Book Review: Black Feminist Politics from Kennedy to Clinton by Duchess Harris

Reigniting Black Feminist Power
Review by Christine E. Hutchins

Duchess Harris, Associate Professor of American Studies at Macalester College, opens her important new book, Black Feminist Politics from Kennedy to Clinton, with a problem. In Paula Giddings's 1996 book When and Where I Enter: The Impact of Black Women on Race and Sex in America, Giddings asks, "Who has presented the political agenda for Black women?

Harris and Giddings show that the 1963 March on Washington represented an overwhelmingly male Black consciousness and Betty Friedan's 1966 Feminist Mystique an essentially middle-class and white feminist movement. Harris begins, "Since Giddings did not answer her own question, this is where I enter. I wrote this book because I wanted to take up the analysis of Black women's involvement in American political life where Giddings left off."

Harris's analysis is both hopeful and disheartening. On the one hand, Harris provides oral, archival and literary histories of Black women without whom neither the Black Power nor the feminist movements would have progressed. On the other hand, Harris demonstrates that these movements, so beholden to Black women, have never adequately or fairly represented their needs and desires. Worse, they have too often asked Black women to choose between identities, prioritizing one over others.

The insistence that they choose may be Black women's worst dilemma, pressured as they are under the combined weight of racism, sexism and homophobia. The Black Power movement often asks Black women to set aside concerns over unequal status; feminist organizations often have difficulty recognizing the ways that race factors into equations of gender and power.

Harris shows through examination of media, Congressional records and survey data that in situations in which they feel they must choose, Black women overwhelming concede gender to race. Harris demonstrates that Black women strongly backed O.J. Simpson, accused of murdering his former wife, a white woman. In the hearings on the nomination of Clarence Thomas to the U.S. Supreme Court, testimony by Anita Hill about his sexual improprieties required Black women to balance the possibility of a Black Supreme Court appointment or a gender-troubled appointment. Black women generally excused Thomas, Harris argues, "considering it more important to take a Black hero where one could be found, however flawed he might be."

Read the Full Review @ On the Issues: The Progressive Woman's Magazine

Now On YouTube--William "Sandy" Darity Chats Up the African-American Economy

Duke University Professor William "Sandy" Darity discusses the state of the African-American economy.

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NPR's Tell Me More with Michael Martin
Tuesday, November 3, 2009

Economists who follow the economic outlook for African-Americans began warning more than a year ago that a recession would hit blacks particularly hard, which has proven to be true. Unemployment among African-Americans stands at 15 percent, while the national jobless rate is just below 10 percent. Some of the nation's leading black economists are gathering this week at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and Duke University to address the disparity. William Darity, an organizer of the summit, explains the economic climate for African-Americans and ways it can be strengthened.

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Now Available on YouTube: "Office Hours with Mark Anthony Neal"

The Cutting Edge of 'Kamaal the Abstract'

Q-Tip's Return to Grace
by John Murph

This decade, many a rap and R&B artist, from Missy Elliott to Mya, have seen their albums stalled or put on permanent hold. But Q-Tip’s Kamaal/The Abstract has the dubious distinction of being one of the most delayed hip-hop records in the history of rap, nearly done under by seven long years of corporate hemming and hawing.

The story of Kamaal/The Abstract is an epic battle of creative artistic control against an increasingly homogenized and claustrophobic mainstream market.

The album, which was released last month, was originally scheduled to hit the streets in early 2002 as the follow-up to Q-Tip’s first solo, and highly controversial, album, Amplified (Arista, 1999). With Kamaal/The Abstract, there was much at stake. Longtime fans felt that for his solo debut, Q-Tip had abandoned the thoughtful verses he waxed with A Tribe Called Quest, for a decidedly more glamorous, blinged-out approach. Kamaal/The Abstract was to be Q-Tip’s return to grace

Kamaal/The Abstract was a move to show both Q-Tip returning to the more experimental approach of Tribe as well as delving deeper into the group’s jazz aesthetic, an aesthetic that made ’90s discs such as The Low End Theory and Midnight Marauders enduring classics for both hip-hop and jazz heads. On Kamaal/The Abstract, Q-Tip recruited the heavyweight talents of saxophonist/flutist Gary Thomas, alto saxophonist Kenny Garrett and guitarist Kurt Rosenwinkel, giving them plenty of room to shine. And instead of balancing the jazz equation with high-profile, hip-hop guest artists, he explored more conventional instrumentation and many times opted to sing rather than rap.

