TED Talk w/ Nina Jablonski: "The Illusion and Power of Skin Color"

"Nina Jablonski says that differing skin colors are simply our bodies' adaptation to varied climates and levels of UV exposure. Charles Darwin disagreed with this theory, but she explains, that's because he did not have access to NASA..."

Wish You Weren't Here...

The folks over at The Root posed an interesting question recently:

"Who would you erase from Black History?"

...but then they followed it up with a fairly obvious list:

Marion Barry

Michael Steele

O.J. Simpson

Sheila Dixon

Dennis Rodman

Alan Keyes

D.C. Sniper, John Muhammad

R. Kelly

Dr. Conrad Murray

Flavor Flav

Clarence Thomas

Bishop Don Magic Juan

Amarosa Manigault-Stallworth

Soulja Boy

Wesley Snipes

Karrine Stephans

Idi Amin/Papa Doc/Baby Doc/Robert Mugabe/Rafael Trujillo

Conservative commentator, John McWhorter, picked up on the lameness of The Root's list and posted his own, typically provocative, but I think ultimately much more interesting, list:

Malcolm X

Price Cobbs

Al Jolsen

Paolo Freire

William Ryan

Ron Karenga

Jonathan Kozol

O.J. Simpson

Frances Fox Piven and Richard Cloward

(Go to the articles to see the justifications for these choices.)

What do you think about these lists? Who would you "remove from Black History," if you had the chance?

Film Trailer: "Soundtrack for A Revolution"

New documentary on music and the southern civil rights Movement:

Music: Miles Davis, "So What"

Film: "Blood Done Sign My Name" (trailer)

I received my Ph.D. in modern U.S. History and African American Studies from the University of Wisconsin-Madison in 2002. My primary adviser, mentor and friend there was Tim Tyson, one of the great Movement historians of our time. Tim taught me a lot about being a scholar and an activist, about being a storyteller, about being a citizen. The research I conducted for my M.A. thesis, which was titled, "'Communist Front Shouts Kissing Case to the World!' The Committee to Combat Racial Injustice and the Politics of Race and Gender during the Cold War," became a part of one of the chapters in Tim's first book, Radio Free Dixie: Robert F. Williams and the Roots of Black Power. His second book, Blood Done Sign My Name, is part Movement history, part autobiography. It focuses on the murder of an African American Vietnam veteran in Oxford, North Carolina, during the early-1970s and the social impact of that event on the local community and beyond. Tim's family participated directly in this saga. The incredible thing about this award-winning book is that it is also a personal meditation on race, remembrance and, ultimately, reconciliation. What do we do with these troubling pasts once we unearth them? How do we honor the past, while moving forward into the future... together?

Blood Done Sign My Name has been made into a feature film, starring Rick Schroeder as Tim's dad! Here is the official trailer:


It is rare that this type of story makes it to the big-screen, so I hope you will check it out. Here are a few things you can do:

1. Go see it.

2. Ask your local independent cinema theater to book it.

3. Help spread the word to other folks in your networks.


Here is another clip of Tim talking about the film:


And here is the song, "Blood Done Sign My Name":

Ideas: What Hallucination Reveals About Our Minds?

Neurologist, Oliver Sacks, is always exploring the fascinating lessons we can learn from various rare brain disfunctions. For a fun intro to his work, check out The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat. During a recent TED talk, Sacks discussed a group of people with Charles Bonnett syndrome, who experience lucid hallucinations. What does this impairment suggest about the nature of "reality"? Check it out...

Solutions: Combatting Corporate Dominance of American Politics

How do ordinary citizens counter the massive influence that large monied interests have over our democracy? What is possible after the Supreme Court's recent disastrous decision opening the floodgates to corporate money in elections. Fran Kortan, publisher of Yes! Magazine, explains "ten ways to stop corporate dominance of politics."

UPDATE: NPR's Ari Shapiro has an excellent interview with Lewis Maltby, author of Can They Do That? Retaking Our Fundamental Rights in the Workplace, about the widespread restrictions on individual liberties in the corporate workplace. Maltby says, "What most Americans generally don't know is that the Constitution doesn't apply to private corporations at all." The full interview can be listened to here. Another excerpt and review of the book can be found at Alternet.

UPDATE: Robert Borosage has a good essay about an amendment to the Constitution Rep. Donna Edwards (D-MD) and Rep. John Conyers (D-MI) have introduced in Congress aimed at overturning the Supreme Court's decision in Citizen's United, which gave corporations the right to spend unlimited funds in election campaigns as a matter of free speech.

Ideas: Dr. King's Forgotten "Dream" of Economic Justice

I wrote an Opinion piece for the Omaha World Herald reflecting on Dr. King's vision of economic justice.

The essay ran on Monday, January 25, 2010, under the title, "MLK: Justice Requires Economic Transformation."

