James Braxton Peterson on Duke University's "Institutional Blackface"

Institutional Blackface

by James Braxton Peterson | HuffPost BlackVoices

For those that do not know, I am a proud graduate of Duke University (Class of '93). As a black alumnus of one of the greatest universities in the world with a troublesome history with race and racism, I am often treated to the highs and lows of the Duke experience. Last week was no different as members of the Duke University Black Alumni Committee reached out to me to begin the process of organizing an event featuring myself, the NBA's Grant Hill, the Washington Post's Nia-Malika Henderson and others to commemorate the 50-year celebration of the presence of black students at Duke – yes, it's only been 50 years. Duke beat Kentucky – i.e. Duke men's basketball beat the University of Kentucky – and this is always good. But in addition to these great moments – moments that make me proud to be a Duke grad, we were once again treated to the insensitive (and now common) practice of white undergraduates who "dress up" as black characters and blacken up their faces in order to do so. Sigh.

Halloween is a holiday that I generally dread anyway since wearing a (figurative) mask for me and for many of my ancestors was a necessary strategy deployed regularly and specifically for the sake of subverting white supremacy. But because I am a professor, former grad student, etc., the Halloween holiday also means that I have been perennially treated to seriously demeaning tricks. White students put on blackface at Halloween, take pictures and generally circulate and celebrate their "costumes." I think of this as the "southern strategy" of the Halloween holiday. Young white folks, usually male, are able to express their racial and racist angst (conscious and subconscious) in a space and at a time that for the most part sanctions backwards, demeaning behavior. This has happened at everyinstitution of higher learning at which I have ever worked or learned. It is strategic because the blackfacers almost never face the facts of our dark American history and almost always claim ignorance in the aftermath of outrage and the pain communicated (perennially) by the black university communities that must bare witness to these regular insults.

For the few of you out there who do not know the history of blackface minstrelsy please allow me to provide you with an ever-so-brief primer. In the 19th century, white performers blackened their faces and aped the most stereotypical, dehumanizing, and demeaning "characteristics" of black people. This practice became one of America's first popular forms of entertainment. Its pervasiveness contributed to the American narratives of race that considered black people to be less than human, "other" and utterly unworthy of citizenship, much less equality. Eventually black entertainers blackened their own faces and exploited America's appetite for the destruction of black humanity. This not-too-distant history is a painful reminder – I guess only to black people – of the awful history of racism in America. That it can be so cavalierly and regularly referenced with no sense of this history or with feigned ignorance of said history is even more troubling than the wearing of blackface in the first place.

But this incident stings a bit more, not just because it's my alma mater, but because of the fact that a head coach of a Division I sports team was not aware that a student athlete engaging in this kind of act might not be a good look for the team, the program, or the university; that a web administrator could/would post this on the Duke Athletics Department website without any thought or consideration of how it might offend Duke alum, current Duke students and faculty is also absolutely striking. I despise these kinds of analogies, but imagine the Duke Athletic Department posting a picture of a student athlete dressed as a Nazi soldier. Yes, the cavalier wearing of blackface offends me that much. It harkens back to a history in this country where everything from entertainment to labor, from religion, to education, everything, was systemically designed to destroy the humanity of people who look just like me – people from whom I am descended.

I could rail on, but instead I would like to make an announcement. I am hereby formally offering my services as an advisor, professor, and/or consultant [PRO BONO] to any institution with which I have ever been affiliated for me to come in during any first-year orientation, diversity "training" or other opportunity, to address this issue specifically and to place in its full context the wearing of blackface on college campuses. For some time now, I have been less and less offended by the students who actually do this, and more and more amazed that some of our greatest educational institutions are incapable of appreciating how painful and embarrassing this pervasive practice has become.

***

James Braxton Peterson is the Director of Africana Studies and Associate Professor of English at Lehigh University. He is also the founder of Hip Hop Scholars, LLC, an association of Hip Hop generational scholars dedicated to researching and developing the cultural and educational potential of Hip Hop, urban, and youth cultures. Peterson has appeared on Fox News, CBS, MSNBC, ABC News, ESPN, and various local television networks as an expert on race, politics, and popular culture.Follow James Peterson on Twitter: www.twitter.com/DrJamesPeterson

NCLB Waivers: Closing Achievement Gap Requires Policy Overhaul, Not Tweaks

NCLB Waivers: 

Closing Achievement Gap Requires Policy Overhaul, Not Tweaks

by Kate Casas | HuffPost Black Voices

To date, 33 states and the District of Columbia have been granted a waiver from the requirements of No Child Left Behind. According to Education Weekly, once given the flexibility to revise their accountability system all but eight states have taken the opportunity to alter their achievement goals. States are now telling the Department of Education (DOE) that it will take longer for low-income, minority, and/or disabled children to reach proficiency than it will for everyone else. For example, the District of Columbia has said that by 2017, 70 percent of African American students and 90 percent of white students will be reading on grade level. In Delaware, it's 75 percent reading proficiency for black students, 71 percent for English Language Learners and 87 percent for white students.

As you can imagine, this has rankled the feathers of education advocates on all sides of the education reform debate. Opponents say that the 26 states that have altered subgroup achievement goals are lowering expectations for at-risk children. Proponents of the changes say states are being realistic about how long it will take to close the achievement gap.

My concern isn't about how the goals and timelines are being perceived, but rather, what policies and systemic changes are being implemented so states can realize their goals. What we should have learned from No Child Left Behind is that you can set a goal of 100 percent proficiency for all students, but if you don't have the policies to support that goal, you are going to fall far short.

