UC Berkeley Black Graduate Student Association

Barack v. Hillary

2007-02-01T14:31:00.000-08:00

And they're off! Its Barack Obama vs. Hillary Clinton in the race for the presidency. A lot of to do has been made of the showdown between the two; A black man and a woman both have a serious chance for the presidency. Have you begun to lean toward either candidate? Is there a Republican or independent candidate that has caught your eye? Most importantly, will Black people always be counted on to vote Democrat?

Are African-American kids worth saving?

2007-01-21T06:02:00.000-08:00

On any given weekday afternoon, a crowd of students, mostly African-American, gather at the sidewalks and bus stops of Shattuck Avenue. Some are loud and boisterous and walk around aimlessly even though the school bell has signaled the time to return to class. Most are concerned with fleeting matters rather than education and see school not as a necessity, but an arena for social gathering.

Is there any reason to care anymore about a generation more concerned with bling and self-gratification than knowledge and self-improvement? Some, like media mogul Oprah Winfrey, have given up the hope of educating the latest generation of African-American children. When asked why she built her $40 million dollar school for girls in South Africa rather than America, Oprah told journalists:

"I became so frustrated with visiting inner-city schools that I just stopped going. The sense that you need to learn just isn't there. If you ask the kids what they want or need, they will say an iPod or some sneakers. In South Africa, they don't ask for money or toys. They ask for uniforms so they can go to school."

Is Oprah right? Should we stop caring for a generation that many feel doesn't care about itself? Or should we persist in educating the young black leaders of tomorrow?

Panel Suggests Brown Univ. Atone for Ties to Slavery

2006-10-19T22:20:00.000-07:00

I just stumbled on this article on the NY Times website and wanted to hear your views. It is ironic because just a few days ago I had a great conversation with friends regarding the reparations debate, one of whom suggested our generation is uniquely poised to address the issue of reparations. I think this article illustrates that there are possibilities for developing creative, and practical remedies on the questions of who should pay, and to whom should the benefits go?

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/10/19/education/19brown.html?em&ex=1161489600&en=0fcd84a51ea7cc7d&ei=5087%0A

Just the other day I also heard about a case in the 7th Circuit Court of Appeals for reparations. The information below was forwarded to me:

The Seventh Circuit is currently hearing oral argument in regards to a reparations case filed by a pro se plaintiff against 9 major corporations including Bank of America, JP Morgan, Union Pacific, etc. The nature of the complaint as argued by Plaintiff is that the nine corporations benefitted from the African Slave trade and as result have become mult-million dollar corporations while African Americans continue to be impoverished. If the plaintiff succeeds, a trust would be set up for the descendants of African Slaves.

I was also sent the PDF for oral arguments but it is quite large - email me privately if you'd like for me to forward it to you.

Your thoughts?

New book by Juan Williams

2006-10-08T22:39:00.000-07:00

Many of you probably know of Juan Williams. He's a well known black journalist who regularly appears on many TV and cable show shows and is a correspondent for NPR. He is also known for writing the companion book to the "Eyes on the Prize" TV series (now being aired again on PBS). He's always been pretty left-leaning in his politics--that is until his most recent book called Enough: The Phony Leaders, Dead-End Movements, and Culture of Failure That Are Undermining Black America -- and What We Can Do About It. Yes, that's the entire title. In the book he takes a similar position to Cosby's while also flaming the likes of Jackson, Sharpton, and the reparations movement among other leaders and issues. His bottom line is we have been hanging on to an outdated and harmful culture of victimhood. You can hear some of what he has to say about this during his NPR interview. And to keep it interesting, here's a recent LA Times article critiquing Williams and Cosby.

So what do you all think? Is Big Juan selling out or keeping it real?

White Parents - Black Children

2006-08-18T11:22:00.000-07:00

Peace all - Im interested in your comments/ ideas/ rants on this New York Times article!

I've posted the article here, but there is an interesting slide show on the NYTimes site. There is also a response to this article from TRA writers and activists on my blog.

lisa marie
http://birthproject.wordpress.com

====================
Breaking Through Adoption’s Racial Barriers

By LYNETTE CLEMETSON and RON NIXON

When Martina Brockway and Mike Timble, a white couple in Chicago, decided to adopt a child, Ms. Brockway went to an adoption agency presentation at a black church to make it clear they wanted an African-American baby.

Their biological daughter, Rumeur, 3, is accumulating black dolls in preparation for her new brother or sister. Black-themed children’s books like “Please, Baby, Please” by the filmmaker Spike Lee and his wife, Tonya Lewis Lee, share shelf space with Elmo and Dr. Seuss.

But the couple’s decision provoked some uneasy responses. One of Mr. Timble’s white friends asked, “Aren’t there any white kids available?”

Ms. Brockway’s black friends were supportive. “But,” she said, “I also sensed that there was maybe something they weren’t saying.”

Mr. Timble cut in. “Like maybe they were thinking, ‘What do these people think they are doing?’ ”

Ms. Brockway and Mr. Timble are among a growing number of white couples pushing past longtime cultural resistance to adopt black children. In 2004, 26 percent of black children adopted from foster care, about 4,200, were adopted transracially, nearly all by whites. That is up from roughly 14 percent, or 2,200, in 1998, according to a New York Times analysis of data from the National Data Archive on Child Abuse and Neglect at Cornell University and from the Department of Health and Human Services.

“It is a significant increase,” said Rita Simon, a sociologist at American University, who has written several books on transracial adoption. “It is getting easier, bureaucratically and socially. With so many people going overseas, people are also increasingly saying, Wait a minute, there are children here who need to be adopted, too.”

The 2000 census — the first in which information on adoptions was collected — showed that just over 16,000 white households included adopted black children. Adoption experts say there has been a notable increase since 2000.

The reasons for the increase are varied. The Multiethnic Placement Act and its amendments prohibited federally financed agencies from denying adoption based on race. The foster care system has sharply changed in recent years and now includes financial incentives for finding more adoptive families.

The combination of legal changes and greater embracing of multicultural families — Americans have adopted more than 200,000 children from overseas in the past 15 years — have lessened resistance from both blacks and whites. The long wait for white children and the high costs of international adoptions — typically $15,000 to $35,000 — also play a role.

And agencies are offering courses to help adoptive parents enter the process with more cultural openness and awareness.

Ms. Brockway and Mr. Timble decided to adopt after a physically and emotionally wrenching first pregnancy — their daughter was delivered at 25 weeks. They did not want to deal with the long wait for a white infant, and adopting from overseas did not appeal to them.

“Some people see Asian or other ethnicities as closer to white, more acceptable, easier,” said Ms. Brockway, a teacher. “That’s just not us. We feel like we have the open arms and minds to be a good match to an African-American child.”

In practice, however, decisions about adoption placements are still influenced by racial considerations, many families say. Since 1994, white prospective parents have filed, and largely won, more than two dozen discrimination lawsuits, according to state and federal court records. Many more disputes have been settled in arbitration.

The loaded jumble of viewpoints and anxieties related to transracial adoptions of black children are complex and often contradictory.

Rhetoric around the issue has softened considerably since the National Association of Black Social Workers, in 1972, likened whites adopting black children to “cultural genocide.” The group removed the genocide reference from its policy statement in 1994, but it still recommends same-race placements. And organizations like the Child Welfare League have argued in recent years that while race need not be the primary consideration in placements, it should not be disregarded.

Many blacks still worry that white families cannot equip black children to navigate the country’s complicated racial landscape.

“Adoption, like everything else in this country, gets filtered through the lens of race,” said Joseph Crumbley, a black social worker in Philadelphia and a consultant on transracial adoptions. “For blacks, it is about how comfortable can whites be in dealing with the issue of race when their race is in conflict with the race of the child.”

At the same time, some blacks view international adoptions by whites as a slight to black children in need of permanent and stable homes. “I can’t help but wonder why Angelina and Brad can’t adopt an African-American baby here with so many in need,” said Ishia Granger, 36, a black friend of Ms. Brockway.

More than 45,000 black children were waiting to be adopted from foster care in 2004. There are no reliable national figures for private adoptions.

Advocates of black adoption criticize adoption agencies as not doing enough to recruit black families. But one strategy agencies use, in part, to recruit black families — reducing fees for African-American adoptions — seems to some critics like a literal devaluing of black children. And while current adoption laws impose penalties on federally financed agencies that discriminate, there are no penalties for failure to identify black adoptive families.

Both black and white families, at times, feel discriminated against. Charlene White, a black adoptive mother in Richmond, Va., said that when she and her husband, Malachi, began the process in 1997, a counselor asked them about drug and criminal records — questions a white couple they knew who were also adopting were not asked.

“It was definitely because we were black,” Ms. White said.

A white judge initially denied Nick and Emily Mebruer’s petition to adopt a black child, ruling that the Mebruers, a white couple who live in rural Lebanon, Mo., were “uniquely unqualified” to parent a black child because of their limited interaction with black people and culture. The ruling was overturned, and their daughter, Maggie, is now 3.

“We felt like it was an indictment of us and our entire community,” said Mrs. Mebruer, a family doctor, as Maggie played with a black doll in the center of the living room and danced to the Australian children’s group the Wiggles. “It was assuming that we didn’t have the desire or the capacity to learn.”