On Tuesday, an older man called me at my office in Lincoln to let me know that he thought the ideas in the article were "communistic."

Judge for yourself. Here are a few excerpts...

King believed poverty was primarily the result of systemic economic failure and “ongoing economic exploitation,” not individual personal failing. The poor were “damned” to segregated, ghettoized neighborhoods, chronic unemployment and low-paying, meaningless jobs. “Pervasive and persistent want” demoralized the poor, undermined human dignity and led to family disintegration, drug and alcohol abuse, violence and crime.

* * * *

King linked urban poverty with suburban plenty. “The poor and discriminated huddle in the big cities,” he said, “while affluent America displays its new gadgets in the crisp homes of suburbia.” King called suburbs “white nooses around the black necks of the cities.” “Housing deteriorates in central cities,” he groused, while “suburbs expand with little regard for what happens to the rest of America.”

* * * *

Disillusioned with piecemeal reforms, King believed structural change in the economy was essential to end poverty. “True compassion,” he said, “is more than flinging a coin to a beggar. It comes to see that an edifice which produces beggars needs restructuring.”

* * * *

King advocated “democratic socialism,” a mixed economy where citizens, through democratic processes, insert human values into the economy to temper the harsh edges of unbridled free markets.


He fought for an “economic bill of rights,” a $30 billion package guaranteeing full employment, a livable income and increased construction of low-income housing. King called for “massive public works programs (to build) decent housing, schools, hospitals, mass transit, parks and recreation centers.” These public investments would “enrich society” and spur private investment.

* * * *

In an era of ballooning military budgets, billion-dollar Wall Street bailouts, home foreclosures, double-digit unemployment and continuing urban crisis, perhaps we might listen anew to King’s prophetic vision of economic justice.

* * * *

To read the entire essay, click here.
Let me know what you think in the comments section below.

Continuing Adventures in Racial Politics

Some good articles have appeared recently dealing with racial politics in the U.S. Check 'em out...

• The Defender has a nice piece on the Black Power Conference that took place in March.

• An excellent analysis of youth and the "post-racial society." Be sure to read the (scary) comments, too!

• A new study shows that college-educated African Americans lose more jobs than their peers across the racial line.

• Here is an AWESOME 1972 interview with Miraim Makeba by Nikki Giovanni.

• This is an important critical piece on Obama's back-peddling on justice for thousands of black farmers who were systematically screwed over by the feds for several decades.

• Colorlines has a nice article focusing on the business class and conservative pundits' attempts to scapegoat policies that are aimed at helping minority communities get access to credit as the supposed cause of the banking crisis.

FILM FESTIVAL: "Real to Reel: Documenting Empowerment, Equality, Inclusion" (The Ross Theater, Lincoln, NE, April 16-20, 2009 - FREE/open to public)

The African and African American Studies Program at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln is sponsoring our second "Blacks In Film Festival" in mid-April. This time around we are focusing on documentary films and asking some broad questions...

• How has documentary film been used to tell meaningful stories about black people in Africa and the United States?  What is the process of putting these stories together on film?  What makes a compelling documentary film?  

•  What kinds of (intellectual, cultural, social, etc.) spaces do these films open up for audiences to consider race relations and black experience in new or meaningful ways?

• Can documentary film play a role in political struggle?  Can documentary film be a "weapon of the oppressed," an agent of change?  If so, how? If not, why not?

• And does the relationship between the filmmaker and the subject matter in documentary films matter?  Explain.

Here is the poster for the film festival (click image to enlarge)

Here are the films we are screening at The Ross FREE and open to the public...

-  "What We Want, What We Believe... the Black Panthers" (on the Black Panther Party)

-  "Mo & Me" (filmmakers exploration of his father's - Mo Amin - life)

-  "God Grew Tired of Us" (on Sudan's "Lost Boys")

-  "Wattstax" (the 1973 "Black Woodstock" concert in Los Angeles, featuring Staxx Records musicians and Richard Pryor interludes)

-  "When We Were Kings" (on famed "Rumble in the Jungle" between Muhammad Ali and George Foreman in Zaire)

-  "Amandla:  A Revolution in Four-Part Harmony" (on role of music in South African freedom movement)

-  "Hip Hop Beyond Beats and Rhymes" (on sexism and homophobia in hip hop)

-  "Hip Hop Colony" (on hip hop in Africa)

For full film festival information (including brief bios of our two keynote filmmakers, a detailed schedule of all events, and synopses of each film) click here.

Please spread the word...

The Battle for Whiteclay

If you do not know about the tragic and exploitative situation in Whiteclay, Nebraska, I hope you will take a few minutes and read the following article:

• Paul Hammel, "Drink, and despair, around every corner in Whiteclay" (Omaha World Herald, 3/7/09)

You should also check out Mark Vasina's excellent and moving new documentary, "The Battle for Whiteclay."