Take, for example, my home state of Missouri. Missouri, to its credit, is one of the eight states that has not used the waiver to set different goals for each subgroup. However, the five-year trend in Missouri shows that without some serious policy overhaul it will take 174 years to close the achievement gap between Hispanic students and white students in reading and 87 years to close the black/white achievement gap in math. Additionally, the gap between low-income and non-low-income students in both math and reading is continuing to widen.

The achievement gaps in Missouri are not unlike the achievement gaps we see all over America. While it is admirable that the Missouri Department of Elementary and Secondary Education believes the gap can be closed by 2017, I fear that the policy changes the department has outlined are not transformational enough to get the job done.

In order to close gaps of this magnitude, Missouri and other states have to focus on the following strategies:

• Turn traditional public schools into a model of autonomy for principals and teachers that ensures each school is able to meet the needs of the unique learners in its school;

• Provide a transparent system for giving A-F letter grades to all schools and hold them accountable for student outcomes and school spending decisions;

• Increase educational choices so children who are stuck in schools not making significant progress have a fantastic and immediate choice for something different and better;

• Recruit, retain, compensate and evaluate teachers based on performance, not seniority.

These kinds of systemic changes are happening in some places, but not in Missouri. Worse yet, there is currently no plan for them to. The outline for closing the achievement gap calls for the rehashing of a lot of worthwhile tweaks, but history has shown us that slight adjustments aren't enough.

My fear is that we are getting hung up on how states are communicating their goals for closing the achievement gap and forgetting that the actual plan for closing the achievement gap is what is important. Having spent a decade working in and with students in the mostly low-income and minority Saint Louis Public Schools, I understand as well as anyone the damage that the soft bigotry of low expectations can cause, but the loud bigotry of inaction is even worse.

***

Kate Casas is the State Policy Director of the Children's Education Alliance of Missouri, a statewide policy organization that focuses on parent engagement and public awareness.

The John Hope Franklin Papers: A Historian Becomes History

The John Hope Franklin Papers: A Historian Becomes History

by Naomi L. Nelson | HuffPost BlackVoices

The only way we can know our past is through the records we keep and pass on. No one was more keenly aware of this than groundbreaking American historian John Hope Franklin, whose papers were recently acquired by Duke University and will soon be open to the public.

During his prolific career, Franklin spent hours in archives and libraries pouring over letters, diaries, obituaries, business records, photographs, and publications, seeking to tell a new more inclusive American history. His research itself was a form of activism. The staff in many southern libraries and archives in the 1940s and 1950s had never imagined that an African American scholar might wish to use their collections.

While they could not deny that Franklin had a right to use the materials, they refused to offer him the same levels of service offered to white researchers. At North Carolina's State Department of Archives and History, for example, the director made him wait for several days while they arranged for a separate research area for him.

The archive's white staff, unwilling to serve a black researcher, required him to retrieve and reshelve the materials he used. (This latter requirement was soon dropped when white researchers complained that Franklin could browse the closed stacks while they could not -- an exquisite example of the ironies of segregation.) From his intensive engagement with historic materials emerged a long list of books and articles that would expand and enrich our understanding of American history, including From Slavery to Freedom: A History of African-Americans, The Emancipation Proclamation, The Militant South, The Free Negro in North Carolina, George Washington Williams: A Biography, and A Southern Odyssey: Travelers in the Antebellum North.

At the same time Franklin was writing history, he was making history. "I think knowing one's history leads one to act in a more enlightened fashion," he reflected in 1994 in Emerge magazine. "I cannot imagine how knowing one's history would not urge one to be an activist."

Franklin worked with Thurgood Marshall on the Brown v. Board of Education case and joined protestors in the march led by Martin Luther King, Jr., from Selma to Montgomery, Alabama. After teaching at historically black St. Augustine's University, North Carolina Central University, and Howard University, he was recruited by Brooklyn College to chair the Department of History in 1956. He thus became the first African American to chair an academic department at a predominantly white university (news that made the front page of The New York Times). Franklin then moved to the University of Chicago, again as chair of the history department, before moving for a final time to Duke University, where he was appointed to an endowed professorship in the history department (another first). He remained engaged in the national conversation on race long after his retirement in 1992, most memorably co-chairing President Clinton's 1997 National Advisory Board on Race. After Franklin's death in 2009, his close friend Vernon Jordan lauded him as "a teacher who taught us to believe in the shield of justice and the sword of truth."

Franklin's papers have now become part of the historical record themselves. A few illustrative examples provide a personal view of this very public historian and activist. Nestled in a series of folders is the typescript of Franklin's father's autobiography. Buck Colbert Franklin was a lawyer in Oklahoma and lived through the 1921 Tulsa Race Riot and its aftermath. He started his autobiography in 1956 and worked with his son to edit the document until his death in 1960. In 2000, John Hope Franklin and his son John Whittington Franklin finished the editing and published My Life and an Era: The Autobiography of Buck Colbert Franklin. The fragile typescript bears handwritten notes and edits by all three generations and allows us to see a family's history taking shape. While the published version is very true to the typescript, a few sections were excised -- notably a reflection on the ways that segregation can lead to violence and another on human nature -- and some wording was changed to reflect more modern sensibilities.

