What’s Killing Our Culture? III: Ignoring the Illness

What’s Killing Our Culture? III: Ignoring the Illness

by Adia “Dr. Dia” Winfrey, Psy.D. & David Banner | special to NewBlackMan (in Exile)

What’s Killing Our Culture? III is a collaborative piece co-authored by Grammy award- winning artist/producer David Banner and mental health professional Dr. Dia. David Banner’s song and video “Swag” embody the true power of Hip Hop, addressing topics  from police brutality to saving our youth. What’s Killing Our Culture? III will further explore the question by highlighting the poignant messages expressed in this revolutionary song.

“If that’s the only thing they hear then that’s the only thing they’ll be”

~David Banner, “Swag”

Disrespectful and ambitionless, violently engaging in illegal behavior…the symptomology describing our youth is well known. In the court of public opinion, these behaviors are blamed on Hip Hop culture. In professional circles, environmental factors are identified as the problem. The symptomology has been discussed through grant funded studies and countless journal articles and books. But our youth have yet to be healed, because the illness, our poor self-concept, has been ignored.

“I’ll never let a mutha***** think for me”

~David Banner, “Swag”

Self-concept, a person’s view of their overall self, is a highly sensitive internal process impacted by both passive and active interactions. From our own perceived abilities to our aspirations, it drives our own beliefs about who we are as individuals.

“Let a white cop shoot a black kid, You’ll see a few tweets, that’s it”

~David Banner, “Swag”       

Too often the environmental messages Black Americans receive propagate poor self-concept. Hollywood typecasting says “You’re the constipated-faced drug dealer.” The industry says, “You’re a video hoe.” Local news says “You’re the week’s most wanted.” Family says “The darker you are, the less attractive you are.” Teachers say “You’re not as smart.” Neighbors say “You’re suspicious.” Social media says, “You’re ghetto.” Police say “you fit the description.” American history says “You’re a slave.”

These messages constantly communicate Black life is less valuable, and are the source of the illness, poor self-concept. As problematic as the behavior is, it is the illness that fuels the symptomology we see in our youth, as well as ourselves.

“More like a thinker, dreamer, believer – pick one”

~David Banner, “Swag”

Positively shaping the self-concept of our children, and ultimately our communities is an individual and collective undertaking. It is as much about celebrating us, as it is redirecting behavior. Children are a reflection of adults, and we have all been subjected to the same messages. Redefining their self-concept requires we re-examine ours. The beauty of self-concept is it changes as one’s thinking changes. We have the tools to empower ourselves, claim our space, and re-build our communities. Black Americans are walking miracles that have made unbelievable achievements in the face of insurmountable obstacles. Imagine the power and healing we can achieve when we go to the source of the illness, as opposed to focusing on the symptoms! Now is the time!

***

David Banner holds a Bachelor’s Degree in Business from Southern University and is a semester and thesis away from earning a Master’s Degree at the University of Maryland. He’s been awarded various honors for his community initiatives, and testified before Congress at a hearing titled, From Imus to Industry. David Banner recently released the album and launched the 2M1 Movement. Learn more at davidbanner.com.

Adia “Dr. Dia” Winfrey, Psy.D, is the author of H.Y.P.E.: Healing Young People thru Empowerment (African-American Images, 2009). She’s been featured on NPR, in JET Magazine, and endorsed by syndicated radio personalities Tom Joyner and Michael Baisden. Learn more at letsgethype.com, and check out “What’s Killing Our Culture? It’s Not the Mainstream and Tight Jeans” and “What’s Killing Our Culture? II It’s Bigger than Hip Hop” on NewBlackMan (in Exile).

The Revolution Will Be Digitized: Black Youth & Digital Social Capital

Mark Anthony Neal looks at how technology and social media are empowering and creating young activists

THE REVOLUTON WILL BE DIGITIZED: 

Black Youth and Digital Social Capital

by Mark Anthony Neal | Ebony.com

Whether because of their consumption of hip-hop, sagging or their so-called addiction to television programs like Basketball Wives, contemporary Black youth are often chastised for squandering the political and social gains bequeathed them by the Civil Rights generation.  A new study suggest though, that contrary to popular belief, Black youth are on the cutting edge of new forms of participatory politics that may have the capacity to broaden their impact on traditional political practices.

