an effort to cultivate and elevate those who they believed embodied the ideals and gave voice to the topical and historical concerns of their community. Historically and socially African Americans have continually made alliance with the oppressed in religious text such as the Bible due to the parallels in their life situations. The people they read and sung songs of were poor, marginalized, and condemned, yet from their very community arose a liberator, a destroyer, a messiah. With that being said, we must consider how and why myths are created not only for the community, but for the significant individuals who serve as mediators between the oppressed and the institutions of oppression.
In essence, myth will be defined as a story of forgotten or vague origin, basically religious or supernatural in nature, which seeks to explain or rationalize one or more aspects of the world or a society. Given this definition it would make sense for African Americans to constantly cite world myths and religious text in an effort to make sense of their divided communities throughout the Diaspora. In his book, Hero with a Thousand Faces,Joseph Campbell argues that there are mythologically instructed communities. This means that these individuals lives are heavily influences by certain moral and ethical principles spelled out in a mythic text, much like the Bible or Koran. For the ancients, myths or sacred teachings were their guiding texts for understanding life and functioning in communion with each other. He further explains that from these myths arise a corpus of images and identities and models that provide the pattern to which growth may aspire—a range of metaphoric identities that myth provides in a set of possible programmatic identities for the individual personality. This notion can be further extended to include the community as an individual personality which would further problematize the idea of how myth is created. From the legacy of slavery, African Americans share a collective consciousness of what oppression means. Though it differs for every person, what cannot be denied is that the experience is part of a shared memory of the past, much like slavery in general is part of the American imagination (those set of subconscious histories that shape our national mind as a country). So a dialectical synthesis can be made between shared oppression and shared liberation, hence the “one for all and all for one” mentality that is often present in the black community that stands as part of the legacy of race and color in America.
It is in this culture of the oppressed from which internal strife in made manifest in the active creation of a liberatory myth. However, African American culture is an ethnic as well as a class culture because the history of black people in the United States has produced a residue of shared collective memories and frames of reference. It is because black Americans have undergone unique experiences in America, experiences that no other national or racial minority or lower class group have shared, that a distinctive ethnic culture has evolved. Though this culture is overwhelmingly the product of American experience, the first contributing source is still African (Schiele 443).
And it is indeed the synthesis of African American that urges the production of myth. It’s purpose being the mediating between the internal worlds of a people and the externalizing of their fears, desires, and ideals. Externalizing is the basis for communion between men by the subjectifying of our worlds through externalization we are able to paradoxically share communally in the nature of internal experience and by externalizing cause and effect we may construct a common matrix of determinism.
Music
There is no doubt that music has—and has had, historically—a crucial role in defining and expressing the ethnic cultural component in black American culture. As Amiri Baraka put it in his novel Blues People: “The one peculiar referent to the drastic change in the Negro from slavery to ‘citizenship’ is his music” (Jones 63). The transition from slavery to citizenship is the change for which I seek to argue for a bridge, a matrix of determinism, and a reclamation of cultural assets from institutions of cultural domination. Furthermore, I want to suggest that it is first and foremost the cultural domination that creates the foundation for further oppression through economics, media, society, and education (this, again, will be further addresses in “The Rub”).
Nonetheless, the role of music in the African American community has its roots in the life force of their African past. Traditional African music is symbolic, an expression and validation of psychic energy. In traditional Africa, music is an integral part of life and is linked with the worldview of the society in which it is produced. It has social, ritual, and ceremonial functions as well as some purely recreational purposes. Traditional art forms, including music, are rooted in mythology, legends, and folklore, and are associated with gods, ancestors and heroes. Musical activities are ritualized and intended to link the visible world with the invisible. Dancing is often an important part of the ritual and spiritual aspect of music. These aspects of African culture have been retained, despite slavery, in the diasporic communities all over the world, but most notably in the music of African Americans. What scholars call “Africanisms” are the retentions in modern African American culture which links blacks in America psychically to their ancestral past—this could be in the form of speech, dress, culture, etc. What we saw in the seventies in Black American music is an example of this retention and also a precursor to the swing of the pendulum back to this type of modern myth being in the music. Earlier, the term cultural worker was used to describe the musicians who through symbolic image and sound merged their music with the myths of a liberatory nature whether it be inspired by religious overtones, the paradox of love, the phenomena of astronomy, the shifting of paradigms, the creation of alternate realities, or the invoking of divine creative spirits.