Here's what Frank LaMere of the Winnebago Tribe of Nebraska and Chair of the Native Caucus on the Democratic National Committee had to say about the film:

"Chronicles a painful odyssey that should give pause to the caring, the oblivious, and those who don't give a damn."

Here are a few things you might do:

• Check it out. Educate yourself about the issue.
• Write your state senator about Whiteclay.
• Hold a neighborhood showing of "The Battle for Whiteclay" in your living room. Or, have your church, school, or other social organization show the film and discuss it.
• Spread the word to other caring people in your world...

Here are some more action suggestions.

Medicine for Melancholy

Looks interesting:

Here is an article on the film from The Root.

Seen any good films lately?

The Wisdom of Woody

"I hate a song that makes you think that you are not any good. I hate a song that makes you think that you are just born to lose. Bound to lose. No good to nobody. No good for nothing. Because you are too old or too young or too fat or too slim or too ugly or too this or too that. Songs that run you down or poke fun at you on account of your bad luck or hard travelling. I am out to fight those songs to my very last breath of air and my last drop of blood. I am out to sing songs that will prove to you that this is your world and that if it has hit you pretty hard and knocked you for a dozen loops, no matter what color, what size you are, how you are built, I am out to sing the songs that make you take pride in yourself and in your work. And the songs that I sing are made up for the most part by all sorts of folks just about like you. I could hire out to the other side, the big money side, and get several dollars every week just to quit singing my own kind of songs and to sing the kind that knock you down still farther and the ones that poke fun at you even more and the ones that make you think that you've not got any sense at all. But I decided a long time ago that I'd starve to death before I'd sing any such songs as that. The radio waves and your movies and your jukeboxes and your songbooks are already loaded down and running over with such no good songs as that anyhow."

-- Woody Guthrie

Things that make you go hhhhmmmmmmm.....

Which is it?

A. Liberate your mind and your ass will follow?

B. Liberate your ass and your mind will follow?

What do you think?

Fannie Lou Hamer

Do you know who Fannie Lou Hamer is? Everyone should...

Free Troy Davis!

From Amnesty International...

The Civil Rights Era in Omaha

The Reader, an alternative weekly here in Omaha, is running a two-issue series on the local civil rights movement. In the current issue, "Full Freedom Now" focuses on the 4CL, or "the Citizens Coordinating Committee for Civil Liberties." During the early-mid-1960s, the group, led by four clergymen, used non-violent direct action to press for change on a host of issues. Their list of demands for the city council included: the hiring of more black people by the city and schools, the integration of police cruisers, and what would ultimately prove the hardest to achieve — a city ordinance outlawing discrimination in housing. Rev. Kelsey Jones recalled, “Racial problems exist here in a more acute degree than in Cleveland, Detroit, or Baltimore,” Rev. Jones said in a Sun Special article in 1963. “We only think things are worse in those cities because they are out in the open. Here, they are cemented. Take the cap off, as in Mississippi, and it would be the same.” A second article, "We Just Wanted to Swim, Sir," focuses on the successful attempt by the local NAACP Youth Council to desegregate the public swimming pool at Peony Park.

Both are worth taking a look at... yet another reminder that the struggle for racial justice was a national, not a regional, phenomenon.

It's About Time!

This is the dude I voted for...

Click ahead to the 3:30 mark...


The crucial quote:

But what I have also said is - don't come to table with the same tired arguments and worn ideas that helped create this crisis.

We're not going to get relief by turning back to the very same policies that in eight short years doubled the national debt and threw our economy into a tailspin. We can't embrace the losing formula that offers more tax cuts as the only answer to every problem we face, while ignoring critical challenges like our addiction to foreign oil, the soaring cost of health care, failing schools and crumbling bridges, roads and levees. I don't care whether you're driving a hybrid or an SUV - if you're headed for a cliff, you have to change direction.

Amen!

Any thoughts?

Joe Carter and the Legacy of the African American Spiritual

Speaking of Faith is one of my favorite NPR programs... always probing interesting dynamics of spiritual life. The following episode, from July 2008, focuses on Joe Carter and the African American spiritual:

The spiritual is celebrated in American culture and beyond. It is the source from which gospel, jazz, blues, and hip-hop evolved. It was born in the American South, created by slaves, bards whose names history never recorded. The organizing concept of this music is not the melody of Europe, but the rhythm of Africa. And the theology conveyed in these songs is a potent mix of African spirituality, Hebrew narrative, Christian doctrine, and an extreme experience of human suffering.

We celebrate the life of Joe Carter, who explored the meaning of the Negro spiritual in word and song — through its hidden meanings, as well as its beauty, lament, and hope.

Check it out here. It is well worth a listen...

How to Work Out from Home

It's gut-check time... This time of year, in early February, a lot of folks begin to lose sight of their New Year's resolutions, particularly when it comes to exercising. Here is a CLASSIC 3-minute video with some really excellent ideas about how to work out from home...