Black political scientist Cathy Cohen (University of Chicago) and Joseph Kahne of Mills College are the lead researchers in the new report, “Participatory Politics: New Media and Youth Political Action” in which a team of researchers surveyed nearly 3,000 youth between the ages of 15-25 about their use of social media and their engagement in participatory politics. The report is part of Youth and Participatory Politics project, funded by the MacArthur Foundation.

The authors describe participatory politics as “acts that are interactive, peer-based, not guided by deference to elites or formal institutions, and meant to address issues of public concern.” Though participatory politics are not solely defined by forms of social media and digital technology, the authors note that social media allows youth to access and mobilize large networks, to “amplify” issues of concern to them, particularly with regards to news coverage, and to remix political content to fit the taste and consumption habits of younger audiences.

In the most traditional sense, social media is premised on the animating of social and political networks. The Greensboro Sit-In of February 1, 1960 and the subsequent “viral” explosion of sit-ins as a political strategy throughout the 1960s is a great example of how such networks can work.  However, contemporary social media is unmatched in the speed in which those networks can be energized and in its ability to counter “official” narratives.

Read the Full Article

Media Portrayals of Black Youths Contribute to Racial Tension

Media Portrayals of Black Youths Contribute to Racial Tension

by Joshunda Sanders | Maynard Media Center

Mainstream media often portray African-American youths, especially black men and boys, as criminals, crime victims and predators. These stereotypes, according to social justice advocates, can create a racially charged atmosphere that results in violence such as the shooting death of teenager Trayvon Martin.

U.S. popular culture has become increasingly desensitized to one-dimensional portrayals of black youths. Perpetuation of them as dangerous has been embedded in American society not only by words and images projected by journalists but also by a wide variety of other media and entertainment sources, including the Internet, movies and video games.

Clearly, the perception of African-Americans and other people of color as inferior to whites is rooted in the nation’s legacy of racial hierarchy, a system of stratification based on belief that skin color makes whites superior. Also contributing to embedding these stereotypes is that even as U.S. Census data show a growing number of nonwhites in America, fewer people of color are in decision-making positions at daily newspapers, television and radio stations, and online news organizations.

Media coverage of the February shooting of Martin, 17, in Sanford, Fla., by neighborhood watchman George Zimmerman, exemplifies negative treatment of black youths in the media. After a controversial delay, Zimmerman was arrested and charged with second-degree murder in the unarmed teenager’s death.

At the center of the case are issues related to race, gun rights and whether Zimmerman was acting in self-defense.

In most media stories last week, autopsy results showing that Martin’s blood had traces of THC, the active ingredient in marijuana, overshadowed other new evidence. An Associated Press report from Orlando, Fla., began: “Trayvon Martin had marijuana in his system. He was shot through the heart at close range.”

Many of these stories were published with photographs showing cuts and scratches on Zimmerman’s face and head. A police report said he “appeared to have a broken and a bloody nose and swelling of his face.”

In the same week, an all-white, six-person jury in Houston acquitted Andrew Blomberg, 29, a white police officer, in the alleged beating of 15-year-old Chad Holley after Holley was arrested for burglary in March 2010.

In video footage from a security camera, which jurors were shown in court, Holley was seen falling to the ground after trying to hurdle a police squad car, the AP reported, and was “surrounded by at least five officers, some who appear to kick and hit his head, abdomen and legs.”

Blomberg testified that he didn’t kick or stomp Holley. Community activists decried the verdict and the racial makeup of the jury.

The presumption of guilt can also apply to young black women. When Rekia Boyd, 22, was fatally shot by an off-duty Chicago police detective in March, her death was overshadowed in mainstream media by the Martin case.

Boyd was with friends on a street near the detective’s home when words were apparently exchanged and he fired several shots, one of which struck Boyd in the head. No charges have been filed in the incident. Boyd’s family has filed a civil lawsuit against the detective and the city.

In its report on the shooting, one Chicago television station noted that Boyd was hanging out with a group “at 1 in the morning.”