The Mebruers did not explicitly set out to adopt a black child. But when the Kansas City office of Catholic Charities called one spring afternoon to say that an infant was available and that they needed the couple’s decision within hours, the race of the child, Mr. Mebruer said, was secondary.

White families adopting black children are increasingly learning that the “love is enough” approach to adoption that families bring to the process is often met with skepticism.

Psychologists, researchers and adoptees themselves say many children adopted transracially in past decades suffered from philosophies focused on assimilation, with little or no acknowledgment of racial and cultural conflict.

Robert O’Connor, 39, who was raised by a white family in Rush City, Minn., recalled his struggles growing up in a small town with few other blacks. Throughout his youth, he said, he felt awkward around other blacks. He did not understand black trends in fashion or music or little things like playing the dozens, the oral tradition of dueling insults.

“I always felt like I had this ‘A’ on my forehead, this adoptee, that people could see from a far distance that I was different,” said Mr. O’Connor, who now researches transracial adoptions as assistant professor of social work at Metropolitan State University in St. Paul.

Today, some agencies are working to avoid mistakes of the past. Ms. Brockway and Mr. Timble are adopting through the Cradle, a Chicago agency that gives transracial adoptive parents extensive counseling as well as a course on “conspicuous families.”

One exercise meant to assess parents’ comfort level in confronting racial issues lists a roster of stereotypes including, “lazy,” “passive” and “athletic,” and asks parents to assign them to the race or ethnic group to which they are often applied.

Judy Stigger, a counselor at the Cradle and herself a white adoptive mother of two black children, now adults, makes the issues tangible to prospective parents by relating personal stories. She tells about the time when her son, then a teenager, reached into her purse at a McDonald’s and a clerk called security; and the time when her daughter began crying while looking through congratulatory cards sent by family and friends when they took her home.

“Was I supposed to have been white?” her daughter, then in the third grade, asked. Ms. Stigger had never noticed that the children on all of the cards were white.

“It’s about getting people to realize that they should not be thinking about being, as one 8-year-old put it to me, ‘a white family with a weird child,’ but a multiracial family,” Ms. Stigger said. “The way most white people use the term ‘colorblind’ is just silly. We want to create color aware families, not colorblind families.”

Ms. Brockway worked for years in predominantly black schools and now tutors children in foster care. Mr. Timble, who owns a promotional printing business, has a cousin who has adopted four black children. They live in an ethnically diverse section of northwest Chicago.

But after working through the adoption process, Ms. Brockway said, they are considering moving to a neighborhood with more black professionals and finding a more diverse church.

For some adopting families, public reaction defies assumptions. Katherine and Ryan Liebl were dining recently in the Oak Park neighborhood of Chicago, where they live, when a black family asked them where they had adopted their son, Matthew, now 8 months old.

They responded that he was from Chicago and steeled for disapproval. Instead, they said, the family cheered: “Yeah, domestic baby. Good for you!”

The Liebls, who adopted through the Cradle, were chosen by black birth parents from profiles submitted by black and white adoptive families. The same birth parents had previously chosen a black couple, Dana and Drayden Hilliard, to adopt two older children. So the Liebls’ son Matthew has two biological siblings being raised by a black family in a nearby suburb.

The two families have become friends and are raising the children as siblings, getting them together about once a month.

The Hilliards said they were surprised that the birth mother chose a white family. “But wherever a child can find love, black, white or purple, that is all right with me,” said Ms. Hilliard, 39, a program analyst. “I do feel that if parents adopt transracially they owe it to their child to keep them connected with their heritage. But we are happy to be a resource for that.”

The two families do not know for sure what attracted the birth mother to them, but they said worldliness seemed to have trumped race. The birth mother commented to each that their expressed love for travel would offer her children a chance to explore the world that she never had.

“We feel like we struck gold,” said Mr. Liebl, 31, a lawyer. “Matthew has these siblings that he will know and this level of contact between us that is authentic and not forced.”

In the personal letters that the Cradle requires adoptive parents to submit to birth parents, those adopting transracially are asked to include examples of how they would bring diversity to a child’s life.

Ms. Brockway said it had been a difficult exercise. She wants to include pictures with black friends, but not too many. She wants to write about her black students, Mike’s black relatives and co-workers, their activities in black communities — but not too much.

“I don’t want to appear over the top, trying too hard, like we think we’re cool because we have black friends.” she said. “And who is to say what any birth mother will think is important or how any one views or defines diversity and culture. These things are different for everyone.”

Sabrina I. Pacifici contributed additional reporting.

Bill Cosby vs. Poor Black America

2006-08-01T19:44:00.000-07:00

Hey everyone, hope you are all enjoying your summer. I came across this Op Ed piece in the Post by Michael Erik Dyson. It was written in response to the recent and ongoing controversial remarks made by Bill Cosby about "poor blacks".

Here is an excerpt from the article:

"Ever since he battered poor blacks two years ago in his infamous remarks on the 50th anniversary of Brown v. Board of Education , Bill Cosby has been taking to the road to spread his bitter gospel to all who will listen. In rigged town-hall meetings, Cosby assembles community folk and experts who agree with his take on black poverty: that it's the fault of the poor themselves.

It's often difficult to point out just how harmful that sentiment is, because most black folk do believe strongly in taking their destiny into their own hands. They believe in hard work and moral decency. They affirm the need for education and personal discipline. When they hear Cosby say that poor black folk should go to work, stay out of jail, raise their children properly and make sure they go to school, they nod their heads in agreement.

But it's one thing to say that personal responsibility is crucial to our survival. It's another to pretend that it's the only thing that matters. The confusion between the two positions is what makes Cosby's blame-the-poor tour so destructive. By convincing poor blacks that their lot in life is purely of their own making, Cosby draws on harsh conservative ideas that overlook the big social factors that continue to reinforce poverty: dramatic shifts in the economy, low wages, chronic underemployment, job and capital flight, downsizing and outsourcing, and crumbling inner-city schools.

None of these can be overcome by the good behavior of poor blacks. As historian Robin D.G. Kelley argues, "All the self-help in the world will not eliminate poverty or create the number of good jobs needed to employ the African American community."

Some talking points:
1) do u agree with Dyson's assertion that Bill Cosby has taken on the persona of the conservative idealogue with his assumptions about poor blacks?
2) Are factors like social injustice, low wages, unemployment and poor educational opportunities accountable for black poverty or is it the result of personal responsibility/moral depravity, or something else entirely?
3) Are Cosby's conservative ideals embraced by the Black middle class as a whole?

For the full article check out this link:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/07/20/AR2006072001631.html

For those of you who don't know Dr. Dyson, he is a professor from UPENN who has authored several books on race relations. One of his more recent books was released last year entitled "Is Bill Cosby Right? Or Has the Black Middle Class Lost Its Mind?". A book which deconstructs Cosby's 2005 NAACP speech.

A Leader By Example

2006-06-30T12:43:00.000-07:00

Aight, folks so I wanted to share something good today as part of my ongoing commitment to step outside the negativity and begin to reconstruct images of Black males in America.

I came across an article recounting one Black male's story of leadership from the "Being a Black Man" series in the Washington Post. (Thanks Mike for forwarding the link to us) I thought the story was pretty inspirational and I hope it will encourage you all to think of what you can do (or already are doing), just for today, to be a role model. Enjoy!

Peace,
Erica

"Be the change you wish to see in the world"-Mahatma Ghandi

A Leader By Example

By Jabari Asim
Tuesday, June 27, 2006; 1:08 PM

WASHINGTON -- Let's say you're an African-American man, fortysomething, educated and a happily married homeowner.

You're more familiar than you care to be with news reports about black men doing wrong. You may have seen some of that wrongdoing up-close, or even found yourself staring at a brown face from the wrong end of a gun.

In any case, you don't need to see statistics to confirm what you already know. So you just shake your head when you read about a recent Washington Post survey which found that one in four black male respondents had been victims of a violent crime. You sigh when the same poll shows that a third of never-married black men have fathered a child. You nod knowingly when you read that "better-educated, affluent black men are most likely to criticize black men for not taking education seriously enough."

After all, you've been there. You live there. Unless you're a man like Sylvester Fulton.

Fulton, a 46-year-old Memphis resident, was recently named Big Brother of the Year by Big Brothers Big Sisters of America. He has been a Big Brother to Jeremy Moore, 15, for more than four years.

Fulton had plenty of excuses when he was invited to be a Big Brother in 2001: "I was a full-time grad student. I had just found that I had diabetes. I had a wife and daughter. And I had this real bad habit of playing golf whenever I could."

Fulton got involved while president of the Memphis chapter of Alpha Phi Alpha, the nation's oldest black Greek-letter college fraternity. The group has a national partnership with Big Brothers Big Sisters.

He felt "a little nervous and a little excited" the first time he met Jeremy, but they soon established a rapport. "They do an excellent job matching you with children you have something in common with," Fulton said. "When I saw his face I could see that he was so happy to have a Big Brother." The two go to sporting contests, take road trips or just hang out. Fulton said he is always on the lookout for "teachable moments."...

FOR FULL ARTICLE check out the link:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/blog/2006/06/27/BL2006062700733.html

Terrorism is color blind...