While pre-release media coverage was mixed, the underground buzz about the record generated a lot of excitement in the music world. Unfortunately, that exhilaration didn’t touch the powers that be at Arista Records, who initially kept postponing the release date. And then label execs put Kamaal on ice, arguing that it didn’t have a single hit on it.

After that, Q-Tip’s career floated, in limbo; another disc, Open (Hollywood) also stalled. It wasn’t until he pulled a Rocky Balboa last year with The Renaissance (Motown Records), that his recording career landed back on solid ground. So the thawing and release of Kamaal/The Abstract is a long time coming.

It must have been incredibly frustrating for Q-Tip to watch Kamaal/The Abstract held back while other risk-taking albums recorded later—Outkast’s Speakerboxxx/The Love Below (ironically also on Arista), Common’s Electric Circus, Gnarls Barkley’s St. Elsewhere and Kanye West’s 808s & Heartbreak—became critical and commercial successes. With Kamaal/The Abstract, Q-Tip proved himself to beprescient in challenging the status quo of what a hip-hop artist could do.

Read the Full Essay @ The Root

New York State of Mind? Alicia Keys and Shawn Carter @ the World Series

Ne-Yo Sings the Theme to 'The Princess & the Frog'

"Never Knew I Needed" will be featured during the The Princess & the Frog's ending credits. The soundtrack album will be available November 23rd, and the movie, whose action takes place in New Orleans and the Louisiana bayou, will open in theatres on December 11th. In addition to Ne-Yo's contribution, The Princess and the Frog Soundtrack boosts a colorful collection of original songs and a lively orchestral score, both composed and conducted by Randy Newman.

Sapphire Chats Up 'Push' and 'Precious' with Katie Couric

Author Sapphire talks about the new movie "Precious" inspired by her novel "Push," the process of casting the lead actress Gabourey Sidibe, and the inspirational message of the story.

Why No One Talks Back to Cathy Hughes

The empress of black radio is using public airwaves to personally attack her enemies in Congress in the name of black progress. Who's going to put her in check?

Why No One Talks Back to Cathy Hughes
by Natalie Hopkinson

If you’ve tuned in to black radio in the past few months, chances are you’ve heard “Reality Radio,” a series of announcements in which radio pioneer Cathy Hughes asks the black community to fight a new law in Congress that she claims would “murder black-owned radio.”

Her definition of homicide? Performance Rights Act (HR 848), a bill that would require radio stations to pay royalties to artists for playing their music. The potential winners and losers in the bill being considered by Congress has been a source of heated debate. But it clearly would dim the already free-falling profits of Hughes’ company Radio One, the nation’s largest chain of black radio stations.

Now, your average multimillionaire business mogul might respond to a congressional threat by heading directly to K Street to hire the most powerful lobbyist money can buy. But we are talking about Cathy Hughes, BLACK multimillionaire business mogul, someone who has a long track record of using the airwaves to throw her weight around on behalf of the Darker Nation.

Thus Hughes’ calculus for the “Reality Radio” spots goes something like this: I am a black person + my business is under threat = black people are under threat.

“This bill is not in the interest of black people!” Hughes tells the 12 million listeners who tune in to Radio One stations each week, in spots that air as many as a dozen times a day. In one episode, Hughes publicly scolds bill co-sponsor Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee of Houston for assuring radio execs that HR 848 would not put them out of business. “She has never worked at, managed nor owned a radio station in her life,” Hughes says. “So how could she possibly know anything about what it takes or doesn’t take to operate a broadcasting facility?”

Read the Full Essay @ The Root

Crisis in the Village? The Morehouse Dress Code

Crisis in the Village? The Morehouse College Dress Code

Mark Anthony Neal of NewBlackMan is joined by David Ikard (Florida State University), Simone Drake (Ohio State University) and Jeffrey McCune (University of Maryland) in a discussion of the Morehouse College Dress Code.