Stories about black youths that don’t reinforce stereotypes, don’t involve celebrities and that tell narratives about everyday lives of black people haven’t been a priority in news coverage, says author Bakari Kitwana, executive director of Rap Sessions in Westlake, Ohio. Through Rap Sessions, Kitwana leads discussions on college and high school campuses nationwide to counter mainstream media narratives about the hip-hop generation.

In addition to being stereotyped in media, Kitwana says, black youths are also criminalized by three other circumstances.

“Job options are limited, especially if you’re working class, which is different from previous generations,” he says. “The military doesn’t have a draft so, ultimately, it’s composed of people who are so pushed out of other life options. The military becomes a way of not being totally impoverished. Add to that limited education because of the cost of a college degree.”

Publishers, editors and producers who decide which news stories are important often don’t choose ones that humanize or contextualize lives of black youths. In journalism, decision makers are largely white.

A 2011 study by the Radio Television Digital News Association and Hofstra University showed that while the percentage of people of color in the U.S. population had risen since 1990 from 25.9 percent to a projected 35.4 percent, the number in television rose 2.7 percent and fell in radio. TV news diversity, it noted, “remains far ahead of the newspaper.”

“The way that journalism is currently practiced and structured doesn’t allow for the telling of stories of underrepresented people,” says Malkia Cyril, founder and executive director of the Center for Media Justice in Oakland, Calif. Privatization of corporate media is one reason that continues to be true, she says.

In 1983, 50 corporations controlled U.S. media, according to “The Media Monopoly” by Ben Bagdikian, a longtime journalist and media critic. By 2004, in his revised and expanded “The New Media Monopoly,” Bagdikian wrote that the number was five — Time Warner, Disney, News Corp., Bertelsmann of Germany and Viacom, with NBC a close sixth.

“The way that journalism is on the open market means that stories are for sale, and what sells is stereotypes,” Cyril says. “Market-produced coverage will tend to misrepresent youth.”

The implications of “this charged environment can result in the dehumanization of black life and regressive political decisions that can lead to violence, as the Stand Your Ground Laws resulted in the shooting death of Trayvon Martin,” she added in a follow-up email. “Otherwise, the story gets framed as coverage leads to bad individual behavior, and the systemic piece gets lost.”

When media producers in journalism and popular culture media like movies, television series and video games are mostly white, chances that young people will be humanized and fully represented are slim, says Eleni Delimpaltadaki Janis, public opinion and media research coordinator for The Opportunity Agenda in New York.

 “You see few images of black men and boys being good students or being good fathers,” she says. “They’re really fewer images of men in those roles compared to reality. It’s not just the news coverage. It’s also every type of media, but also in entertainment media, including video games. They all do a good job at using negative images of black boys and men for entertainment.”

Solutions include reporters intentionally incorporating black youths into everyday or evergreen stories like those about Christmas shopping, Janis says. Kitwana adds that it’s also important for journalists to remember that their profession carries the weight of social responsibility since democracy can’t function properly if journalism doesn’t function properly.

Eileen Espejo, director of media and health policy at Children Now in Oakland, says producers across the media spectrum should seek ways to avoid stereotypes. “We don’t want there to be a quota,” she says. “But we want you to think more creatively about the roles that people of color can play, and break out of the traditional mold.”

***
 

Joshunda Sanders writes media critiques for the Robert C. Maynard Institute for Journalism Education. Her stories and other media critiques are available at www.mije.org/mmcsi and can be republished free of charge. For more information, please contact Elisabeth Pinio at epinio@mije.org or 510-891-9202.

Trailer: Woke Up Black (a film by Mary F. Morten)

About the Film

Arguably more than any other underrepresented group of Americans, African American youth reflect the challenges of inclusion and empowerment in the post-civil rights period. Whether the issue is the mass incarceration of African Americans, the controversy surrounding Affirmative Action as a policy to redress past discrimination, the increased use of high stakes testing to regulate standards of education, debates over appropriate and effective campaigns for HIV and AIDS testing and prevention programs, efforts to limit sex education in public schools, or initiatives to tie means-tested resources to family structure and marriage, most of these initiatives and controversies are focused on, structured around, and disproportionately impact young, often marginal African Americans. However, in contrast to the centrality of African American youth to the politics and policies of the country, their perspectives and voice have generally been absent from not only public policy debates, but media and broadcast programs. Increasingly, researchers and policy-makers have been content to detail and measure the behavior of young African Americans with little concern for their attitudes, ideas, wants and desires. This documentary will work to fill that void.