2006-06-24T01:11:00.000-07:00

Black people can be terrorists too apparently.

Here's the story from AP:

Seven men accused of trying to blow up the Sears Tower with help from al-Qaida never actually made contact with the terrorist network and were instead caught in an FBI sting involving an informant who posed as an al-Qaida operative, authorities said Friday.

Federal prosecutors said the men — who operated out of a warehouse in Miami's blighted Liberty City section — took an oath to al-Qaida and plotted to create an "Islamic Army" bent on violence against the United States. Five of those arrested are U.S. citizens.

Attorney General Alberto Gonzales stressed that there was no immediate threat in either Chicago or Miami because the group did not have explosives or other materials it was seeking.

"This group was more aspirational than operational," FBI Deputy Director John Pistole said.

Nevertheless, Gonzales said Thursday's arrests underscored the danger of "homegrown terrorists" who "view their home country as the enemy."

Those arrested ranged in age from 22 to 32 and included a legal immigrant from Haiti and a Haitian who was in this country illegally. Investigators said all members of the alleged plot were in custody on conspiracy charges.

"We are confident that we have identified every individual who had the intent of posing a threat to the United States," said R. Alexander Acosta, U.S. attorney in Miami.

Five of the defendants, including alleged ringleader Narseal Batiste, appeared in federal court in Miami on Friday under heavy security. They were brought in and out in single file, chained together at the wrists and wearing ankle chains.

"It's an example of the philosophy of prevention. These arrests were made during the talking stage, long before any bomb-making stage," said Kendall Coffey, a former U.S. attorney in Florida. "While they may be seen as bungling wannabes, they are potentially dangerous wannabes who, based on the allegations, were pursuing extremely dangerous plans."

Joseph Phanor, the father of defendant Stanley Grant Phanor, said he did not believe "anything they say about" his son.

"This boy, he's not a violent boy. He never got into trouble. He didn't want to kill people," the elder Phanor said. Court records show that his son was convicted of carrying a concealed firearm in 2002 and sentenced to two years' probation.

Prosecutors said Batiste began recruiting and training the others in November. The FBI learned of the plot from someone the defendants tried to recruit, authorities said. The FBI then arranged for an informant of Arabic descent to pass himself off as an al-Qaida operative.

Batiste met several times in December with the informant and asked for boots, uniforms, machine guns, radios, vehicles and $50,000 to help him build an "Islamic Army," the indictment said.

In February, Batiste told the informant that he and his five soldiers wanted to attend al-Qaida training and planned a "full ground war" against the United States in order to "kill all the devils we can," according to the indictment. His mission would "be just as good or greater than 9/11," it said.

Prosecutors said the men plotted to blow up Chicago's Sears Tower, the tallest building in America, and other buildings such as the FBI offices in North Miami Beach. They were charged with conspiracy to destroy the structures and to wage war against the U.S. government.

Batiste and a co-defendant provided the informant with photographs of the FBI building, as well as video footage of other Miami government buildings, and discussed a plot to bomb the FBI building, the indictment said.

Terrorists or too much time on their hands? Or both. Do you feel safer?

Are Blacks more homophobic?

2006-06-09T19:35:00.000-07:00

In some black churches the musical director is gay, half the choir is gay, heck, the pastor might even be gay. Yet, in some Black churches messages of homophobia rain down from the pulpit. Prominent black pastors like T.D. Jakes have joined Republican leaders in condemning same-sex marriage and more broadly homosexuality. Does this mean that blacks are more homophobic?

The Republican Party hopes that by rallying Black people against homosexuality, it will increase is voter base as evidenced in the following article.

A highly organized, well-funded campaign led by right-wing evangelical Christian groups, including the Traditional Values Coalition and the Family Research Council, in conjunction with the Republican Party machine is targeting African Americans. The goal is to divide Black voters by emphasizing and manipulating views on gays and lesbians, according to a spokesperson for the National Lesbian and Gay Task Force (NGLTF).

Republican loyalists and officials have sought to spread an anti-gay message in African American churches in order to convince Black voters to "come back home" to the Republican Party.

http://www.politicalaffairs.net/article/articleview/3132/1/160/

Dr. Cornel West and singer John Legend discuss homosexuality and the black community here.

Black people can be religious, but does that necessarily mean that we are more homophobic than our counterparts?

Black B!+c#e$

2006-06-01T10:37:00.000-07:00

"I don't want another black bitch."

Tyra Banks, host of UPN's America's Next Top Model, uttered these words to a contestant whom she perceived to be disagreeable and bitchy. The contestant would have joined a plethora of "black bitches" on reality TV, including The Apprentice's Omarosa Manigault-Stallworth, Coral Smith of MTV's The Real World, America's Next Top Model's Robin Manning and Camille McDonald, Alicia from Survivor: Australian Outback and "New York" from Flavor of Love. It seems positive black women on reality TV shows are much fewer in number than their feistier counterparts.

Given the depiction of black women in reality television, is it safe to say that producers and American television viewers are under the impression that most, if not all, Black women are all neck-rolling, finger-snapping, well, bitches? Or is it that Black women on television--and in the real world--play into these stereotypes?

Kathy Griffin, a white, female comedian, recently aired her one woman stand up comedy show called "Strong Black Woman." In an Palm Beach Post article, Griffin articulated why she gave her show that title.

Question: OK, the last time I checked, you were white, yet your recent Bravo special is called Kathy Griffin: Strong Black Woman. What's the deal?

Answer: I'm a strong black woman on the inside. I'm also kind of a gay man on the inside, so I have a few different things going on on the inside.

Q: What's it like being a strong black woman?

A: Well, you got the weight of the world on your shoulders. Oprah and I have a lot in common that way. We're changing the world, we're fighting with our weight, we're very busy.

Q: What's the difference between a strong black woman and a strong white woman?

A: A strong black woman has just about had it. It's a lot of, "I'm calling you out on your (stuff)" and that's a big part of what my act is. It's, like, "OK, I'm just going to say it, we're all thinking it, and I'm just going to say it." It's a struggle. I struggle here in Hollywood. I struggle to be heard. I hope you think this is funny.

Do you agree with her assessment? Is calling oneself a "strong black woman" okay?

Origins of Hip Hop Conservatism

2006-05-23T23:27:00.000-07:00

Continuing with the theme of hip hop, I came across this article today about the "Origins of Hip Hop Conservatism"

http://www.infozine.com/news/stories/op/storiesView/sid/14384/

or what I like to label as the ongoing paternalistic battle between old and new skool, east vs. west coast, etc. I, of course, have my opinions and biases on the subject (i.e. I was born in Cali after 1980=) but I'd love to hear what y'all think.

Erica

Here is an excerpt of the article:

"We are not going to purge hip-hop conservatives, but we can struggle against conservatism in hip-hop.
The concrete basis for the ideas guiding this conservatism is historically valid, but it is a restrictive ethos which prevents a new generation of hip-hoppers from truly appreciating our current circumstances.The entirety of hip-hop is an array of contradictory ideas and materializations. This I have strived to drive home consistently in my works. It lacks, however, a responsible and educated Left which can give an accurate context to hip-hop and fill the void left by the marginal Right.It is important that the reader clearly understands that the classification of a Left and a Right within hip-hop is not to make synonymous with the Left and Right of the macro-political spectrum. The usage of the terms 'Left' and 'Right' merely situates a body of ideas within hip-hop that represent either a progressive force or a reactionary/conservative force; reactionary force palpably composing the Right.If you will, and with hopes to avoid being pigeonholed as a Communist, because I think George Will, a true Old Guard conservative would know this, I would like to say something about Marx. Marx was a student of Hegel and was familiar with every subtlety of his work, but he was hesitant to allow just anyone to critique Hegel because of his skepticism about their own familiarity with and appreciation of this monumental German philosopher. I oftentimes feel the same regarding the conservatism within hip-hop; that not just anyone can lay down the sword unless they know or struggle to know all the characteristics of hip-hop. This has compelled me to write critically about this knee-jerk leftover predisposition which hovers over hip-hop like a black cloud. It simply is not marginal enough to be not annoying.The right-wing of hip-hop-that is the intellectuals who preserve hip-hop in a magical past; the writers who, like Pan-Africanists fancying the constructing of boats to sail "back" to a mythical Africa, want to, in People Under The Stairs fashion, float us back to the "good ole' days" when it was "all about fun"- is no longer able to express hip-hop in its newest and fullest of forms."

Issue of the Week: Link between rap music and alcohol use

2006-05-19T11:08:00.000-07:00

Alright, ya'll this is my last "issue of the week" post for the blog before leaving UCB and passing the task on to Mark Luckie, the new official tech cat. As I do daily, a couple of weeks ago I was listening to the NPR show, "News and Notes with Ed Gordon", a show focused on African American issues (highly recommended by the way--11am on 91.7FM). UCB's own, Denise Herd, was speaking about her research on the link between alcohol use and rap music. I thought it would be a great topic to discuss on the blog. Here is a link NPR's website where you can listen to an 8.5 minute clip of the show (click on "listen") and read a summary of recent study. Here is a description of the show segment taken from the NPR website:

"A recent study by the Prevention Research Center of the Pacific Institute for Research and Evaluation in Berkeley, Calif., suggests young people who listen to rap and hip-hop are more likely to abuse alcohol and commit violent acts. Ed Gordon discusses the issue with Denise Herd, an associate professor at the University of California Berkeley School of Public Health, and David Jernigan, executive director of the Center on Alcohol Marketing and Youth at Georgetown University."