In another box, a substantial stack of typed notecards bears testimony to the contributions of historians during the Brown v. Board of Education litigation in the early 1950s. The question at hand was whether the Congress that passed the Fourteenth Amendment and the state legislatures that ratified it believed that the amendment would abolish segregation in public schools. Franklin scoured the records of state governments and reports in contemporary newspapers looking for evidence. ("Historians to the rescue!" Franklin quipped in his autobiography.) Many notecards he generated during his research include his typed or handwritten comments alongside the excerpts. His initial research plan and a handwritten outline of his findings rest alongside the cards. This research, along with that provided by other notable historians, provided the foundation for the legal brief filed by the NAACP's Legal Defense Fund, and these cards allow us to sit alongside Franklin as he identified and weighed the evidence.

Wonderful things are often filed in unexpected places. A small portrait of Frederick Douglass is clipped to a letter at the front of a folder full of correspondence related to Franklin's article for LIFE magazine's 1968 series "A Search for the Black Past." Despite Franklin's broad interests in American history, in the eyes of the public he was most identified with African American history, and many people wrote to him about the series. The correspondent who sent him this small photograph noted that it had been given to him by his grandfather (who remembered the Civil War years and called Douglass as "the [most] powerful negro in America.") The letter was written on Martin Luther King, Jr.'s, birthday a mere six years after Dr. King's assassination. In his response, Franklin replied that he had not been able to find another copy of this particular photo and would try other sources. As we don't have any other notes about his findings, it is up to present researchers to continue the search.

John Hope Franklin is a towering figure in American historiography. His papers allow us to look over his shoulder as he developed his ideas and worked for a more inclusive and equitable society. We are fortunate indeed that he saw himself as both historian and history.

The John Hope Franklin Papers are currently being prepared for research use. The date when they will open to the public will be announced on the website of the David M. Rubenstein Rare Book & Manuscript Library at Duke: library.duke.edu/Rubenstein.

***

Naomi L. Nelson is the Director of the David M. Rubenstein Rare Book & Manuscript Library at Duke University.

The Lost Voice of Bishop Henry McNeal Turner

The Lost Voice of Bishop Henry McNeal Turner

by Andre E. Johnson | HuffPost BlackVoices

I have just returned from the Association of the Society of African American Life and History (ASALH) where I had the opportunity to present work on Bishop Henry McNeal Turner as part of my on going effort to reclaim the prophet voice of Turner. After presenting my paper, "Cry in the Wilderness: (Re) Claiming the Prophetic Voice of Bishop Henry McNeal Turner, a person shared her "testimony" of attending Henry McNeal Turner High School in Atlanta, but not knowing who Bishop Turner was. She knew that he was a "black man," but as she remembered, no one talked about who he was or why people deemed it was important enough to name a school after him. Even upon graduation in 1966 from the school, in which her class presented a bust of Bishop Turner to the school, she and her classmates still did not know who the Bishop was.

As she continued her story, she only discovered who the Bishop was when in Washington DC and wearing a Turner High class reunion shirt, she so happened to walk into a black owned bookstore. Upon entering the store, the owner greeted her by saying, "So you are from Atlanta." Puzzled, the women asked, "how did he know that?" and he responded, "your shirt, you went to Turner High and the only Turner High school I know is in Atlanta. Yeah, Bishop Turner was a bad man." The woman looked startled and asked, "So, do you know who this man was?" The owner responded, "of course I do." The women said that he then begin to offer her a history of the Bishop and to tell her why he was so important.

After "discovering" who Bishop Turner was, the woman continued to share her frustration in trying to find material on him. She looked everywhere for information on Turner but only finding "snippets" of information here and there. One of the reasons she attended our session was because she wanted to hear more about the elusive Bishop that supposedly was so important during his time, yet, she could find only snippets of information. In addition, she also shared with us that she is a member of the AME Church and even at her church; she did not hear much on Bishop Turner.

When she finished, I shared with her and the rest of the audience, (who by the way, was glad that she mentioned not knowing Turner because several others did not either), that this story is not surprising. Since I started to work on Turner, I have heard this story before. For a person whose public career lasted over sixty years; one that took him from working along side enslaved people to Senior Bishop of the AME Church, one whose literary archive is massive, one would have thought much more would have been done on Turner. Therefore, her question to me was a simple one--"why haven't we heard more of Bishop Turner?"

I believe the answer to that question is three fold. First, while Turner's literary archive is massive, it has also been scattered. In short, outside of the small collection at the Moorland-Spingarn Library in Washington DC, there is no one place that has a Turner collection or a place that has the "Turner Papers." I attempt to address this problem by collecting and publishing the writings of Turner titled, The Literary Archive of Henry McNeal Turner (Mellen Press). I am thankful for Mellen because they were the only publisher interested in publishing everything I found on Turner--a collection of text, as is, and without commentary, so that others who have an interest in Turner could finally read his words. I have completed two volumes already, "An African American Pastor Before and During the American Civil War, Vol. 1 (2010)and the "Chaplain Letters, Vol. 2 (2012). Vol. 3, titled An African American Pastor During Reconstruction is due in 2013.

The second reason I tie to the first--there has not been much in the way of publication about Turner. In short, history just has not been kind to Turner. Unlike his more famous contemporaries, Frederick Douglass, Frances Ellen Watkins Harper, Ida B. Wells, (who ASALH remembered this year with a plenary), Booker T. Washington and others, works on Turner is scant. So scant in fact, that in our session at ASALH, I rattled off from memory the previous scholarship on Turner.