Woke Up Black followed five black youth for two years. During this time we witnessed interactions with family members, educational institutions, and the legal and judicial system. We saw the social networking that is critical to the successful development of these youth and we provided a rare opportunity to hear youth speak out on some of the important and potentially life- altering topics of the day. The film underscores the humanity that we all share with each other regardless of race or age. For some of the youth profiled, despite extraordinary circumstances, they remain hopeful.

The continuing social, political and economic marginalization of African American youth is a fact that is difficult to dispute. For example, while approximately 10 percent of non-Hispanic white children lived in poverty in 2001, the poverty rate for African American children was 30 percent. Similarly, data from the U.S. Department of Justice indicates that while 3 of 1,000 white Americans ages 18-19 are sentenced prisoners, 29 of 1,000 African Americans ages 18-19 are sentenced prisoners.

The Year in ‘Race Matters’

The Year in ‘Race Matters’

by David J. Leonard | NewBlackman

Colorlines recently published a 90 second video summarizing the year in race, an amazing feet given what has happened over the year.  Statistical measurements define 2011, in many ways:

·        45 percent of the 131,000 homeless veterans in America are African-American

·        26 percent of African American families earn less than $15,000

·        1 in 9 African Americans live in neighborhoods where 40%+ of its residents live in poverty

·    Black women earn 68 cents for every dollar earned by men; for Latinas this number is 59 centers

·        16.2 percent of African Americans are unemployed

·        17.5 percent of black males are unemployed; 41 percent of black teenagers are without a job

·      11.4 percent of Latinos are unemployed; 21.3% of Alaska Natives and 19.3% of members of Midwest indigenous communities are unemployed

·        In 2011, blacks and Latino were twice as likely to face home foreclosures

·    “Between January and June of 2011, the United States carried out more than 46,000 deportations of the parents of U.S.-citizen children”

Yet, meaning of this year transcends these numbers.  We have seen ample intrusions of blatant racism into the public square.  I recently wrote about this, arguing:

In Two-Faced Racism, Leslie Picca and Joe Feagin explore the ways in which racial performances are carried in both the frontstage (integrated and multiracial public spaces) and the backstage (those private/semi-private all-white spaces where race talk and racist ideas reveal themselves in profound ways).  Their research found that the backstage offers whites a place to “perform, practice, learn, reinforce, and maintain racist views of and inclinations toward people of color.  These views and inclinations play a central role in generating and maintaining the overt and covert racial discrimination that is still commonplace in major institutions of this society” (27-28). 

Increasingly, however, the frontstage is replacing the backstage whereupon whites are publicly performing, learning, reinforcing and maintaining their racist views toward people of color.  Evident in college students donning blackface and then putting pictures online, evident in Gene Marks, Newt Ginrich, Donald Trump and their reactionary pals lamenting the laziness of black youth, evident in the usage of the N-word, evident in white-only movie screenings and white-only swimming pools, the lines between the frontstage and the backstage are blurring before our eyes.   In other words, the frontstage is now the backstage, leaving me to wonder what sorts of ideologies, stereotypes and racial talk is transpiring in backstage.  Or maybe, in a “post-racial America,” widespread racism has returned (did it ever leave?) to the frontstage thereby illustrating the importance of challenging and resisting in each and every location.

From Rep. Doug Lamborn referring to President Obama as a “tar baby” and Brent Bonzell describing President Obama as “a skinny, ghetto crackhead” to Fox’s headline for President Obama’s birthday party –“Obama's Hip-Hop BBQ Didn't Create Jobs” and Eric Bolling “criticizing” President Obama for “chugging 40's in IRE while tornadoes ravage MO,” there have been ample examples of the ways in which public expressions of racism have defined the 2011 political sphere.  The racism and sexism directed at Michelle Obama (just one example) and the astounding types of political commercials (just one example) are also evident of the ways in which violent rhetoric has dominated the public square.

