Up with Chris Hayes: What if Ohio were The Bronx?

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This a great critique of how the Electoral College impacts policy.

"I'm a fan of yo' 'I'm Gay'": Fat Joe on LGBTs in Hip-Hop

A Love Letter to The Bronx

The Grand Concourse

A Love Letter to The Bronx

by Mark Naison | special to NewBlackMan

Dear Bronx,

In the forty five years I've spent with you, you've taught me that creativity, beauty and compassion thrive most in the midst of hardship.

I first met you in the mid-60's when my girlfriend and I visited her sisters living hear the Grand Concourse and Claremont Park. She was black and I was white, and we had a hard time walking hand in hand in most of the city. 

But not in the Bronx, We always felt safe here because the Bronx was a place where people of different races and cultures lived together and where people of different colors were part of the same families. Though we didn't stay together forever, I will never forget your hospitality during that challenging time in my life.

I then watched you burn from the Third Avenue El and the Number 4 train when I first stared working at Fordham in the early and middle 1970s. It felt awful, at the time, that I could do nothing to stop this tragedy, but I took heart from the community organizations that mobilized, first to stop the fires from heading North, and then that began to rebuild every neighborhood that had been left abandoned and burned. 

Now virtually every vacant lot in the South Bronx is filled with new town houses, apartments and shopping centers. Thank you, Bronx for showing me and the world, that your spirit was unconquerable, and that all the people that wrote you off as hopelessly beaten and decayed were wrong.

And thank you Bronx, for giving the world hip-hop. In the middle of the 70's, when large portions of the Bronx were burning and music programs in the schools were being eliminated by budget cuts, young people in the Bronx, some African American, some Latino, some West Indian, were creating a new form of densely percussive music, using two turntables and a mixer, that made whole neighborhoods dance, and then incorporated poetry and rhyme to dazzle the imagination. What started in the Bronx soon spread into every neighborhood in the country, and eventually the world, where young people were marginalized, forgotten, and looked on with contempt. Hip Hop, your original product, became as popular as Rock and Roll was in its time.

Now,"The Message" that you spawned during those difficult years is given life daily, in the suburbs of Paris , in the favelas of Rio, in the immigrant quarters of Berlin In all of those places, where life is hard, young people use hip hop to say, in the words of Grand Master Flash; "Don't push me, cause I'm close to the edge, I'm trying not to lose my head. It makes me wonder how I keep from going under."

Thank you Bronx, not only for surviving, but for triumphing in the face of adversity, and setting an example of endurance and creativity for the entire world.

Sincerely,

Mark Naison

Professor of African American Studies and History

Fordham University

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Mark Naison is a Professor of African-American Studies and History at Fordham University and Director of Fordham’s Urban Studies Program. He is the author of two books, Communists in Harlem During the Depression and White Boy: A Memoir. Naison is also co-director of the Bronx African American History Project (BAAHP). Research from the BAAHP will be published in a forthcoming collection of oral histories Before the Fires: An Oral History of African American Life From the 1930’s to the 1960’s.

20 Years in 27 Days: A Marriage in Music | Day #7: Quincy Jones feat. James Ingram—“One Hundred Ways"

20 Years in 27 Days: A Marriage in Music

Day #7: Quincy Jones feat James Ingram—“One Hundred Ways”

by Mark Anthony Neal

The funny thing about falling in love, even from the perspective of a 16-year-old, is that music that mattered little to you before, suddenly takes on great importance. Such was the case with Quincy Jones’ The Dude.

Released in 1981, two years after Jones industry changing collaboration with Michael Jackson , The Dude represented the height of Jones critical and commercial powers; it earned two Grammy awards, with Jones also winning for Producer of the Year in 1982. Like many of Jones’ Soul-Jazz-Pop hybrids the recording featured his regular musical collaborators including his God-daughter Patti Austin and a relatively unknown vocalist named James Ingram. The Dude was Ingram’s break out effort, singing lead on Jones “Just Once,” and “One Hundred Ways.” By the end of 1982, Ingram was a fixture on the pop charts with his duet with Patti Austin “Baby Come to Me,” which was cross-marketed via a story line on ABC’s General Hospital.

It was “One Hundred Ways,” that was in my head the morning of June 28, 1982. It was the last day of school and Gloria and I (along with two of her friends) were going on our first “date” after school. So after school we trekked to the McDonald’s across the street from the old Yankee Stadium and Macombs Dam Park (where the new Yankee Stadium currently stands). All I had was fries,  too self-conscious of eating in front of the girl, as we chatted about the summer, knowing that we likely wouldn’t see each other until the following August. Two months is a long time in the life of teen-agers—two months that we would not survive.

Macombs Dam Park

At the time “One Hundred Ways” struck such a chord in me, because it was all about the myriad ways that one can show affection. At 16, I was limited to about three of those “one hundred ways”; in many ways my relationship with this woman over the last 23 1/2  years (including19 years and 10 days of marriage) has been about realizing the full range of those “one hundred ways.” It’s a struggle, but that’s what lasting relationships are all about.