There also however, may be another reason for the lack of Turner scholarship. As I argued in the"Forgotten Prophet: Bishop Henry McNeal Turner and the African American Prophetic Tradition," near the end of his life, Turner was what I call, a "pessimistic prophet." While Turner advocated for emigration, he also knew that African Americans were not disposed to go--the ones who could afford it did not want to and the ones who would have gone could not afford to go. Therefore, Turner quickly became the "prophet" to poor and marginalized African Americans and his prophetic venom spewed on everyone--including "middle-class" African Americans who resided in what he called the "safety" of the North. In short, with his prophetic denunciations against America, the church, and African Americans, many people simply became tired of Turner and his chronicling of the abuses of African Americans; especially in the face of African American rhetoric that proclaimed that African Americans were moving forward and doing well just a generation out of slavery.

When Turner died in 1915, the last twenty years of Turner life had been one were he adopted a pessimistic prophetic persona--and quite frankly, no one wanted to hear Turner or remember him as someone to admire. For example, while other African Americans tried to find some hope in the Plessy decision, Turner declared in an editorial, "Sackcloth and Ashes for the Negro." While other African Americans supported the country in its imperialism campaigns at the end of the nineteenth century, Turner denounced it and said that if any African Americans fight in these wars "they ought to be hung." While African Americans were still beholden to the Republican Party, took broke ranks in 1900 and supported the Democrat nominee William Jennings Bryan. While other African Americans celebrated the country and the progress African Americans made, Turner constantly and consistently reminded them about the lynchings and mob violence that were still taking place all over the country, called the American flag a dirty and contemptible rag and damned the country to hell (yeah, before Jeremiah Wright).

As I will argue in the follow up book to Forgotten Prophet tentatively titled, Bootlicks, Spittoon Lickers, Scullions, and Fool Negroes: The Pessimistic Prophecy of Bishop Henry McNeal Turner, Turner's positions and proclamations did not fit the integrationist model that surfaced during this time. Therefore, African Americans and even the AME Church, who Turner embarrassed continually, decided to marginalize his work, writings, and record. However, this should no longer be the case and I invite others to join me in this reclamation project.

***

Andre E. Johnson is the Dr. James L. Netters Professor of Rhetoric and Religion and African American Studies at Memphis Theological Seminary. He is also Senior Pastor of Gifts of Life Ministries in Memphis, Tennessee and blogs at Rhetoric Race and Religion. He is the author of the forthcoming "The Forgotten Prophet: Bishop Henry McNeal Turner and the African American Prophetic Tradition" (Lexington Books) and is currently editing the works of Bishop Turner under the "Literary Archive of Henry McNeal Turner" (Edwin Mellen Press). Follow him on Twitter @aejohnsonphd

Elizabeth Warren and the Politics of Racial Passing

Elizabeth Warren and the Politics of Racial Passing

by Marcia Dawkins | HuffPost Black Voices

This year's election season is "the battle of the racial passers." While many have fixated on the authenticity of a multiracial President Obama and a Latino Mitt Romney, questions of racial identity and passing have taken center stage in the Massachusetts Senate race between GOP incumbent Scott Brown and Democratic challenger Elizabeth Warren as well.

To put it bluntly, Brown is accusing Warren of "passing," or representing herself as a member of a different racial group than the one to which she belongs. These accusations are to be expected, as I wrote in my new book, Clearly Invisible: Racial Passing and the Color of Cultural Identity, which deals with how people from all walks of life reconcile who they are with who society tells them to be in a society where racial definitions are constantly changing.

Brown resurrected the theme of racial passing last week when his campaign released an ad called "Who Knows," which is a mashup of television reports featuring Warren being grilled about her claim to Native American heritage. "Elizabeth Warren is trying to put questions about her heritage behind her," announces the newscaster in one of the clips.

Brown underscored the ad's message with his opening remarks at last week's debate. He said, Warren "checked the box claiming she is Native American, and clearly she is not."

Translation: Don't be duped. Warren is a deceptive passer. I know this because I can see race. I know a Native American person when I see one and I'm not seeing a Native American person when I see Warren. Therefore, you shouldn't either.

Brown followed up his questions about Warren's racial identity by questioning her "character," asserting that she passed as Native American in order to take advantage of affirmative action. Apparently, Warren benefited from unfair advantage as a racial minority at Harvard Law School. Three messages are being sent here. The first is: If we can't trust Warren's outward appearance then we can't trust her actions either. The second is: Trust me!! I'm not a passer!! I am who I say I am and my appearance confirms it. Remember (a white male) appearance is a trustworthy measure of character. The third is: White (male) people are now members of a disadvantaged racial group because of programs like affirmative action.

Warren responded via a statementprovided to the Boston Globe after the debate. "Growing up," Warren explained, "my mother and my grandparents and my aunts and uncles often talked about our family's Native American heritage. As a kid, I never thought to ask them for documentation - what kid would? - but that doesn't change the fact that it is a part of who I am and part of my family heritage."

Some of Brown's campaign staffers weren't convinced by the candidate's testimony, which could explain why they took to the streets making Native American "war whoops" and doing the "tomahawk chop" at a campaign rally in Boston over the weekend.

When the votes are counted this November, Warren's racial identity will be less significant than the fact that questions about her identity persist as means of disqualification. Such questions demonstrate the ongoing problems of racial identification in the twenty-first century.

But, if we're willing to get past the noise and listen to Warren, we may also find some answers. Answers to questions like: What are you? Who is most qualified to respond? What evidence can be considered? Warren's identity also provides a new answer to the old question about the definition of race. Is race real? Is it biological? Is it sociological? For Warren the answer is complicated. Race is clearly invisible -- a fact of life that may also be, to some degree, a fiction.