Several UCB students have research interests in Hip Hop so it would especially be great to hear some of your perspectives!

Issue of the Week: "White Guilt and the Western Past"

2006-05-14T09:19:00.000-07:00

So, this week's issue comes from a piece forwarded to me from Bryan Tollin. Once again, some provocative material to get you all talking. It's an article by the controversial Shelby Steele titled "White Guilt and the Western Past: Why is America so delicate with the enemy". If you haven't read any of Shelby Steele's work, you are sure to have a strong negative or positive reaction to him so please post comments on the blog. Here's an excerpt (go to the link for the whole thing):

"There is something rather odd in the way America has come to fight its wars since World War II.

For one thing, it is now unimaginable that we would use anything approaching the full measure of our military power (the nuclear option aside) in the wars we fight. And this seems only reasonable given the relative weakness of our Third World enemies in Vietnam and in the Middle East. But the fact is that we lost in Vietnam, and today, despite our vast power, we are only slogging along--if admirably--in Iraq against a hit-and-run insurgency that cannot stop us even as we seem unable to stop it. Yet no one--including, very likely, the insurgents themselves--believes that America lacks the raw power to defeat this insurgency if it wants to. So clearly it is America that determines the scale of this war. It is America, in fact, that fights so as to make a little room for an insurgency.

Certainly since Vietnam, America has increasingly practiced a policy of minimalism and restraint in war. And now this unacknowledged policy, which always makes a space for the enemy, has us in another long and rather passionless war against a weak enemy.

Why this new minimalism in war? It began, I believe, in a late-20th-century event that transformed the world more profoundly than the collapse of communism: the world-wide collapse of white supremacy as a source of moral authority, political legitimacy and even sovereignty..."

Another Kind of Brotha

2006-05-09T10:56:00.000-07:00

This is my first "official" post, although y'all may have read some of my commentary in the past. I decided to start off this week with a ray of positivity. For those of you members of the BGSA who've been around since '04, you may remember a beautiful young brotha named Ken Eisinger. Ken was a student in the MSW program at Cal and he was also my best friend. Tragically Ken's life took a terrible turn 1 year ago shortly after graduation. After battling Major Depression unsuccessfully for several months, Ken disappeared, severing all ties with family and friends, leaving only a letter of good bye. After months of police investigations we still have not located him, though I have not given up hope. This is a piece he wrote about his experience of being a Black male at the age of 23....I hope you will enjoy it and share in carrying on his memory.

Much love, respect and admiration to all you Black males out there,
Erica

One Kind of Brother, by Ken Eisinger

My consciousness about race in America began as soon as I could read. My mother used to take my cheeks between her hands and say, “Ken, repeat after me.”
“I am a beautiful black boy.”
This was my introduction to race. My mother’s unconditional love behind the mantra I had to recite. My father’s voice quietly rumbling chapters from Malcolm X’s autobiography before bedtime. When I played Star Wars, I was Lando; when I played make-believe, I was John Henry; on Halloween, I was Pharaoh Ramses II. These episodes and many more laid the foundations for my thinking about race. I did not know at the time, but my parents were circling my wagons, creating a firewall. Any parent of a black male child must account for America’s systemic marginalization and ferocious abuse of black men, anticipating perils like police brutality, prison, drugs, teen parenthood, low education level, homicide… Everything my parents did in my early years taught me to view myself as a strong, proud black male. They deliberately equipped me with psychological armor for a merciless gauntlet I would someday have to run. Someday is now.

Thoughts on being a young, black man in America
Twenty-three years later, I’m beginning to wonder if other people’s parents gave them the “black is beautiful” pep talks. I am struggling to come to grips with an ugly reality: being a young black man in America means negotiating the perpetual expectation of negativity, failure and death. What’s worse, far too many brothers are buying into ideology that leads to jail or the grave.
Because I am young and black, I am presumed to plumb the depths of the human capacity for base, animalistic behavior. From media, friends and strangers the message comes through loud and clear: I am seen as an inarticulate, unintelligent, violent, crack-dealing, weed-smoking, sexist, materialistic, adulterous, dishonest monster from a broken home in a poor neighborhood until proven otherwise. The breadth and depth of my stereotype are disconcerting, and I’m wondering where my place is in a world that sees only one kind of brother.
Ok, let’s establish the cultural script. Think Birth of a Nation. Think Black Boy. Think Tupac and DMX. The set of attitudes and behaviors young black men are thought to possess is one of America’s most distinctive and enduring icons. But for me, it is far too narrow. See, I’m not a thug. I’m a college graduate from rural Minnesota who plays Kirk Hammet guitar solos. I don’t fit the image, but no one can tell that by looking at me. Enter my everlasting paradox: a continuous reconciliation of the who-I-am with the who-you-think-I-am.
I am not a criminal, yet cops stare me down and follow my car all over town. I am not a thief, yet plainclothes security guards follow me around department stores. I’m not violent, yet a businessman who bumps into me on a crowded bus is so terrified, he almost weeps trying to apologize. I’m not a convict, yet when my job takes me to the courthouse the staff always assumes I am on trial. I don’t use drugs, yet downtown, people are always asking me for weed. When one is starving for positive affirmation, insanity becomes a very real and present possibility. If everyone expects me to behave like an animal, is that then what I am?
Expectation is significant because it is permission. The above situations send one message: be a criminal. This goes on all day, every day. Be a criminal. Be a criminal. Ubiquitous expectation becomes a palpable force, a concrete pressure. Cops and clerks don’t care that I am a waste of their time; all they see is black skin, which they equate with criminal intent. Every time someone assumes I am amoral or violent, they socialize me to behave in exactly that way. And since I get pre-judged no matter what I do, what incentive do I have not to fit into my stereotype? Each assumption contains the seductive validation and encouragement to tap into my worst impulses toward corrupt, amoral behavior.
Consider media representations of young black men for example. Nowhere is the “thug” image more reinforced than through music, movies and TV. During the average day, I will see a handful of music videos, telling me we are materialistic. I will see a couple of commercials for black movies, telling me we are inarticulate and unintelligent. I will see a news report about a rape or a murder, telling me we are violent criminals. I will hear several rap songs where the rapper proudly details how he slept with some “b*tch,” telling me we should treat women like garbage. I might see some talk show where the black male guest cheats on his girlfriend, telling me we are unethical. None of this is me. It never was, it never will be. I don’t want any part of it. I stand on the sidelines, while my brothers get brainwashed, and turn my back on my stereotype.
Tragically, ideas that are proposed innocently enough in a music video have the potential to shape the self-image of entire generations. Of all the stereotypes in America, none are so precisely designed to obstruct social maturation as the expectations (or lack thereof) placed on young black men. A young brother who hears the song “All About the Benjamins,” by Puff Daddy, and embraces the ideology of drug money and gang affiliation, is on the fast track away from school and towards the block.
Every young black man has an inherent desire for positivity, health and happiness. Drug dealers want security. Gang bangers want stability. But these young men’s environmental messages urge failure and self-destruction. Gradually, as the exterior messages outweigh the interior messages, the battle for self-definition is lost, and another kid gets swept away in the conformist hordes. According to the Hennepin County African American Men’s Project, in Hennepin County in 2002, “black men 18 to 30 were twice as likely to die and 27 times more likely to go to jail as their white counterparts.” This racial disparity is partially caused by the messages the black kids receive from their environment about their outlook on life and the monstrous pressure they are under to conform. So limited are the possibilities for black male behavior that even I — who did not grow up in the ‘hood, and have the coping skills of an adult — feel the powerful pull of street culture.
The key to survival as a black man is being able to decipher our cultural script — rip it apart — and to pick and chose which actions represent the best of black culture and which the worst. Keeping a mental filter going all day is exhausting, but the alternative is to be a statistic from the Hennepin County demographer’s office. And while school and the professional world do not guarantee a happy ending, we all know how the street life ends up.
Around the time I turned 20, I had an epiphany. I realized that while broken English and menacing scowls did afford me some small cultural capital, the realest power I had was to chose for myself how I would portray myself to the world, and that behaving in the opposite of my stereotype made people squirm exponentially more than my thug routine ever had. Rare is the person who voluntarily can conceive of an existence beyond what has been expected of him all his life. Breaking old habits seems easy compared to creating new ones out of thin air. Defining myself has been the hardest and most rewarding thing I have ever done. Letting go of the familiar is terrifying. Being an individual is exhausting. If you are too tired or too scared, you won’t budge. But if you do, new worlds open up, you see new horizons.
Today, I assume a “buffet table” approach to my own culture, selecting only those items that are positive displays and leaving the rest alone. I pretty much make up black-maleness as I go along. I emulate Christopher Priest, Aaron McGruder, Alexs Pate, Randall Keenan and Ellis Cose. Borrowing pieces from these guys, I am working on a new image of a young black man. If society is forcing me to become a law unto myself, it will be one of intellect, spirituality and wholeness. The seeds my parents planted have sprouted into maturity and self-awareness. And, one day, when I become a father, I will look deep into my son’s eyes and make him repeat after me:
“I am a beautiful black boy.”