Why More And More Students “In the Hood” Are Out of Control

Why More And More Students “In the Hood” Are Out of Control

by Mark Naison | Fordham University

During the last year, I have gotten more and more reports from the best teachers I know in Bronx public schools, that their students“are out of control.” We are not talking about Ivy League Teach for America types who grew up in wealthy suburbs, but tough, charismatic, physically imposing women graduates of New York City public schools, with formidable classroom management skills and a great sense of humor.

At first, I found these reports hard to believe. The women I am talking about are not only physically strong, they are incredibly innovative in their pedagogy- the best of the best! If they can’t control a class of Bronx 11 or 14 year olds, who could?

But then I started thinking about their work in a much larger context than one suggested by discussions of curriculum, class management, or graduation rates. And I came up with a startling conclusion- that students living in America’s poor neighborhoods, even by age 10 or 11, already know, intuitively, that the schools they are in are unlikely to get them out of the world of poverty and hardship that surrounds them. As a result, they see what goes on in classrooms--especially all the tests they are bombarded with--as fundamentally irrelevant to their lives!

And they are not wrong in their assessment! If they look around their neighborhoods, they see precious few people who have used education to better their lives. For every person in their hood who gets out by pursuing higher education, there are five who leave by going to prison or joining the armed forces. In their world, there is little real life reinforcement of the message schools preach--that the way to success in America is by passing tests, graduating from high school and going on to college. Those who do manage to jump through all those hoops, when they get to college, find the path is long and treacherous, both economically and academically, and if they do manage to get a college degree often can’t get jobs at all, or can’t get jobs that allow them to pay off their student loans.

The current economic crisis has only made the path of self-denial and academic effort seem more problematical. At a time when even middle class college graduates, from top private colleges, have trouble finding work how are you going to “sell” the proposition that education is the path to success in South Bronx neighborhoods like Morrisania or Hunts Point?

The bottom line is--in a city where the top 1 percent of the population monopolizes 44 percent of the income--you can’t. The deck is already so stacked against young people growing up in poverty that no legerdemain or trickery or classroom magic can convince them that the things they are learning and being tested on will have any positive effect on their lives.

So why shouldn’t they fool around? Why shouldn’t they act out? Why shouldn’t they try to enhance their reputation as a thug, a comedian, or a flirt by making the classroom their private theater? After all, those traits represent real life social capital in the world they inhabit, as opposed to the math problems, history lessons, or sentences they are given to construct.

Some people attribute the phenomenon of poor kids acting out to the stress they are under outside of school--reflected in issues ranging from poor diet, to lack of sleep, to gang violence, to physical abuse in their places of residence. All those are undoubtedly contributing factors. But let’s not discount the “rational” element in student behavior, reflected in their very real understanding that the schools they are in are simply unable to deliver on the promise of a better life they use to “sell” their pedagogy.

Given that cold reality, there is absolutely no reason why a student in a place like the South Bronx should defer the joy and status of being a class comedian or “thug in training” for the prospect of participating in an endless round of test preparation and taking which for people in their neighborhood is truly “A Race To Nowhere.”

***

Mark Naison is a Professor of African-American Studies and History at Fordham University and Director of Fordham’s Urban Studies Program. He is the author of two books, Communists in Harlem During the Depression and White Boy: A Memoir. Naison is also co-director of the Bronx African American History Project (BAAHP). Research from the BAAHP will be published in a forthcoming collection of oral histories Before the Fires: An Oral History of African American Life From the 1930’s to the 1960’s.

'Left of Black': Episode #30 featuring Mark Naison

Left of Black #30 w/ Mark Naison
April 18, 2011

Left of Black host and Duke University Professor Mark Anthony Neal is joined by Fordham University Historian and activist Mark Naison in a wide ranging discussion about growing up as a White American embracing Black culture, the emergence of Black Studies on predominately White college campuses, the Bronx African American History Project and his infamous appearance on Chappelle’s Show.

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→Mark Naison is a Professor of African-American Studies and History at Fordham University and Director of Fordham’s Urban Studies Program. He is the author of two books, Communists in Harlem During the Depression and White Boy: A Memoir. Naison is also co-director of the Bronx African American History Project (BAAHP). Research from the BAAHP will be published in a forthcoming collection of oral histories Before the Fires: An Oral History of African American Life From the 1930’s to the 1960’s.

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Left of Black is a weekly Webcast hosted by Mark Anthony Neal and produced in collaboration with the John Hope Franklin Center at Duke University.

'Left of Black': Episode #9 featuring Joan Morgan & Sofia Quintero

Left of Black'--Episode # 9
w/Mark Anthony Neal
Monday, November 15, 2010

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Host and Duke University Professor Mark Anthony Neal discusses the controversy over Tyler Perry’s big screen adaptation of Ntozake Shange’s For Colored Girls and surviving the Bronx, New York with writers Joan Morgan and Sofia Quintero.

-->Joan Morgan is the author of When Chickenheads Come Home to Roost: My Life as a Hip Hop Feminist and a founding contributor to Vibe Magazine.

-->Sofia Quintero is the author of several novels including Explicit Content, Picture Me Rollin’ and most recently, Efrain’s Secret, her first young adult novel.

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Also available for download from iTunes U Here