***

Marcia Alesan Dawkins, Ph. D.is Clinical Assistant Professor, USC Annenberg School of Communication. Dawkins is the author of Clearly Invisible: Racial Passing and the Color of Cultural Identity (Baylor University Press, August 2012) and Eminem: The Real Slim Shady (Praeger Press, 2013). She writes on race, diversity, media, religion, and politics for a variety of high-profile publications, including The Huffington Post, Truthdig, The Root and Cultural Weekly.

Follow Marcia Dawkins on Twitter: www.twitter.com/drdawkins09

Rev. Otis Moss III on "Invisible Racism"

Otis Moss III:

"​In this day of the viral "empty chair," the church community and the interfaith community must speak to the "empty chair" and what it represents. The "empty chair" represents invisible racism and voter suppression in America."

Tupac Shakur, Jesus and Resurrection Power

Tupac Shakur, Jesus and Resurrection Power

by Ebony A. Utley | HuffPost Black Voices

Jesus and Tupac had a lot in common.

Their dramatic early years began with conception under non-normative circumstances. Mary's mysterious virginal conception could have led her community to accuse her of adultery. Afeni Shakur's decidedly non-virginal conception occurred while she was out on bail. Afeni was accused of planning to bomb New York City public spaces. Neither woman was guilty of the accusations raised against them, but scandal still surrounded their pregnancies. The stress of the accusations was augmented by the fact that Mary was traveling while pregnant, and Afeni was imprisoned while pregnant.

Jesus was born into poverty in a manger in Bethlehem. Tupac was born into poverty in New York City. As poor minority babies, their families moved around a lot. Jesus' family fled to avoid the state-sanctioned oppression that was Herod's wrath. Herod wanted to kill Jesus simply because of who he was. Tupac's family moved in and out of shelters to avoid the state-sanctioned oppression also known as institutionalized racism. No one wanted to help Afeni because of who she was: a former member of the Black Panther Party. Both boys' stepfathers came from lineages filled with unscrupulous characters. There was no silver spoon for either child.

Under these circumstances, Jesus and Tupac matured into brazen intellectuals who spoke truth wherever there was injustice. They loved words and were master storytellers. As single men in their 20s who were self-taught and unemployed, they cared very little about others' perceptions and fraternized with sexually licentious women, cavorted with sinners, enjoyed a good party, appreciated good wine, had tempers, used profane language with religious people, praised faithfulness over stilted forms of religious piety and honored God more than the government.

Public demands for justice accompanied by a seeming disregard for social mores quickly placed Jesus and Tupac under constant surveillance. They were both betrayed and ultimately killed while still in their prime. Here's where the comparisons break down. Jesus was blameless. Tupac was found guilty of sexual abuse. And his body of work does indeed cosign plenty of immoral activities.

Despite many other obvious differences, comparing the particulars of Jesus and Tupac's lives creates broader implications for the relationship between religion and hip hop. Although they appear antithetical, religion and hip hop share immense potential for creating safe spaces where people who feel like outcasts can express themselves. Irrespective of whether you believe Jesus was the son of God or whether you believe Tupac was a thug, paying attention to religious influences in hip hop humanizes thugs. Paying attention to how hip hop uses religious themes humanizes religion.

For example, Jesus' resurrection must not be limited to the Christian narrative of death, burial, resurrection, ascension and promised return. Jesus is resurrected every time someone like Tupac can see a reason for his pain and persecution and decide to persevere. Tupac literally saw himself as Jesus.

Tupac intended no disrespect because Jesus helped him understand himself. When religious doctrines about original sin, eschatology and God seemed impractical, Tupac found hope in a Jesus who understood oppression as well as the inevitability of death. In fact, Tupac and the Outlawz rapped in "Black Jesuz" about a not-too-perfect saint who hurts, smokes, drinks, understands their pain and carries them through hard times.

As I write in my book "Rap and Religion: Understanding the Gangsta's God":

Gangstas who depict death as a way of life are drawn to crucified Jesus not because they want to die, but because staring down death makes them feel most alive. According to cultural critic and minister Michael Eric Dyson, gangstas see a crucified black Jesus as "the God who literally got beat down and hung up, the God who died a painful, shameful death, subject to capital punishment under political authority and attack, but who came back, and keeps coming back, in the form and flesh we least expect."

Resurrection power is the ability to live in the midst of death. Jesus is immortalized by humanity in the same way that, 16 years after his death, Tupac's is immortalized within the hip hop community.

Tupac was the first rapper to depict himself on a cross, but he was not the last. Many rappers have depicted themselves as Jesus crowned with thorns, and many more have appropriated the themes of return, rebirth and resurrection.

Hip hop's affinity for Jesus encourages resurrection as a form of resistance when religious platitudes fail. Although it may appear blasphemous, hip hop heads push the boundaries of religion until they arrive at Jesus -- an accessible model -- for surviving oppression. Jesus is a cultural icon for resisting the rules, especially those for life and death. By imitating a Jesus who suffered and yet emerged victorious over death, they boldly appropriate Jesus' resistance as their own.

***

Ebony A. Utley, Ph.D. is an associate professor of communication studies at California State University Long Beach, and the author of "Rap and Religion: Understanding the Gangsta’s God."

Got Solutions? Beyond Denial and Toward Transformation (Part 2)

Got Solutions? Beyond Denial and Toward Transformation (Part 2)

by David J. Leonard | HuffPost BlackVoices

As I noted in part 1, white denial about racism and demands for solutions (for the racial injustices often dismissed) go hand in hand. As Mark Anthony Neal brilliantly reminded people in a Facebook status update: "The very essence of 'privilege' is when you enter into a space and are fundamentally unaware that not only have you changed the conversation, but have made the conversation about you." 