Again, the connection between culture and music is a very thin line in African American culture. Music is heavily involved in both the creation and literal colonization of space—music creates an embodied but imaginary space that mediates our internal space (feelings, desires, dreams) with external space (the physical, the experienced). As cultural musicologist Jody Berland has recognized, listening to local, regional, or national radio broadcasts brings listeners together in time outside of space that both narrates an imagined community and defines a cultural space but also takes us outside of where we are and our everyday activities. Thus music, in general, connects listeners to fantasy, pleasure and an ever-elusive future. Like a time-traveling, omnipresent alien presence—music takes us outside of our bodies and place while simultaneously reminding us of our location and what it means to live there (185). This is exactly the type of musical—and even theatrical, filmic, and television—evolution that needs to occur to in media and entertainment to create an atmosphere for change on larger levels of society.
Messiahs
In his life-form the individual is necessarily only a fraction and distortion of the total image of man. He is limited either as male or as female; at any given period of his life he is again limited as child, youth, mature adult, or ancient; furthermore, in his life role he is necessarily specialized as craftsman, tradesman, servant, or thief, priest, leader, wife, nun, or harlot; he cannot be all. Hence the totality—the fullness of man—is not in the separate member, but in the body of society as a whole; the individual can only be an organ (Bruner 354). Hence, this is why many members of the African American community see Obama on many levels, as not just the President, but a symbol of progress, change, and the living myth of what the American Dream can create. But why is their always the messianic overtones when a man of color is in a position of power, and specifically how is Obama being created not only by the African American community, but by other marginalized people and the media, as a messiah figure. Furthermore, in the context of this document, all myths are, at some stage, actually believed to be true by the peoples of the societies that used or originated the myth and we have seen this myth before: Martin Luther King, Jr, Malcolm X, Caesar Chavez, Fredrick Douglass, Ghandi, Marcus Garvey, etc. And it is in the death of one myth that another arises. We see constant rememberance of the death of MLK and his legacy and the parallel rise of the myth of Obama and his vision for a Brave New World.
"...that the viability of the new black hero is dependent upon his ability to carefully regulate his blackness. To satisfy the needs of the national imagination, he must cultivate the patina of blackness while radiating a transcendent racial identity that is not immediately linked to the black communiy, which remains profoundly stigmatized. Because he maintains a prescribed distance from the black community, the ascendancy of the new black hero is no way equal to a national desire to redress some of America's most pressing race problems. Ultimately, America's recent fascination with a darker national savior has to be considered in the context of a rich tradition in its narrative in which self-sacrificing men of color offer both salvation and absolution to the white protagonists."
And this is the reason I urge the Obama Administration and those cultural workers looking to actively participate in the call for cultural redress to embrace the emancipation of culture from institutions of domination such as record companys, producers, television networks, studios, universities etc. because those who control the methods of distribution usually aren't concern with cultural awareness. But despite this present reality, we have the power to proactively reconstruct our cultural infrastructure if we but take a page from our new President, our new myth. Because, it's as Gilber Murray puts it, "This power of entering vividly into the feelings of both parties in a conflict is...the characteristic gift." And in a growing age of multiculturalism, its time that we embrace not only our American national identity as being a melting pot, but to individually embrace a concept pinned by Ruth Hill Upseem called global nomads (or third culture kids, trans-culture kids) which refers to someone who, as a child, has spent a significant period of time in one or more cultures other than his or her own, thus integrating elements of those cultures and their own, this integrating elements of those cultures and their own birth culture, into a third culture. Obama is a global nomad and we see its affect on the way he's creating himself as an outreach type of president who wants to hear all voices and who has the ability to easily negotiate many cultures in an effort to create this matrix of cultural determinism.
The Rub
At this juncture, where myth meets reality, I think it’s important to take a page from history in regards to how a matrix of determinism can be created in this new administration. Much like the Muslim Intellectuals of the Russian Empire who sought to address the backwardness of their people and the empire as a whole through educational reform, or Jadid, I believe it is the responsibility of the administration to address the cultural concerns for Americans—black or otherwise. Much like the Muslim intellectuals of the empire, America has to confront the growing disparity between the black underclass, middle class and elite. The jadidist called for spiritual, material and educational renewal in the empire, but, for the sake of this paper, I think it important to have a renewal in the cultural music of the African American community. This movement has been dubbed Afro-Futurism and it has the possibility to take off if we but confront the atmosphere of domination by seduction that draws on tactics of cultural absorption (i.e. incorporation of alternatives), inordinate consumerism, political and economic co-optation, symbolic racism, and symbolic violence rather than on violence, terror, intimidation, and overt legal discrimination. Telecommunications technologies allow media and entertainment arms of domination to assume a more prominent role in deluding the oppressed into willing participation in, and defense of, the social system that continues to exploit them. Trends in oppression by seduction include—1) decline in overt public pronouncements and attitudes affirming White intellection superiority; 2) the proliferation of African American political conservatives; 3) the elevated socioeconomic status of many African Americans; 4) the rise in the culture of consumerism; 5) the transformation of media images and messages. These trends increasingly render African American susceptible to alluring messages of meritocracy, political equality, and race neutrality, which can confine and thwart African American resistance against oppression.