Not surprisingly, Rush Limbaugh (calling President Obama a “oreo cookie” and Michelle Obama as “uppity”), Ann Coulter (“our blacks are better than theirs”), Pat Buchannan (“Blacks bought a lot of propaganda of the liberal plantation”), amongst others, all illustrate the ways in which racist language and ideologies define the nature of political discourse during 2011.  Beyond the ample instances of racism, it is important to see beyond the starling ease that racism operates within the public square to look at the ways race plays out within the deployed narratives and ideologies. 

Take Pat Buchannan, who reminisced for Jim Crow during 2011: “Back then, black and white lived apart, went to different schools and churches, played on different playgrounds, and went to different restaurants, bars, theaters, and soda fountains. But we shared a country and a culture. We were one nation. We were Americans.”  In language and the vision for America, race defined the past year (and the years before).

The last year has also seen quite a bit of recycling.  From the Moynihan Report and culture of poverty, to bootstraps ideology and efforts to blame the poor, 2011 has seen a comeback (not that these racist narratives ever went away) of these troubling ideas.  Two of the most illustrative examples were Newt Gingrich and Gene Marks.  Gingrich, who has made a career of race baiting (calling President Obama a “food stamp president” and one defined by a “‘Kenyan, anti-colonial worldview’”), recently offered policy prescriptions to deal with black unemployment: teach black youth the value of work.  He stated:

Really poor children in really poor neighborhoods have no habits of working.  And have nobody around them who works. They have no habit of ‘I do this and you give me cash’-unless it’s illegal.  What if you paid them part time in the afternoon, to sit at the clerical office and greet people when they came in?  What if you paid them to work as the assistant librarian. What if they were the assistant janitor, and carried a mop?

Deploying longstanding stereotypes about black laziness and criminality, all while crafting economic policy based on bootstrapism, Ginrich shows how 2011 has been so much about sampling and redeploying the racist ideologies of yesteryear.  Gene Marks, whose article prompted widespread condemnation because of its paternalistic tone and acceptance of widespread stereotypes, is equally reflective of this trend.

I am not a poor black kid.  I am a middle aged white guy who comes from a middle class white background.  So life was easier for me.  But that doesn’t mean that the prospects are impossible for those kids from the inner city.  It doesn’t mean that there are no opportunities for them. I believe that everyone in this country has a chance to succeed.  Still.  In 2011.  Even a poor black kid in West Philadelphia.

 

The racism of 2011 has not been limited to the political sphere, amongst punditry and politicians, but has been visible throughout society.  Evident in a teacher calling black and Latino first graders “future criminals,” Alexandra Wallace’s racist diatribe against Asians, Psychology Today’s racist article about black women, billboards charging “abortion-as-black- genocide,” and a high school coach referring to a black player as “a future welfare recipient,” racist talk and imagery has been visible throughout the year.  We have seen Lowes’ refusal to run advertisements during All-American Muslim and the Right’s demonization of Nightrunner, “DC Muslim Batman of Paris.” 

Amid the denials and the claims that whites face ample discrimination, the level of racial animus and the level of rhetorical violence during 2011 have been revealing.  The lack reflexivity and the hegemony of white privilege, with the use of the N-Word during Slut Walk, is telling about this year (see here for an apology).  In fact, 2011 has seen ample instances of the N-Word within the public square, from high school girls chanting it before their game to the recent slur directed at Rihanna.

Of course, 2011 has seen the violence and the injustices of racism in policy.  In the execution of Troy Davis, in the systemic deportations of undocumented mothers and fathers, in the judicial assault on ethnic studies, in the anti-immigrant policies of Alabama, Georgia, South Carolina,  and Indiana, in the many instances of police brutality, the persistence of racial profiling,  and the number of hate groups surpassing 1,000, this year has seen ample evidence of the fallacy of a post-racial America.