Beyond attempting to turn the conversation into what they want, what these demands fail to recognize is white denial about racism, male denial about sexism, and heterosexual denial about homophobia is problematic and is instrumental in the perpetuation of violence, inequality, and privilege. While I remain wary of the demands for solutions, especially in absence of a willingness to work toward social change and accountability, there are many individual and systemic changes that will not only foster greater equality and justice but will address historically produced inequalities. There is much that can and must be done as part of a movement of racial reconciliation and change.

Universal Health Care: A consequence of America's history of racism, violence, segregation, wealth disparity, and inequality represents stark differences between life and death. Whether looking at life expectancy, infant mortality, and countless illness, we see that racial inequality has consequences. In other words, racism kills. To combat the health consequences of American Apartheid, we must adopt a single-payer national health system. The grave impact of a Jim Crow system of "health care" is seen each and every day. According to a recent study from Harvard University, "Nearly 45,000 people die in the United States each year -- one every 12 minutes -- in large part because they lack health insurance and can not get good care." Race matters here. Tim Wise notes that each year 100,000 African Americans die "who wouldn't if black mortality rates were equal to that of whites." Universal health care would not solve these disparities but it would certainly dramatically intercede against racism's assault on the basic human right of life. Lesley M Russell makes this clear:

Racial and ethnic minorities make up more than half of America's uninsured and they suffer higher rates of chronic illness than the general population. They are more likely to experience risk factors that predispose them to chronic illnesses such as obesity, and are much less likely to receive preventive screenings, regular care, and to fill needed prescriptions that could prevent or ameliorate their conditions. Because being uninsured often means postponing needed heath care services, people of color are diagnosed at more advanced disease stages, and once diagnosed, they receive poorer care. Inevitably, they are sicker and die sooner.

A single payer system may not be a complete solution but it is a way to save lives, improve lives, and challenge the ongoing history of racism. Who is on board? It would seem that providing health care and dismantling America's prison nation is the ultimate fulfillment of family values. You want a solution, how

about respecting and valuing every person's family; now that's some values I can get on board with.

While we are nationalizing things, how about we abandon the inequitable local funding formulas employed by school districts and ensure that equity and equality is maintained in each and every school district. Since I know everyone is interested in change, how about a higher education that is open and accessible to everyone.

Solutions are a-plenty. Abolish the Electoral Collegeand move toward publicly funded elections.

There are of course many solutions, from the Dream Act to dramatically changing the tax code and increasing minimum wage would take us on a path toward equality, justice, and racial reconciliation. If you want solutions, join me in fighting for them: if people get to deduct mortgage payments from their taxes, how about rental tax deductions; if children are deductible what about no children? Free childcare for all; what about public transformation in every community - interested? An end to the war on drugs and the military industrial complex! Are these the solutions you had in mind?

I could go on for pages, but I am wondering if these are the solutions you had in mind. Yet, what I have in mind is an end to the war on drugs, the war on women, and the war on the poor; or maybe a program that actually works to address poverty and homelessness. How about a societal commitment to end rape culture; ready to help by showing zero tolerance for the criminalization, shaming and demonization of rape victims? Are those the solutions you are so interested in hearing about? You ready to commit to protecting the vote for every citizen with equal zeal as many fight for the right to bear arms? I don't know about you, but to me surely making voting easier than it is to get an assault weapon in some locales would be both a step in the right direction and solutions in itself.

Solutions abound; policy initiatives, personal transformation, and a willingness to listen, dialogue, and look inward are solutions. And while I don't think the requests for solutions are always genuine, every proposal, suggestion, and potential solution is one that is possible. Yet, we don't have to look any further than our history books to find solutions, to find pathways toward freedom and justice. "On the one hand we are called to play the Good Samaritan on life's roadside; but that will be only an initial act. One day we must come to see that the whole Jericho road must be transformed so that men and women will not be constantly beaten and robbed as they make their journey on life's highway," notes Martin Luther King. "True compassion is more than flinging a coin to a beggar; it is not haphazard and superficial. It comes to see that an edifice which produces beggars needs restructuring." Or we can simply fulfill the demands of the Black Panther Party: "We want land, bread, housing, education, clothing, justice, peace and people's community control of modern technology."

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David J. Leonard is Associate Professor in the Department of Critical Culture, Gender and Race Studies at Washington State University, Pullman. He is the author of the just released After Artest: Race and the War on Hoop (SUNY Press) as well as several other works. Leonard is a regular contributor to NewBlackMan, layupline, Feminist Wire, and Urban Cusp. He is frequent contributor to Ebony, Slam, and Racialicious as well as a past contributor to Loop21, The Nation and The Starting Five. He blogs @No Tsuris.

So You Want to Talk Solutions? White Denial and the Change Question (Part 1)

So You Want to Talk Solutions? White Denial and the Change Question (Part 1)

By David J. Leonard | HuffPost Black Voices

One of the common responses to discussions about racism and other forms of injustice is the demand for solutions. The commonplace entry into public and private discussions about racism, the efforts to take over comment sections, to silence those who work to highlight inequality with responses like "what's the solution" does not engender solutions but rather works to derail the conversation. Usually deployed alongside the descriptor of wining and complaining, this disingenuous demand (as opposed to a desire to figure out the path toward justice) for solutions illustrates the manner that white male privilege operates. In my many years of teaching and writing, the majority of those who felt entitled to have answers NOW and remedies yesterday were white men. The "shut up... stop complaining...give me solutions" reframe is the embodiment of privilege.