The term Afro-Futurism refers to African American signification that appropriates images of advanced technology and alien and/or prosthetically enhanced (cyborg) futures. Such Afro-futuristic art is typically concerned with Black Nationalism and empowerment and creation of mythologies based on the confrontation between historical prophetic imagination, such as Egyptian theories of the afterlife, and modern alienated black existence. As Mark Dery observes, “African Americans are, in a very real sense, the descendents of alien abductees” (Dery 1993, p736). Sociologist Paul Gilroy discusses Black Diaspora in terms of a history of dispersed people, but also of the space that results from this dispersal—“a utopian eruption of space into the linear temporal order of modern black politics’(Gilroy 1993, p 198) Therefore, Black diasporic consciousness seeks to return to an inaccessible homeland—in some sense, an imaginary utopian homeland that outer space metaphorically represents. This sense of African-alienation is also, of course, transferable to other marginalized social groups. The space alien as a transcendent form of Other capable of challenging simplistic binaries of male/female, black/white or rich/poor. Particularly evident in rave culture, for example, alien labeling allows for symbolic incorporation of idealized raceless, classless and genderless plurality of the dance floor. As Susan McClary has remarked: “The musical power of the disenfranchised—whether youth, the underclass, ethnic minorities, women or gay people—more often resides in their ability to articulate different ways of constructing the body, ways that bring along in their wake the potential for different experiential worlds.”
Ultimately, Music is prophecy: its styles and economic organization are ahead of the rest of society because it explores, much faster than material reality can, the entire range of possibilities in a given code. It makes audible the Brave New World that will gradually become visible…it is not only the image of things, but the transcending of everyday, the herald of the future.
Afro-Futurism on the Rise
Santogold "Creator"
Janelle Monae "Many Moons"
Saul Williams "Sunday Bloody Sunday"
Tv on the Radio "Wolf like Me"
Solange "I Decided"
Kanye West "Love Lockdown"
Gnarls Barley "Run"
Works Cited
Baraka, Amiri. Blues People: Negro Music in White America. Westport, Conn. Greenwood Press. 1980.
Berland, Judy. “Radio Space and Industrial Time: Music, Formats, Local Narratives and Technological Meditation.” Popular Music.Vol. 9, No. 2. (April 1990): 179-192. JSTOR. 21 Feb. 2009.
Bruner, Jerome S. “Myth and Identity.” Daedalus Vol. 88, No. 2 (Spring 1959): 349-358. JSTOR. 21 Feb. 2009. < http://www.jstor.org/stable/20026501>
Campbell, Joseph. The Hero With a Thousand Faces. Princeton, N.J. Princeton University Press. 2004.
Chase, Gilbert. “Afro-American Anthropology and Black Music.” Anuario Interamericano de Investigacion Musical. Vol. 7. (1971): 117-124. < http://www.jstor.org/stable/779865>
Jerome, Fred. “Einstein, Race, and the Myth of the Cultural Icon.” Isis Vol. 95, No. 4 (Dec. 2004): 627-639. JSTOR. 21 Feb. 2009. < http://www.jstor.org/stable/3653093>
McLeod, Ken. “Space Oddities: Aliens, Futurism and Meaning in Popular Music.” Popular Music. Vol. 22, No. 3 (October 2003): 337-355. < http://www.jstor.org/stable/3877579>
Ogunleye, Tolagbe. “African American Folklore: Its Role in Reconstructing African American History.” Journal of Black Studies. Vol. 27, No. 4 (March 1997): 435-455. JSTOR.21 Feb 2009. http://www.jstor.org/stable/2784725
Schiele, Jerome H. “Mutattions of Eurcentric Domination and Their Implications for African American Resistance.” Journal of Black Studies. Vol. 32, No. 4 (March 2002): 439-463. JSTOR. 21 Feb. 2009. < http://www.jstor.org/stable/3180885>
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