References
John Henry, Ramses II
Birth of a Nation, Black Boy, Tupac, DMX
AfAm Men’s Project
“All About the Benjamins”
Christopher Priest, Aaron McGruder, Alexs Pate, Randall Keenan and Ellis Cose
©2001, Kenneth B. Eisinger

Issue of the Week: Blacks and Immigration Rights

2006-05-04T09:17:00.000-07:00

This week's issue is about the involvement of Blacks in the immigration rights movement. Today an article appeared in the NY Times about the unease some Blacks appear to be feeling about supporting this issue--check it out. Most of the discomfort has to do with competition for jobs and comparisons made between this movement and the Civil Rights Movement. What are your thoughts? Do you share these concerns or do you think they are off base? To what degree should we be involved in this issue and why? What are the implications for the Black community? Just some questions to get things going...

If you are interested in the history of Black/Mexican relations you can check out this article on BlackCommentator (Stephanie, thanks for bringing attention to this).

Where were we?

2006-05-02T00:56:00.000-07:00

A good friend of mine went to the rally to stop the genocide in Darfur at the National Mall this weekend. In an email to me he lamented the lack of Black people there. Then I came across this picture of the rally and thought, "Wow!" The next day in doing my daily web surf of the news I saw George Clooney as the new celebrity face of the fight against the genocide and again I thought, "Wow!" I know that the media is selective in who they choose to give attention to for issues like this which may have been the case with Clooney (Don Cheedle, who has also spoken up about this hasn't received as much attention), but I seriously doubt the person who took this picture at the rally focused in on the "White crowd". Anyway, after all of this I thought, "Where were we on this very important issue and where have we been?" I mean, it is true that we are dealing with our own struggles right here at home but does that really excuse inaction on something this major? Then after dismounting my high horse, I had to ask myself where I was and where have I been on this. My indignation quickly dissolved into embarrassment and shame. I certainly wasn't at any of the local rallies, in fact, I haven't done much of anything about this over the years that it has been occurring. How 'bout you?

www.savedarfur.org and www.darfurgenocide.org are just two places to get started with action but I know some of you bright Berkeley folk have additional resources and ideas. Please post them...

"Love Trap"

2006-04-28T00:25:00.000-07:00

Not to be confused with "Tired Black Man" (the previous post)... The filmmaker of this movie contacted BGSA in hopes of doing a sreening of the movie here. Below is his letter. Some questions related to this:
1) Is this a movie we should bring here?
2) Are we supporting Black film the way we should?
3) Are Black films too narrow?

-----------------------------------
Please allow me to introduce you to Love Trap, an award winning independent film featuring an all-African-American cast. A beautiful love story, Love Trap is simply the kind of movie that black films should be about these days; it's entertaining, socially responsible, meaningful, and inspirational. The story involves two young law students struggling to find and understand love, and it is for this reason that I have decided to tour Love Trap at colleges & universities around the country. I know that this film will speak directly into the lives of your students, and I hope that we can work together to bring „Love Trap‰ to your college.

Please take the time to visit our website www.lovetrapmovie.com to find more information about the film. Love Trap is the only film produced in 2005 that has won the Best Feature Film Award at four separate Black Film Festivals so far, and has been nominated for two more. Feel free to browse the many testimonials about the film on our Guest Book page, and please make sure you don't miss our Screenings page where, when you click the Jacksonville link, you will see a short video of various people's reactions just after watching the film. After researching our site I strongly believe that you'll agree with me when I say that everyone should see this movie-especially young black people.

Of course, I am charging a fee for this event, which includes screening the film for one or more shows and a Q&A session with me afterward. I can also host a short workshop on independent film-making, or lead a seminar about some of the more prominent issues explored in the film on the natures of love, God, male and female relationships and the often overlooked issues involving competition between friends. Ultimately, I desire this to be much more than just a typical movie night screening, and when you consider that your students will be watching the film before it is distributed mainstream, I hope you see this opportunity as I do- as a special event that your students will always remember. If you're interested in bringing Love Trap to your college, please call me to discuss the fee and travel arrangements.

I view this as a unique opportunity for the social and cultural enrichment of your student body. It is definitely worthy of your consideration, and I hope you will see the value of spending a small part of your programming budget on Love Trap, a wonderful example of independent film-making.

Issue of the Week: Black Relationships and Marriage

2006-04-25T09:48:00.000-07:00

This "issue of the week" concerns marriage and relationships in the Black community. Last month there was an article in the Washington Post titled "Marriage is for White People" that has attracted some attention. Check it out and let's get some discussion going around this important issue.

There is also a very controversial film coming out related to Black relationship issues. The clip can be seen at www.tiredblackman.com. It's been sparking quite a bit of commentary among some BGSA folks so lets get some of it on the blog.

Second Colloquium

2006-04-21T14:30:00.000-07:00

This past Wednesday we had the second colloquium involving research presentations from Dawn and Oluwakemi. Below are the abstracts of their presentations. Hopefully we can get some conversation going about their work. Feel free to post comments or questions for the presenters (whether you attended or not).

Dawn L. Williams (School of Education)
“Race-Based Reform: From Segregated Oppression to Integrated Oppression”

Abstract:
This literature review calls into question the success of the Civil Rights movement, which is associated with the integration of Black people into a white dominated society. This research shows that reforms made during this period have had disparate effects on the education and the economy of Black people. Furthermore, through a socio-historical lens this research challenges other theorists who downplay the U.S. government’s key role in the Black-white student achievement gap.

Oluwakemi M. Balogun (Department of Sociology)
“Extended Identities: Transnational Social Fields and Second-Generation Nigerian Immigrant Identity”

Abstract:
I theorize about assimilatory and transnational frameworks as simultaneous processes in the identity formation of second-generation immigrants. Rather than posing transnationalism and assimilation as diametrically opposed, I adopt a more expansive transnational social fields approach that allows for an understanding of the social connections that link the second-generation to both their parents’ homeland and country of settlement. Through interviews with Nigerian second-generation immigrants, I explore the ways in which identities and transnational social fields mutually constitute one another, arguing that identities are mediated through variable levels of insertion and active participation within transnational social fields.

Issue of the Week: Law to Segregate Omaha Schools

2006-04-20T10:14:00.000-07:00

Check out this NY Times article... Spearheaded by a Black state senator, the state legislature has approved a bill to divide the Omaha school district into three racial zones--Black, Latino, and White. He cites Black political control as his rationale for requesting the division. So what do you think about this? It would be interesting to hear perspectives from law and education students on this. Of course all are welcome to comment...

Issue of the Week: The State of Black Males

2006-04-06T12:37:00.000-07:00

Okay, so the "issue of the week" has not been so weekly. We'll get better with it...

There have been quite a few op-eds that have come out lately on the dire state of Black males. Orlando Patterson and Clarence Page are just a couple who have written on the topic. Below I have pasted Orlando Patterson's take on all of this (since you now have to pay to view on NY Times). Not only does he comment on the state of Black males but also critiques how academics go about conducting research on such issues. It's already generated quite a bit of controversy. So what say you on the issue?

Other articles:

Plight Deepens for Black Men

Black Males' Main Threat? Not Hip-Hop. by Clarence Page
-------------------------------------------------------------
A Poverty of the Mind
By ORLANDO PATTERSON

Cambridge, Mass.

SEVERAL recent studies have garnered wide attention for reconfirming the tragic disconnection of millions of black youths from the American mainstream. But they also highlighted another crisis: the failure of social scientists to adequately explain the problem, and their inability to come up with any effective strategy to deal with it.

The main cause for this shortcoming is a deep-seated dogma that has prevailed in social science and policy circles since the mid-1960's: the rejection of any explanation that invokes a group's cultural attributes — its distinctive attitudes, values and predispositions, and the resulting behavior of its members — and the relentless preference for relying on structural factors like low incomes, joblessness, poor schools and bad housing.

Harry Holzer, an economist at Georgetown University and a co-author of one of the recent studies, typifies this attitude. Joblessness, he feels, is due to largely weak schooling, a lack of reading and math skills at a time when such skills are increasingly required even for blue-collar jobs, and the poverty of black neighborhoods. Unable to find jobs, he claims, black males turn to illegal activities, especially the drug trade and chronic drug use, and often end up in prison. He also criticizes the practice of withholding child-support payments from the wages of absentee fathers who do find jobs, telling The Times that to these men, such levies "amount to a tax on earnings."

His conclusions are shared by scholars like Ronald B. Mincy of Columbia, the author of a study called "Black Males Left Behind," and Gary Orfield of Harvard, who asserts that America is "pumping out boys with no honest alternative."

This is all standard explanatory fare. And, as usual, it fails to answer the important questions. Why are young black men doing so poorly in school that they lack basic literacy and math skills? These scholars must know that countless studies by educational experts, going all the way back to the landmark report by James Coleman of Johns Hopkins University in 1966, have found that poor schools, per se, do not explain why after 10 years of education a young man remains illiterate.

Nor have studies explained why, if someone cannot get a job, he turns to crime and drug abuse. One does not imply the other. Joblessness is rampant in Latin America and India, but the mass of the populations does not turn to crime.