The prosecution and sentencing of, and the struggle for justice for, Kelly Williams-Bolar is emblematic of many issues surrounding race in 2011.  From the criminalization of people of color and the demonization of women of color, to educational inequalities and the generation of kids behind left behind, her case teaches us much about the continued struggle for civil rights in 2^nd decade of the twenty-first century.  Jamilah King described the case in the following way:

Just in case you haven’t seen this story blow up on your social network this week: Kelley Williams-Bolar is headed to an Ohio jail. The mother of two was sentenced this week to 10 days in jail, three years of probation, and 80 hours of community service. Her crime? Sending her two daughters to an out-of-district school. . . .

              

It’s an infuriating case, especially for anyone who’s even remotely familiar with educational inequity in this country. America still hasn’t made good on its half-century promise to desegregateits public schools, and academic achievement can almost always be measured by zip code.

The demonization of women of color extended into the realm of popular culture as well.

2011 was also the year of The Help, a film that recycled the hegemonic Hollywood trope of “white love” (h/t Elon James White) and racial redemption all while sanitizing the black freedom struggle.  Yet, it was also a year defined by the many powerful responses to this film; these effort resisted and challenged the film’s (mis)representation of black women’s work, segregation, social justice, and countless other issues.  From the Association of Black Woman Historians’ powerful statement to the many articles from black scholars – Dutchess Harris, Rebecca Wanzo, Mecca Jamilah Sullivan, Martha Southgate, Mark Anthony Neal, Aishah Shahidah Simmons,  Melissa Harris-Perry, and Honorée Fanonne Jeffers – many voices have challenged the narrative and representations offered by The Help, refusing to accept the cultural politics of the mainstream.  Yet, 2011 has also seen the release of Pariah, a film that explores the experience of a young black lesbian struggling for acceptance within her family and society at large.  Whereas The Help represents blackness as accessory, as the help, Pariahreminds audiences of the power and beauty of black identity, highlighting heterogeneity, diversity, and humanity.   

2011 has seen ample moments of resistance, a refusal to accept and tolerate racism, sexism, and homophobia.  It has been a year of “speaking truth to power” and refusing the dominant narrative.  Following the airing of ABC’s 20/20 special entitled “Children of the Plains,” a group of Native American students from South Dakota produced their own video that refused the images and messages offered in the show: “I know what you probably think of us…we saw the special too. Maybe you saw a picture, or read an article. But we want you to know, we’re more than that…we have so much more than poverty.”  Then there were the students from Ohio University, who launched the “We are a culture not a costume” campaign to protest the racist stereotypes and racist images so prominent during Halloween.  Youth in Californiaand Alabamafought vigorously to change the tide against anti-immigrant racism.  Hotel workers in New Yorkprotested Dominique Strauss-Kahn and the victimization of Nafissatou Diallo. And so much more.

The power of new media as a space of resistance has been on full-display, whether the consciousness raising happening on twitter and Facebook, or the ways in which Jay Smooth, Jasiri X, Issa Rae, Amie Breeze Harper, Ariana Proehl. Scholars like Alondra Nelson, Koritha Mitchell, Nicole Fleetwood, Danielle McGwire, Kellie Jones, Evie Shockey, and Manning Marable (who we lost this year) have also published important works that advance the study of race, gender, and sexuality in both history and our current moment.  In the face of erasure, dehumanization, and persistent inequalities, scholars and artists (see Lisa Thompson’s discussion of black women in theater), activists and organizers, and people from community big and small have met the racism and injustice with force.  There has been so much to challenge in 2011 yet the many instances of injustice have not killed our “freedom dreams.”  While these dreams will be deferred until 2012, the struggle will continue.   

***

David J. Leonard is Associate Professor in the Department of Critical Culture, Gender and Race Studies at Washington State University, Pullman. He has written on sport, video games, film, and social movements, appearing in both popular and academic mediums. His work explores the political economy of popular culture, examining the interplay between racism, state violence, and popular representations through contextual, textual, and subtextual analysis.  Leonard’s latest book After Artest: Race and the Assault on Blackness will be published by SUNY Press in May of 2012.