Recognizing our forms of denial and challenging our social and racial myopia is the solution. Refusing to accept the lies and distortions, the misinformation and stereotypes is a remedy. However, for those who are desperate for solutions, who feel disappointed with our collective failure to provide a road map toward justice you don't have to look any further, I got you.

Reparations: Given the history of racist violence, evident in slavery, Native American genocide, Jim Crow, forced sterilization, racist immigration laws, the conquest of Southwest and other crimes against humanity, I think reparations are in order. "Sorry isn't enough!" According to the National Coalition of Blacks for Reparations in America (NCBRA):

A necessary requirement of all forms of reparations is an acknowledgment by the government or corporation that it committed acts that violated the human rights of those making the claim for reparations. Some groups may want an explicit apology; however, neither the acknowledgement nor apology is sufficient - there must be material forms of reparations that accompany the acknowledgment or apology. Reparations can be in as many forms as necessary to equitably (fairly) address the many forms of injury caused by chattel slavery and its continuing vestiges. The material forms of reparations include cash payments, land, economic development, and repatriation resources particularly to those who are descendants of enslaved Africans.'

Financial restitution, especially given the amount of wealth generated through white supremacy, because of enslavement, genocide, and exploitation, is a necessary step of racial reconciliation. White financial and political success has been predicated on white racism. Malcolm X rightfully destroys the myth of meritocracy, bootstraps, and the white protestant work ethic as reasons for success:

If you are the son of a man who had a wealthy estate and you inherit your father's estate, you have to pay off the debts that your father incurred before he died. The only reason that the present generation of white Americans are in a position of economic strength...is because their fathers worked our fathers for over 400 years with no pay...We were sold from plantation to plantation like you sell a horse, or a cow, or a chicken, or a bushel of wheat...All that money...is what gives the present generation of American whites the ability to walk around the earth with their chest out...like they have some kind of economic ingenuity. Your father isn't here to pay. My father isn't here to collect. But I'm here to collect and you're here to pay. (From By Any Means Necessary, New York: Pathfinder Press, 1970, 123.)

Prison abolition: The history of America's prison systems and the criminal justice system as a whole is wrought with racism. As Angela Davis remarks,

In order to imagine a world without prisons -- or at least a social landscape no longer dominated by the prison -- a new popular vocabulary will have to replace the current language, which articulates crime and punishment in such a way that we cannot think about a society without crime except as a society in which all the criminals are imprisoned. Thus, one of the first challenges is to be able to talk about the many ways in which punishment is linked to poverty, racism, sexism, homophobia, and other modes of dominance.

America's addiction to incarceration requires dramatic intervention. No reform will suffice given the entrenched nature of the criminal (in)justice system within every institution, from the political to the educational, from the cultural to the economic. The systemic incarceration of people of color, of the poor, represents an assault on families, communities, and a betrayal of the principles of equality, fairness, and democracy. The addiction to incarcerating people of color, particularly the poor, continues a history of systematically breaking apart families and communities. It contributes to stop and frisk, racial profiling, and a culture of criminalization. As noted by Robert Gangi, one time Executive Director of the Correctional Association of New York, "Building more prisons to address crime is like building more graveyards to address a fatal disease." It is time to rectify a societal plague - mass incarceration. This would be a step in the right direction. In the next installment I will lay out some additional solutions.

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David J. Leonard is Associate Professor in the Department of Critical Culture, Gender and Race Studies at Washington State University, Pullman. He is the author of the just released After Artest: Race and the War on Hoop (SUNY Press) as well as several other works. Leonard is a regular contributor to NewBlackMan, layupline, Feminist Wire, and Urban Cusp. He is frequent contributor to Ebony, Slam, and Racialicious as well as a past contributor to Loop21, The Nation and The Starting Five. He blogs @No Tsuris.

Disappearing Acts: Zoe Saldana as Nina Simone & The Erasure of Black Women in Film

Disappearing Acts: Zoe Saldana as Nina Simone & The Erasure of Black Women in Film

by  Nicole Moore | HuffPost BlackVoices

"I've never changed my hair. I've never changed my color, I have always been proud of myself, and my fans are proud of me for remaining the way I've always been." - Nina Simone

When I think of Nina Simone I think of her dark chocolate skin, her full lips and her tight 'fro. Her looks were and still are every bit as relevant and powerful as the songs she sang. As a matter of fact, her undeniable African features defined and empowered her musical career. So it's no small wonder that people are outraged at hearing last week's confirmed announcement that Zoe Saldana, an Afro-Latina with a café au lait complexion and fine facial features, has been cast as the High Priestess of Soul in an upcoming bio-pic. The fires were fanned this past weekend when an interview by the film's writer and director, Cynthia Mort, surfaced in "Entertainment Weekly" where she talks about the biopic as something seemingly more inspired by Nina with composite characters than a film about Nina and the real-life characters from her life.

Zoe Saldana, best known for her roles in Avatarand Columbiana, may have the acting chops to play the lead in a feature movie, but when it comes to playing Nina Simone, I'm not so sure. It's not simply that Saldana looks nothing like Simone, a woman who could spit out a truthful and caustic Mississippi Goddamn that reminded you in no uncertain terms that she had been rejected because of her skin color. 