Listen HERE

The Unmasking of Mike Tyson

The Unmasking of Iron Mike
By Stephane Dunn

Oprah’s show has rarely attempted to provide a platform where intimate portraits of black men and radical dialogue about black masculinity with black men take place nor of course, do we see this often enough in popular culture and mass media. But two recent shows-dialogues with former infamous heavyweight Mike Tyson do a lot towards making up this deficit.

On the first show, Mike and Oprah sat and talked-Oprah in typical form anticipating some answers, but the allure of the show weren’t in the answers to burning questions like why Mike bit off Evander Holyfield’s ear or quintessential philosophical Oprah guru questions: ‘what have you learned’ from this or that. No, it was simply the unadorned humanity of Mike Tyson. Like the recent documentary Tyson (2008), in essence a long commentary on his life by Mike, it was almost too uncomfortable to watch, a former symbol of tough American and especially black American masculinity naked to the world in a way that supposedly true men are not supposed to be. With his powerful punch and that seemingly unwavering scary demeanor, Mike was the last true American heavyweight celebrity when he became the youngest heavyweight ever at age twenty.

After his fall from being a three hundred million dollar media darling, including that marriage debacle with actress Robin Givens, a rape conviction and three year prison sentence, divorces, and that ear biting episode, Mike seemed bound to be written off as yet another former great performer turned into a tragic black male, social monster-public joke. But Mike is having his most raw public showing yet. Without his gloves and that menacing mask, “iron” Mike’s words and tears, his obvious confusion and that painful desire to be free of suffering and his accompanying demons (drugs, womanizing, anger . . .) has the potential to earn him a new audience and a new public role. Ironically, as Mike made clear on the second show with Evander Holyfield, fame is the least thing he seeks.

Most striking was Mike’s inability to fully articulate his pain and the demons he does battle with daily including at that very moment. His ‘I don’t knows’ in response to such topics as the recent death of his young daughter highlighted his struggle not only with words but within himself. That continuous break in his voice suggested the telling tears that seemed to threaten to overtake Mike at any second. He was so extraordinarily stripped of any subterfuge, of the willingness to lie or seemingly of knowing that most men, indeed many women and men would have clung to the mask rather than sit their fully clothed but soul naked on a show that has become sort of an ultimate way that men jokingly [and seriously] distinguish men and masculinity from the so-called soap opera-like feminine emotionality that they equate with Oprah’s female dominated viewership and show style.

Mike humanized not only himself but the emotional vulnerability that we are not often privy to viewing through the prism of America’s heterosexual tough guy masculine ethos. In admitting that he is a hurting, struggling, but feeling human being and man, Mike provides a more powerful entryway into deconstructing narrow images and narratives of masculinity than any academic theory ever could. Furthermore, Mike, ironically, is actually a useful model for the black masculine street codes that require young black men to adapt a cool, dangerous posturing that’s wreaking havoc on themselves and their community.

With Mike so obviously involved in the greatest fight for his life, one can’t help but to hope that this broken brother can be rebuilt into the new man, the new being that he so desperately wants to become. For Mike’s sake, here’s hoping he gets enough rounds to truly, in his words, “win.”

***

Stephane Dunn, Ph.D, MFA, is currently an Assistant Professor in the English Department at Morehouse College. She has also taught at Ohio State University. A scholarly and creative writer, she specializes in film, popular culture, literature and African American studies. She is the author of articles and commentaries and the book, Baad Bitches & Sassy Supermamas: Black Power Action Films (University of Illinois Press 2008).

Black Women's Health and Domestic Violence

Black men need to wake up to the facts on our women's health
by Mark Anthony Neal

October is both Breast Cancer Awareness Month as well as Domestic Abuse Awareness Month and, on the surface, the two seem to have little in common except concern for the quality of women's lives. Most men understand that breast cancer and domestic violence represent forms of crisis in the lives of black women, but I'd like to suggest that our dismissive attitude towards women's health care issues represent a form of abuse itself.