Conservatives, Hip-Hop and 2012

Conservatives, Hip-Hop and 2012

by Bakari Kitwana | Huffington Post

As the 2012 presidential election ramps up, expect conservatives to keep gunning for black youth, in general, and hip-hop, specifically. Black youth showed significant gains in 2008, and now represent the group of 18- to 29-year-old who vote the most. Their ability via popular to inspire young voters -- who in 2008 voted for Barack Obama over John McCain by a ratio of 2-to-1 -- poses one of the most viable threats to Republicans' aspirations to retake the Ppesidency. The recent national discussion surrounding the rapper Common's appearance at the White House is perhaps the first salvo.

What was quickly summed up as either an attempt to defend law enforcement or as an attack on the value of the arts does not get to the heart of what conservatives were really communicating to voters in the Common dust-up. That is, is there a place in mainstream American political life for young blacks, whose political views don't always fall within traditional mainstream conservative/liberal lines?

Black youth, particularly those who are poor and often ignored by politicians and lawmakers, are the men and women that the rapper-actor Common gave voice to in his 2007 poem ("A Letter to the Law") highlighted throughout the controversy. Conservative critics take issue with Common's tendency in the poem to represent their issues. Further, they feign outrage at the fact that Common presumes innocent several high profile Black Panthers convicted of police killings -- Assata Shakur and Mumia Abu-Jama l-- notwithstanding Common's suspicion is shared by international supporters, including Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International. 

So much of conservative media maneuvering since the 2008 election has been about creating illusions. This focus on Common is no different. In fact, the point of highlighting these associations is to encourage the casual observer to infer that like-minded Black youth are equally un-American and should not be welcome at the White House. Hence, the suggestion goes, it is not only logical, but also patriotic to dismiss their issues.

Such reasoning fails to consider that many of these young Americans embrace their citizenship with as much passion as conservative Republicans advance their own interpretation of what the founding fathers envisioned for the nation. Rightly so. Many have fought in American wars of the last decade, as African-Americans in the military outdistance their representation in the general population. Many were forced outside of the mainstream economy years before the Great Recession of 2007-2009. By 2009, for example, unemployment for black 16- to 24-year-olds reached Depression-era levels. 

Many others, with hip-hop as the unifying theme, vote and engage in grassroots community change efforts in neighborhoods abandoned long ago by government job programs and major corporations. They belong to national, multi-racial organizations like The Hip-Hop Caucus, the League of Young Voters, Green For All or similar local organizations. They also, like their fellow citizens, believe their issues should take center stage on the nation's agenda -- that they should be no more or less important than America's super rich, its senior citizens, its fed up Tea Partiers or its mega corporations.

Unfortunately, as the nation gears up for election 2012, they are among those that conservative spin brings to mind with phrases like "take back America." For self-appointed defenders of American values (who these days take their cues from House Speaker John Boehner, presidential hopeful Michele Bachmann and talking heads like Sean Hannity and Ann Coulter, to name a few), hearing the voices of fellow citizens at a White House poetry reading signals not the diversity of the nation, but, rather, a country that has lost its way. 

As a hip-hop advocate and critic who has shared the stage with Common, I can unequivocally vouch for the value he adds to the nation. He's both a thoughtful lyricist and a hip-hop star committed to using his celebrity to improve the lives of forgotten Americans. He does not routinely traffic in misogyny or gratuitous violence. Yes, there are those rare moments where he could go further to distance himself from hip-hop's gender stereotypes. However, to focus on Common's lyrics is to miss the point.

And missing the point in this case means entering a very calculated debate in which Common, and by extension hip-hop culture, is cast as a villain worthy of our collective disdain. This demonizing comes at a time when conservatives, especially over the last two and half years, have firmly demonstrated their ability to set the tone for national media and popular discourse, replete with what has become customary double-talk, innuendo and outright distortion of the facts. 

Problem is, the idea that young blacks and hip-hop culture are by definition un-American is a message that defies reality. 

Voter participation for 18- to 29-year-olds enjoyed an eleven percent increase between 2000 and 2008. Cross-racial hip-hop organizing jump-started many of these mobilizing efforts. In 2008, fifty-one percent of eligible 18- to 29-year-olds voted in the presidential election. Fifty-eight percent of black youth 18-29 voted, the highest participation of any racial group. (Fifty-two percent of white youth voted in the same age group.) Instead of rebuking young blacks and hip-hop culture that speaks to multiracial audiences for their forays in civic engagement -- including symbolic representation at the White House -- one would think that defenders of the American way would embrace them. 