Casting Saldana also attempts, if inadvertently, to erase the memory of Simone's revolutionary ebon image from our minds and history's musical canon. Saldana as Simone specifically challenges the message of Simone's music and undermines the power of her well-documented resistance to conventional ideas of beauty and colorism. Nina's success and appeal had as much to do with her talent as it did with her having big lips, wide hips and that Mama Africa bosom. Unlike Lena Horne, Diana Ross & The Supremes, and Tina Turner whose crossover success was as much a result of having talent as well as having sexy live performances and glamorous good looks, Nina used her experiences with racism, colorism and sexism to ignite her music with strength and resilience heard so defiantly in To Be Yong Gifted & Black for example.

Because Simone's blackness extended as much to her musical prowess as to her physicality and image, it's perplexing that the film's production team, led by Jimmy Iovine, expects anyone, particularly in the black community, to (re)imagine Nina Simone as fair-skinned, thin-lipped and narrow-nosed? I guess if you look at Hollywood's history of casting black female roles, especially in biopics, it's not all that surprising.

With a few exceptions – Angela Bassett as Tina Turner, Halle Berry as Dorothy Dandridge and Beyonce as Etta James – Hollywood  has a long history of giving black actresses the finger by casting white women in the lead of films based on the lives of black women -- most famously Elizabeth Taylor as Cleopatra. Angelina Jolie was given the green light to portray Mariane Pearl, an Afro-Cuban Chinese, French writer in the 2007 adaptation of Pearl's A Mighty Heart, which we kinda let slide because, well, it was Angie. But then she was cast again in a role based on a black woman character in the film Wanted, an adaptation of the same titled comic book series in which the main character is a black.

And the real kicker came in 2008 when St"uck, the true life story of African-American Chante Mallard, for which Suvari had the nerve to sport cornrows. If it only requires cornrows and a full-lipped box-office bombshell to secure these roles originally penned as black women, then what's to prevent any blonde, brunette, pale-skinned actress from playing black? And if that's the case, then surely Hollywood types also think a light-skinned Black woman can portray a dark-skinned Black woman.

Tim Burton and the other producers behind Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter certainly thought so when they cast Jacqueline Fleming, a bi-racial woman, as Harriet Tubman. And hell, even Aretha Franklin wants Halle Berry, a bi-racial woman, to play her in her own life story. And yes, Halle is the highest paid Black actress in America, but is that reason enough for her to represent every Black women on the big screen? From X-Men's Storm to Zora Neale Hurston's Janie, to Dorothy Dandrige and now possibly The Queen of Soul, Halle's image has seeped into America's (cinematic) consciousness as the face of every Black woman making it seem like we are this monolithic community of sistas. 

If Aretha, known as much for her voice as much for her thickness (and her taste in hats) doesn't even think full-figured, Oscar-winning actresses Mo'nique or Octavia Spencer would be great choices to portray her life story, I'm really not surprised by Zoe's casting. And I get that actors do not have to resemble the famous personas they portray, but when there are so few empowering images of Black women in TV & film, details like weight, skin color and hair become serious sticking points amongst Black folk.

And doors do not open for Black actresses with dark skin as readily or as often as they do for their male counterparts. Actors like Wesley Snipes, Sidney Poitier, Don Cheadle, Idris Elba, Bill Cosby and Sam Jackson do not encounter the same level of marginalization and erasure as Whoopi Goldberg, Regina King, Viola Davis and Alfre Woodard.

Then there's Tyler Perry, who has produced films like Diary Of A Mad Black Woman and a remake of Ntozake Shange's For Colored Girls, and has cast a number of Black actresses in his movies. Unfortunately, when the lead female character in many of these flicks is a gun-toting, outspoken, Bible-thumping, righteous she-ro named Madea-- Tyler Perry in drag-- and the other Black women are depicted as non-sexual or hyper-sexual, emotionally scarred, spiritually bereft women who just need God, Madea and a man to be happy, self-poised and empowered, then even and especially these portrayals affirm the notion that Black women are monolithic, simple and bordering on irrelevant. If a man in a dress with a gun is a box-office hit and popular with Black audiences then Hollywood takes note and actresses who look like Viola Davis or Regina King find themselves disappearing from the big screen.

Since the announcement of Saldana as the lead in Nina's biopic was made, a petition on Change.org has been created, which demands that Saldana be replaced. Supporters of the petition would rather that role go to Lauryn Hill, Adepero Oduye, India.Arie or Viola Davis. The petition, however, has been met with criticism by some who believe the role of Nina Simone is turning into a debate about one actress being "blacker" than another. Those who support Zoe, who is outspoken about being an Afro-Latina, say that her Blackness should not be defined by the color of her skin or the straightness of her hair. The fact that Zoe is Black Dominican is all that should matter. If standards of Black beauty in this country didn't have a history of being valued and de-valued based upon their semblance to whiteness as the standard then maybe it wouldn't matter.

In 1966, the woman born Eunice Kathleen Waymon penned The Four Women, which begins, "My skin is Black/ My arms are long/ My hair is wooly/ My back is strong/ Strong enough to take the pain/ Inflicted again and again." Nina had the posture, past and physicality to make this song not only brazen, but also believable and therefore revolutionary in it's telling. How can Saldana possibly bring the pain in an afro-wig and, God-forbid, dark makeup? The producers may as well cast Madea because if it's going to be all about make-up, wigs and fat-suits, ain't nobody bringing it like Mr. Perry.

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Nicole is the Founder and Editor of theHotness.com. Follow her on Twitter: www.twitter.com/thehotnessgrrrl