And why do so many young unemployed black men have children — several of them — which they have no resources or intention to support? And why, finally, do they murder each other at nine times the rate of white youths?

What's most interesting about the recent spate of studies is that analysts seem at last to be recognizing what has long been obvious to anyone who takes culture seriously: socioeconomic factors are of limited explanatory power. Thus it's doubly depressing that the conclusions they draw and the prescriptions they recommend remain mired in traditional socioeconomic thinking.

What has happened, I think, is that the economic boom years of the 90's and one of the most successful policy initiatives in memory — welfare reform — have made it impossible to ignore the effects of culture. The Clinton administration achieved exactly what policy analysts had long said would pull black men out of their torpor: the economy grew at a rapid pace, providing millions of new jobs at all levels. Yet the jobless black youths simply did not turn up to take them. Instead, the opportunity was seized in large part by immigrants — including many blacks — mainly from Latin America and the Caribbean.

One oft-repeated excuse for the failure of black Americans to take these jobs — that they did not offer a living wage — turned out to be irrelevant. The sociologist Roger Waldinger of the University of California at Los Angeles, for example, has shown that in New York such jobs offered an opportunity to the chronically unemployed to join the market and to acquire basic work skills that they later transferred to better jobs, but that the takers were predominantly immigrants.

Why have academics been so allergic to cultural explanations? Until the recent rise of behavioral economics, most economists have simply not taken non-market forces seriously. But what about the sociologists and other social scientists who ought to have known better? Three gross misconceptions about culture explain the neglect.

First is the pervasive idea that cultural explanations inherently blame the victim; that they focus on internal behavioral factors and, as such, hold people responsible for their poverty, rather than putting the onus on their deprived environment. (It hasn't helped that many conservatives do actually put forth this view.)

But this argument is utterly bogus. To hold someone responsible for his behavior is not to exclude any recognition of the environmental factors that may have induced the problematic behavior in the first place. Many victims of child abuse end up behaving in self-destructive ways; to point out the link between their behavior and the destructive acts is in no way to deny the causal role of their earlier victimization and the need to address it.

Likewise, a cultural explanation of black male self-destructiveness addresses not simply the immediate connection between their attitudes and behavior and the undesired outcomes, but explores the origins and changing nature of these attitudes, perhaps over generations, in their brutalized past. It is impossible to understand the predatory sexuality and irresponsible fathering behavior of young black men without going back deep into their collective past.

Second, it is often assumed that cultural explanations are wholly deterministic, leaving no room for human agency. This, too, is nonsense. Modern students of culture have long shown that while it partly determines behavior, it also enables people to change behavior. People use their culture as a frame for understanding their world, and as a resource to do much of what they want. The same cultural patterns can frame different kinds of behavior, and by failing to explore culture at any depth, analysts miss a great opportunity to re-frame attitudes in a way that encourages desirable behavior and outcomes.

Third, it is often assumed that cultural patterns cannot change — the old "cake of custom" saw. This too is nonsense. Indeed, cultural patterns are often easier to change than the economic factors favored by policy analysts, and American history offers numerous examples.

My favorite is Jim Crow, that deeply entrenched set of cultural and institutional practices built up over four centuries of racist domination and exclusion of blacks by whites in the South. Nothing could have been more cultural than that. And yet America was able to dismantle the entire system within a single generation, so much so that today blacks are now making a historic migratory shift back to the South, which they find more congenial than the North. (At the same time, economic inequality, which the policy analysts love to discuss, has hardened in the South, like the rest of America.)

So what are some of the cultural factors that explain the sorry state of young black men? They aren't always obvious. Sociological investigation has found, in fact, that one popular explanation — that black children who do well are derided by fellow blacks for "acting white" — turns out to be largely false, except for those attending a minority of mixed-race schools.

An anecdote helps explain why: Several years ago, one of my students went back to her high school to find out why it was that almost all the black girls graduated and went to college whereas nearly all the black boys either failed to graduate or did not go on to college. Distressingly, she found that all the black boys knew the consequences of not graduating and going on to college ("We're not stupid!" they told her indignantly).

SO why were they flunking out? Their candid answer was that what sociologists call the "cool-pose culture" of young black men was simply too gratifying to give up. For these young men, it was almost like a drug, hanging out on the street after school, shopping and dressing sharply, sexual conquests, party drugs, hip-hop music and culture, the fact that almost all the superstar athletes and a great many of the nation's best entertainers were black.

Not only was living this subculture immensely fulfilling, the boys said, it also brought them a great deal of respect from white youths. This also explains the otherwise puzzling finding by social psychologists that young black men and women tend to have the highest levels of self-esteem of all ethnic groups, and that their self-image is independent of how badly they were doing in school.

I call this the Dionysian trap for young black men. The important thing to note about the subculture that ensnares them is that it is not disconnected from the mainstream culture. To the contrary, it has powerful support from some of America's largest corporations. Hip-hop, professional basketball and homeboy fashions are as American as cherry pie. Young white Americans are very much into these things, but selectively; they know when it is time to turn off Fifty Cent and get out the SAT prep book.

For young black men, however, that culture is all there is — or so they think. Sadly, their complete engagement in this part of the American cultural mainstream, which they created and which feeds their pride and self-respect, is a major factor in their disconnection from the socioeconomic mainstream.

Of course, such attitudes explain only a part of the problem. In academia, we need a new, multidisciplinary approach toward understanding what makes young black men behave so self-destructively. Collecting transcripts of their views and rationalizations is a useful first step, but won't help nearly as much as the recent rash of scholars with tape-recorders seem to think. Getting the facts straight is important, but for decades we have been overwhelmed with statistics on black youths, and running more statistical regressions is beginning to approach the point of diminishing returns to knowledge.

The tragedy unfolding in our inner cities is a time-slice of a deep historical process that runs far back through the cataracts and deluge of our racist past. Most black Americans have by now, miraculously, escaped its consequences. The disconnected fifth languishing in the ghettos is the remains. Too much is at stake for us to fail to understand the plight of these young men. For them, and for the rest of us.

Issue of the week: KRS-1 vs. Adisa Banjoko @ Stanford

2006-03-09T09:35:00.000-08:00

Hodari found this audio link of part of a very heated discussion between KRS-1 and hip-hop journalist, Adisa Banjoko. The exchange is entertaining but not very informative so if you are wondering what all the beef is about you can check out Banjoko's blog entry that challenges KRS-1's philosophy about what hip-hop culture is. There are a number of BGSA folks interested in the study of hip-hop so it might be interesting to get some discussion going on this. Post away...

Colloquium Series

2006-03-08T23:42:00.000-08:00

Today BGSA had a kickoff of the first Marlon M. Bailey Colloquium Series (thanks to Irvin, the organizer) with great presentations by LaToya, Asia, and Kofi. Im starting this post for further discussion on the presentations. Please use this as a chance to ask the presenters questions or share comments/suggestions. The presenters can also ask the audience for opinions and suggestions. Titles of the talks are listed below:

LaToya Shanae Beck (African American Studies)
“African Diaspora or African Presence? Double Consciousness and the African Diaspora”

Asia Leeds (African American Studies)
“Blackness and Nation-Making: Coloniality, State Policies, and Garveyism in Early Twentieth Century Costa Rica”

Kofi-Charu Nat Turner (Education)
“Goin' Dumb and Gettin' Stupid: Building a Hyphy Movement for Reparations”

How can BGSA improve?

2006-02-18T13:48:00.000-08:00

One of BGSA's ongoing interests is how to continue to make the organization stronger, more inviting, and sustainable. In this effort it is important for us to have a sense of what our community feels like we can do better. We would like to get a blog conversation going on this and invite you to share your ideas and constructive criticism. We are particularly interested in the 3 following issues (but feel free to make other comments/suggestions):

1) How can we make BGSA more inviting to others who might have reservations about joining (particularly newer students)?
2) What kinds of activities would you like to see BGSA involved in that we have yet to do?
3) How can we be more supportive of advanced students (i.e ABD students, students going on job market)?

As a reminder, if you would like to sign up for this blog and have not received an invite, please drop me an email and I'll send one right out to you.
Mike

Bridging the Gap Conference: Redefining Reparations with the Hip Hop Nation

2006-02-07T21:46:00.000-08:00

Hey folks I thought I'd get the ball rollin before the conference by throwing out a few of the questions and thoughts we'd like our panelists and speakers to speak to during this year's conference. I hope this dialogue will continue well after this year's conference right up to next year's.

Redefining Reparations
1) How do you define reparation? Philosophically and tangibly
--Why do we need reparations?

2) What is the role of Africa and the Diaspora in our struggle for reparations?

3) How can we convey to youth how important conveyers and players they are for Reparations?

4) How can we/do we revolutionize the individual responsibility, i.e. the "self-help", "self-care", ideology and social movement?
-- How can we or do we distinguish our promotion of these concepts from their promotion and utilization by our enemies (Republicans, conservatives, and neo-conservatives), more often than not directly against us?
-- How can we promote and advance the "healing" dimensions of these concepts and movements without promoting capitalist individualism?

5) How do we move beyond the rhetoric of the "system"? Even if we mean social systems of capitalism and imperialism?
-- Can when we refer to the "system" to make a point about our exploitation and oppression, particularly with youth, state our criticism of capitalism clearly (assuming that is what is being criticized), in formulations like "the capitalist system" or "the system of capitalism", etc.