According to the Chicago Foundation for Women "violence against women and girls is a cradle-to-grave epidemic." The Institute on Domestic Violence in the African-American Community at the University of Minnesota found that black women were 30 percent more likely to be subject to domestic violence than white women and 250 percent more likely to be the subject of such violence than men. Additionally, black women account for more than 20 percent of the homicides associated with domestic violence despite only representing 8 percent of the national population.

Thankfully, there is now a generation of men, including activists and educators like Jackson Katz, Quentin Walcott, director of the CONNECT's Community Empowerment Program in New York, Ulester Douglass of Men Stopping Violence in Georgia and filmmaker Byron Hurt who are providing leadership in getting men of all races to understand their complicity in violence against women. It is still a struggle to get men to speak out against violence against women, but the aforementioned men represent tremendous growth in that regard.

Thanks to organizations like Susan G. Komen for the Cure, the foundation behind the pink ribbons and wrist bands so prominently featured during Breast Cancer Awareness Month, society is beginning to grapple with the disproportionate effect of the disease on black women, who, while less likely to get the disease than their white peers, are far more likely to die from it.

There are lots of reasons for the discrepancies between black and white women, but I'd like to highlight the roles that black women play as caretakers and nurturers in our communities. Also, black women are seemingly more willing to address the high incidence of hypertension and prostate disease among black men, often at the expense of addressing their own health issues.

Ironically, few black men seem to take the same interest in black women's health concerns or their own health issues for that matter. Men have been socialized to think of diseases like breast cancer, fibroids and osteoporosis, as simply examples of "women's diseases." Some men are likely to dismiss diseases that disproportionately affect women, because they were told as boys that it was "mommy's time of the month," distancing them from women's health issues. Nevertheless, black men must take greater responsibility in increasing their awareness of diseases that afflict their mothers, sisters, daughters, wives and friends.

For example, some studies have shown that 80 percent of all black women suffer from some form of fibroid disease, yet most black men are oblivious to the effects of the disease. Could you imagine a disease that afflicted 80 percent of black men that black women would be largely ignorant of?

In many ways our willing ignorance about black women's health issues represents a form of abuse. As healthcare issues remain critical to black America, it is incumbent on black men to get serious about finding out about the diseases that affect the women in our communities with the same passion that some of us have begun to address domestic violence.

Originally Published @ theGrio.com

Issues Beyond the Morehouse College Dress Code

Morehouse’s Crossroads Has Nothing To Do With ‘Ghetto Gear’ or Cross-Dressing
by Frank Leon Roberts

The conversation regarding the new dress-code policy at Morehouse College has been hijacked by a vociferous gang of socially conservative black pundits: some of them simply politically misguided, others merely proud homophobes; a few of them the ideological love-children of Ward Connerly and Bill Cosby. In the short week and a half since I became the first writer to report the news of Morehouse’s new policy, the college has become the subject of an intensifying national debate regarding the role that style plays in producing (or constraining) black male substance.

By now, there is no need to explain what went “down” at Morehouse. You already know. But while you may have already heard the details of Morehouse’s new “no grills or purses” policy, it’s quite possible that you have yet to hear an impassioned defense of grillz and purses in the spirit of Morehouse’s most illustrious progenitors.

There are those who have argued that it is inappropriate to incite a national public dialogue about what’s happening at a private, independently funded college. In the blogosphere, there have been comments in recent days such as “What goes on at Morehouse is a private affair between its students, alumni and administrators. There is nothing illegal about a private school enforcing a dress code. Any student who is unhappy with the dress code has the liberty to leave.”

These voices are misguided and unsophisticated. Morehouse College is much more than simply a “private institution;” it is a black cultural pillar. In other words, the institution we call “Morehouse” is quite similar to the institution we call “the black church.” One does not have to be a member of these institutions in order to be affected by what goes on within their walls. Given Morehouse’s stature as a historical pillar, all African-American men (not just those who are students or alumni of the institution) have an ethical obligation to contribute to this national dialogue about the politics of the college’s policies—especially in instances where it promotes a climate of rampant anti-ghetto-culture classism and femiphobia.

Read the Full Essay @ The Root.com