But this is divide-and-conquer political theater. And the focus for conservatives who lost the presidential election by a landslide in 2008 (in part because of a cross-racial youth vote) is to win in 2012 -- at any cost. To that end, driving a wedge between this emerging, vibrant youth voting bloc is crucial. However, attempting to do so by relying on racial stereotyping, rather than the facts, is a tactic Americans concerned about the future of our democracy should not tolerate this election season.

***

Bakari Kitwana is senior media fellow at the Jamestown Project and the author of the forthcoming Hip-Hop Activism in the Obama Era (Third World Press, 2011)

Follow Bakari Kitwana on Twitter: www.twitter.com/therealbakari

The Zen of Young Money: Being Present to the Genius of Black Youth

The Zen of Young Money: Being Present to the Genius of Black Youth
by Alexis Pauline Gumbs

I fly with the stars in the skies,
I am no longer trying to survive,
I believe that life is a prize,
But to live doesn’t mean you’re alive.

what am I doing? what am I doing?
oh yeah, that’s right, I’m doing me, I’m doing me
I’m living life right now
and this what I’m a do til its over
til it’s over, but it’s far from over

First:
I am a member of a criminalized generation of black geniuses.

My twenty-something age-mates and the teenagers behind us are often dismissed as materialistic, crass, empty-headed, impulse addicts. Elders mourn our distance from the forms of social movement participation they would have imagined and mass media relates to us as a market to be bought, exploited and sold back to ourselves, ever cheaper.

As a particularly nerdy member of the so-called thoughtless generation, I resent the implication. And I wonder sometimes what it will take to make the forms of social interaction, critique and that young black people are engaged in every moment of our high-tech or low-tech days legible to the baby boomers (since we all know that legibility to baby boomers is what makes something real in the United States).

So this rare piece (on my part) of contemporary hip hop commentary is an attempt to provide a specific example for an undercredited belief that is at the basis of my queer intergenerational politic of black love:

As young black people we are experts of our own experiences, we think about the meanings of our lives, the limits of our options and more often than not we choose not to conform, not to consent to an upright and respectable meaning of life. Even in our most nihilistic moments we are tortured artists and mad scientists, living a critique of a dominant society that cannot contain us and does not deserve us. This doesn’t mean that we are always doing the right thing (Spike Lee), but it does mean that any effective transformative politic that is accountable to us, young black people with a variety of intellectual and cultural attractions and modes will respect us as genius participants in a culture in transition (singularity) instead of incorrectly assuming that we are mindless consumers.

Now:

I take, the example of two songs by two of the most visible young black artists around, members of a hip hop crew/entertainment company that has capitalized on glamourizing a sexualized, hyper-capitalist version of youth energy, chosen family, excess and fun: Nicki Minaj, Drake from the Lil Wayne fronted Young Money Crew.

I happen to have been listening to mainstream radio one day in the car during the week that I was reading Angel Kyodo Williams book Being Black, on the value of Zen principles for black people in the United States and, inexplicably free of the usual defenses and judgments I hold against the most highly marketed versions of hip-pop (no typo) and the self-protection against misogyny and hyper-exploitation that generally causes me to hold back my listening, I actually paid attention to they lyrics.

Of course it was incredibly likely that I would hear songs by Nicki Minaj and Drake since they are routinely rotated. It seems like 2 out of 2 songs that are currently played on the radio star or feature one of these artists. But this time, opened up by Williams’ insights about the value of releasing judgment I began to wonder whether beyond payola and the corporatization and uniformity of radio the mass appeal of these two artists might actually not only be the attraction of black youth, and young people in general to…(young) money and the alcohol baptized sexually olympic lifestyle advertised to come with young people’s access to money, but also a very different basic need in the lives of young black people, and a central need in my life: accessible technologies for being present to our own lives.

Read the Full Essay @ The Feminist Wire

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Alexis Pauline Gumbs has a PhD in English, Africana Studies and Women’s Studies from Duke University. Alexis is the founder of Eternal Summer of the Black Feminist Mind and the co-creator of the Queer Black MobileHomecoming Project.