Hip Hop Goin’ Dumb!?
1) What role does Hip-Hop play in our personal lives, our communities, and the larger society?
--How has that role changed over the years?

2) The underground "hip hop" economy, and the potentiality of organizing it to the benefit of NewAfrikan people by extending and controlling the distribution markets of cd's/online spaces.
-- How can/will we ensure that the producers receive earnings from their products (in this "new" market)?
-- How can/we create and protect stable wholesale and retail distribution markets (particularly from the state: i.e. patent lawyers, the police, etc.)?

3) How is the Hyphy Movement a reflection of the larger society? Is the whole country going dumb?
--How can the city which is the home of the Black Panther Party so easily go dumb?
--How can it become fashionable to be stupid?
-- How do you define going dumb? What is the Hyphy movement?
--What does that look like to other cultures; regions and do we want to be perceived that way?
-- What does it mean to be going smart?
--This is portrayed as a movement, will it be explained where this is going?
--What is the significance of the fact much of hip hop nation language originating in the Bay Area?

4) How will the representation of women in hip hop be addressed?

5) How can one incorporate hip hop in his/her writing?
--Hip Hop can be used in a spoken manner for the liberation of Africans can it be used in a written manner also?

Black Ski Trip FAQ

2005-11-23T14:42:00.000-08:00

What are the accommodations like?
The accomodations are condos with 2, 3 and 4 bdrs.
Last year we stayed at Summit Village. We may or may not this year.
http://www.tahoevacations.com/summitvillage.html

What about transportation?
If you live in Cali - you can easily drive to Tahoe. Its about 3 hours from the Bay area. If you don’t want to drive the airport is http://www.laketahoeairport.com/
and of course the RENO/Tahoe airport… which is a bit away.

People who need rides should contact the organizers and we will do our best to hook you up with people who have room. Some folks caravan, other folks ride separate. It doesn’t matter how you get there, you’ll have access to your key and room.

Can I request my roommates?
Yes. You can request them and we will do our best to group people together. We will also do our best to group folks together by school if you like. However, there are NO guarantees.

What about undergraduates?
At this time, Undergraduates are not invited to the Black Graduate Ski Trip. We are interested in making this trip a networking opportunity, but also a place where graduate students can relax and not worry about the tension of mentoring. However, there is nothing to stop a group of undergraduate students from renting a condo/cabin in Tahoe on MLK weekend.

What about my friends who are not graduate students?
Professional friends of BGSA members are allowed if they are over 21, and can conduct themselves as adults. Priority goes to BGSA members for accommodations. Please be certain to mention they are a friend with your name.

What if I am an alumni of a BGSA?
Please join us and mention your previous institution.

What about my kids?
Unfortunately, the BGSA does not make accommodations for children. However, we are working in collaboration with the National Brotherhood of Skiers. They DO bring their children along and many times have an entire youth ski club that ski’s together. The only issue with the NBS is the 140.00 registration fee that is additional to the housing and lift tickets. Check out their site at:

http://www.nbs.org/content/view/27/59/

What about an extra day of skiing/boarding?
If we have at least 15 people who want to ski/board for extra days we will purchase more tickets at group rate. This shouldn’t be a problem.

What about parties/clubs?
There will definitely be one party put on by collaborating BGSA's on Sunday night. Saturday night is usually about the Clubs in the casinos.. and Friday.. probably the same..

if you have more q’s email
(Law students) LaJohnne White or Barbra Williams at nblsawrnorth@yahoo.com
(Graduate & other professional students) Lisa Marie Rollins lrollins@berkeley.edu
or Fred Clarke at ficlarke@ucdavis.edu

Black Ski Trip Info

2005-11-23T11:05:00.000-08:00

The National Black Law Students Association-Western Region
and
The Black Graduate and Professional Students Association
Present

The Black Ski Retreat

MLK Weekend – Jan 13 – 16, 2006

Spend MLK weekend in scenic Lake Tahoe
Socialize with law students, grad students, and professionals
Party with the National Brotherhood of Skiers as they celebrate their Annual Winter Carnival @ Heavenly Ski Resort
Concert, comedy show and casinos minutes away from the cabin
Skiing, snowboarding, and other snow sports
Price Includes:
Lodging- 4 days 3 nights in a beautiful luxury cabin
Continental breakfast, snacks and beverages
Leave the books at home. Be prepared to party and have good time!

*See Registration Form for Package Prices
Pay up front: Friday, Nov 25th
Pay in installments:
First Deposit $80 - Friday, Nov 25th
Second Deposit $80 - Monday, Dec 19th
Remainder- Jan 6th

Black Ski Retreat
Registration Form

First Name ___________________________ Last Name ____________________________

Address _____________________________________________________________________

Telephone ______________________________ Cell ________________________________

Email Address ___________________________ School _____________________________

BGSA Member _______ BLSA Member _______

We are planning to offer different packages this year. It is recommended that first-time skiers/snow boarders and people who have not skied/snow boarded recently, take a beginners lesson. Those of you who are more advanced, can take an intermediate lesson with the mountain adventure package. Please see package descriptions below:

PACKAGE
DESCRIPTION
COST
A
Lodging, 2 day lift ticket (must have your own equipment)
$230
B
Lodging, 1 day lift ticket, 1 day rental equipment
$210
C
Lodging, 1 day Beginners package includes: lesson, limited lift ticket, equipment
$250
D
Lodging, 1 day Intermediate package includes: lesson, full access lift ticket, equipment
$270

Please indicate which package you are interested in: ______
Do you plan to ski or snowboard? _________ (ski/board)

o All packages and equipment are for both skiing and snowboarding.

o We only included one day of skiing for the packages with equipment to keep the cost down. If you are interested in skiing or snowboarding a second day, tickets and equipment can be purchased at the mountain.

o However, just a heads up that most people do ski the second day, so if enough people express an interest in skiing a second day we can purchase these tickets at the group rate also.

o Please indicate if you plan to ski/snowboard on the second day: _____ (yes/no) *Additional $60 for packages B-D, includes lift ticket and equipment for the second day.

Please make checks payable to: NBLSA Western Region
Mail this form along with your first deposit to:
NBLSA-WR Northern Sub-Region
c/o Barbra Williams/ LaJohnne White
Northern Sub-Regional Directors
407 Perkins Street #205A
Oakland, CA 94610

For more information please contact:
(Law students) LaJohnne White or Barbra Williams at nblsawrnorth@yahoo.com
(Graduate & other professional students) Lisa Marie Rollins lrollins@berkeley.edu or Fred Clarke at ficlarke@ucdavis.edu

Private racism and the California way

2005-11-21T02:51:00.000-08:00

Can a person hold simultaneously opposing views, one private and one public? Is this a double consciousness for White folks? Love educated Black folks but loathe nonacademic ones? Sure, in California where racism is often hidden by something that looks like classism but is something far more sinister then what we want to admit. Are good deeds like some sort of invisible tokens to be exchanged for indivuals acts of personal or private racism? How many good deeds can a person accumulate to be able to get away with calling a Black woman a N*gga or Bitch and any cobination of the two? Is it a two for one exchange rate? Or maybe its even steven, one good deed, one N*gga Bitch! Can they store up a bunch then go on a rampage and start lynching Black folks? Oh, I have gone too far? Wellll, history says otherwise, Thomas Jefferson has no doubts done so good things for Black folks, but do we forgive him for raping his slaves? Hell no we don't! Fuck him and the rest of the 'founding fathers'! This country is rife with these privileged white men who are allowed to have a valliant public face while their private face is twisted and hateful. Because this dude has helped some Black folks in the past is absolutely no reason to turn the other check. I can't say strongly enough that he (Sherman) cannot be allow to continue to come into contact with Black students in his present capacity. He though it was all right to cuss out a random Black woman privately but his public face is different. This really pisses me off! So you are going to treat somebody based on what you think their social standing is and contextualize it in race...How does this man really feel about woman? About Black woman? as long as they are Cal students then cool, so are we to condone he treating us different than our community? Are we different than our community? Hell naw! We are here because of our community! Not a one of us got here by ourselves and not a one of us will leave here purely because of self. We are all one mishap from being out of this school on our ass. We can't allow someone’s private racisms not effects us because he is cool to us, that is BS and totally unacceptable. It makes me sick to think that we can go on with our daily grind and not make a peep about this incident. Some vague letter is not enough. This is California racism at its core. Californians aren't as open with their shit as their southern brethrens, that hide behind terms like multicultural, and diversity when they really mean, as long as you Blacks act like us we are cool with yall but really we would like for yall to either blend in or go away and we can let in some benign minorities. Thousands of our folks have been lynched behind the N word but I can't recall too many folks hanging from the tree for being a "fat fuck" GRRRRR!

Not a Genuine Black Man

2005-10-13T01:10:00.000-07:00

Brian Copeland's play, "Not a Genuine Black Man" is running through October 29th. Check it out.

Pictures from our first party of the year!

2005-09-13T23:16:00.000-07:00

Check out the pictures from our first BGSA party. Pics from Hodari and Maxine.

Newsweek article. White Privilege.

2005-09-13T23:05:00.000-07:00

- Starkey sent this link to the Newsweek cover story on race and poverty... Anyone read it yet? Any comments?

- Interesting notes (forwarded by Hodari) from UT Austin Professor on his experiences helping with Katrina relief...

9/12/05
Austin Shelter Notes #6: White Privilege comes in to play

I have chosen to remove myself from the Austin Red Cross Shelter.
A few irresponsible volunteers, some dangerous cops, and me in the middle ... self-protection dictates that I am out of here.

There are three reasons for my pulling out of the shelter. First, the family strain of being in the shelter has reached the point where it was time for me to step back. Second, without an effective government infrastructure, potential volunteers and resources are not all reaching the places where they can do the good that they want to do, and I think I can help. Third, the tensions between APD (Austin Police), the City and the Red Cross are very high, and I don't want to be a casualty of that.

With regards to the third point, let me explain. At this point, I am angry at several volunteers who came into the shelter with a critique of the cops here. I have a critique too, but have kept it to myself. For the most part the cops have done a good job. They are in a difficult situation for which there has been little training, much less any sense that any of this could EVER happen. Still, there have been problems. But at this point, our focus needs to be on our guests.

At the risk of being too blunt and putting some people off, the bottom line is that some well meaning white volunteers have complained about some of the way things are run here, most notably the curfew that has been in place (no reentry until 6 am for those who leave the shelter after midnight). Unfortunately they have complained directly to the police who have been walking around and have gradually pissed several officers off. What these well meaning white people don't realize is that pissed off cops are not good for brown skinned males like myself.

On my Thursday shift, our intake area was moved across the building. Those coming in were no longer coming in on busses, but were coming in in smaller groups. So moving the registration from the back dock to the front of the building made sense. However, this caused a logistical glitch for my shift. For the night, our guests were still brought through the back dock, which meant that groups of one or two, or maybe even 10 or 12 would have to walk through the dorms and all the way across the building to be checked in.

As the registration captain it was my place, and in fact my job, to address this type of issue. But when I approached one of the police officers on the back dock about whether we could bring folks in right at the door where they would be registered, this was too much for this overstressed cop. She said something along the lines of "you volunteers can't just be changing everything every minute, etc...." I told her I wasn't trying to change things, just asking a question. She radiod up to "Sarge" and said "Sarge I've got some volunteer on the back dock trying to change the way we intake evacuees." I asked her to please not tell Sarge I was trying to "change things" I just wanted to work through a logistical issue. She walked away and repeated that "some volunteer was trying to change things." I tried to tell her again that I was not trying to change things, she put her open palm in my face and said "whatever, sir" at which point I walked several feet away to just wait for "Sarge". When Sarge arrived, I never had a chance to open my mouth. He started yelling, explaining that I had no idea of the security issues in the building (which was far from accurate - I have been calling paramedics and cops to pull drunks and crack heads off of cots where they had fallen into families trying to sleep, have taken several of Austin's homeless in through registration, have been made aware of the presence of local dealers now hanging around on the back dock trying to serve "new clients," etc...).

Without me getting in a word, Sarge went on to spit, sputter, and yell that I would "cease harassing his officers," (which I never did and which is not really in my personality to do). I tried to look sympathetic, listen carefully and find space to help deescalate the situation, but quite frankly never could get in a full sentence, much less a word. Unfortunately Sarge's yelling attracted another officer and now three officers were towering over me (I am a stocky guy, but only 5'4") and two of them were yelling. Thankfully I was rested at the time, and could keep my wits. The problem was that these cops were GETTING EACH OTHER WORKED UP. I was just standing there. Like so much of this last week it was surreal. One white cop (Sarge), one black cop, and one hispanic cop just going nuts.

Anyway, at some point Sarge, his finger wagging, yelled that I would stop harassing his cops and yelled "Are we clear?" As much as I try to play peacemaker I have too many degrees and too many ancestors watching for me to "yes sir boss" this person, so instead I tried to calmly say that I wasnt trying to disrespect his officers and that I was just asking a question.
He cut me off before the first word and continued his yelling DO YOU UNDERSTAND ME?
again my response was "I was n..." He came back, DO YOU UNDERSTAND ME?
and again DO YOU UNDERSTAND ME? When I didn't cowtow, he finally looked to another officer and and started calling out some code, something like "well, it looks like we have a XYZ24 11 here, let's move him on to the dock and take care of this." I don't know if they were about to give me some kind of ticket (though I doubt it), arrest me, or beat the crap out of me. The arrest seemed most likely, though I was preparing myself mentally for the worst case scenario of protecting myself in the case of a beating (and yes, all colorblind fantasies to the contrary, that is what black men in our society still need to do).

Thankfully, they did not get their hands on me, because as they moved to do ... something, the head of the Red Cross on site at the time, the person one above that whom I report directly to, pushed her way in between me and the officers in order to protect me and commenced to yelling at "Sarge" and giving it right back to him: "This is one of my leaders, he is doing his job, you are not to yell at him or disrespect him,etc...."

As she stood between me and the cops and went off on them she made it clear that I should keep my mouth shut so at this point I just watched and was impressed once again with the Red Cross (she is one of perhaps ten folks I know of on site who actually have red cross training). A team had been built and she protected it, well. She handled the situation expertly. Her yelling was focused and determined, but I could see it was also controlled; it was a strategic response to the circumstance. When the incident was over she quickly dropped any evidence of anger.

As the shelter manager held her own in a yelling match with three cops, it dawned on me that "Sarge" and one of the other two officers were both new on the scene. I had been on-site the majority of the time since this began and I had never seen these guys. I had gotten to know and established friendly relations with most of the officers in the areas I worked most often, but these guys I had never seen.

Eventually I asked the shelter manager if I should remove myself from the area, she said yes, so I went and sat down in the cafeteria. When the shelter manager came in, we and the three other leaders on the shift talked. I was backed 100% and was impressed, but was even more impressed with the reponse to my statement that I would have to "press charges," by which I really meant "file a complaint." Her response may sound surprising but it was nuanced and brilliant. She informed that that the point where I filed a complaint was the point where she would have to let me go. "We are trying to build relationships and have a team" she explained, and though I was completely in the right, and though she would back me to the hilt and defend and protect me in these circumstances, she would not back my going outside on this until after the immediate evacuee crisis had past. Filing a complaint now, she explained in so many words, would hurt already fragile relations, and our shelter residents, the people we were trying to help, would eventually bear the brunt of the escalating tensions.

I respected that 100%, but then the ball moved in my court so to speak. I understand why the manager made her decision and respect her. But now I have to protect myself. In the current situation I do not feel safe from the police and will not put myself at risk at their hands. They are doing their best in a tense situation, but when they snap it is often on people like me. As I mentioned earlier, I am not pissed at the cops, if only because I have long known what they are about and how they think. Whatever their race, they have long been trained in ineffective techniques and often "know not what they do." I am pissed at the volunteers who come in and escalate tensions without consequence to them. Others bear the consequences of their actions (although to be fair, they too know not what they do).

For the academics out there, take note, here is a prime example of white privilege, and its consequences, at work. I am not the darkest skinned guy in the world and am definetely more privilieged than many who are darker skinned than me, but is times like these when I say to myself, it must be nice to be white and can only wish that more white people could wake up to realize the many everyday ways in which they make life difficult, and sometimes dangerous for people of color.

At any rate, after the incident I simply asked to go home. We had people in place who could handle the work and my presence was not good for these high strung cops. There were no hard feelings for my departure, in fact the shelter assistant manager and the shelter day manager have both asked when I will "plug back-in" and seem to hope for me to do so ASAP. But removing myself is for the best, because I may have given all that I can give IN the shelter, that is before it becomes to much for me and my family.

I have seen and been a part of some of the most beautiful, as well as the most painful things I can imagine. One recent highlight was watching a midnight reunion as a 3 year old and 5 year old were taken off a van and placed back into their father's arms. There were many, many others.

I moved back to Austin just three months ago, and I realized several days ago that everything happens for a reason. I am a changed person, and as difficult as this has been I thank God for placing me here. It still staggers me to realize my experiences, as intense as I have felt them to be, are immeasurably small compared to what many of our guests have gone through, and still face ahead of them.

I'll keep writing these notes as it seems appropriate - maybe no more, maybe a bunch more. But the opportunity to share with whomever has wanted to read, has been an important steam valve, so to speak. It has helped me stay focused, analytical and sane. So thank you to anyone who took the time to read these notes.

Sincerely,
Kevin Michael Foster, Ph.D

bgsa trip to New Orleans around holidays

2005-09-10T19:16:00.000-07:00

I am really thinking about Dawn's comment about planning a BGSA trip in conjunction with Habitat for Humanity or some other organization during Christmas time to New Orleans to help build some affordable housing.

Welcome to the BGSA blog!

2005-09-08T20:51:00.000-07:00

Welcome. Well we finally have a BGSA discussion group up and running! Yes, we are on blast with a new interface to the world! Please feel free to share your rants and raves, make announcements, or share any ideas you might have for the group.

Just to spark things off I suggest we pick up where we left off in our email discussions--the Katrina disaster. There is lots to discuss--everything from how it was handled by the local and federal government to Kanye West's comments to the state of black leadership. So what's the word?

Mike
The BGSA tech cat