Discipline and Race: The Newest Jim Crow

I read this in March, but it's beyond crucial information on the racialization of school discipline and was covered by Glen Ford at Black Agenda Report. This is why the prisoners' rights conference I'm organizing right now is going to have a breakout session on Schools as a Pipeline to Prison. For certain kids. That would be, of course, kids of color. Sigh.

New Data Show Black Students Have Been New Jim Crowed
by Black Agenda Report Executive Editor Glen Ford

"Real" vs. "Casual Racism"

I don't watch The Today Show or anything else early in the morning. I have other things to do. More than I can get done, as a rule. But I'm not whining. Most of the time, I wouldn't watch commercial television if I was poverty-stricken and they were paying viewers by the minute.

But that doesn't mean I don't hear about the craziness that shows up there from time to time. Like Monday, August 6th (apparently) when, Matt Lauer proved once more that many people from the U.S. just love to embarrass themselves in public. Particularly as pertains to race.

Still, I'm not re-posting this piece from xojane.com because I give a care about Matt Lauer or The Today Show or mainstream U.S. culture. I'm re-posting it because of what Lesley has to say about what she calls "casual racism." Good stuff.

Casual Racism Is Not My Spirit Animal
by Lesley

The Danger of the Single Story

A couple of months ago, I posted a YouTube video about life in the 'hood. It was produced by talented young Black actors, writers, directors, and musicians and has gotten a lot of play on the internet. But I asked when I posted it, "What's wrong with this picture?"

The video I'm posting today answers that question.

Standing Up To Bullies In Church

It's always fun to see what new application of the same old story manages to hit the radar here in this part of the woods. Recently, it was a White minister that buckled to a few of his parishioners when they decided a Black couple needed to marry elsewhere. This in the Bible belt, of course. Where Christianity is bigger than the flag, mother and apple pie all put together. My friend Dayne Sherman had a little something to say about this story and I thought you might enjoy reading it as much as I did.


Standing Up To Bullies In Church
by Dayne Sherman

To Rage Or Not To Rage...?

I've been thinking a lot lately about the level of my passion. When I teach. When I speak. When I blog. When I'm on Facebook. When I'm chatting casually over coffee at Starbuck's. When I'm sprawled on my couch talking to my significant other as if, being Black, he isn't already one step of ahead of whatever I'm going to say.

One of my student evaluations for last semester said, "Don't be so honest."

As compared to what? Lying? Putting it out there in bite-sized chunks? Whitewashing the truth (literally)?

Pretty Is As Pretty Does

If I just can't get here the way I need to on top of what I am being "forced" to write at In-Your-Face Women these days, then at the very least, I should be tipping you to what I'm reading myself here and there.  For example, S.E. Smith posted the piece I'm re-posting here the other day at GlobalComment.com. I'm so disgusted that any journalist would snipe Gabby Douglas for having a hair out of place after winning a gold medal, it brought me out of retirement (as it were). I know I didn't write this, but I wish I did.

Racism in Olympic Coverage
by S.E. Smith 

Beauty and the Beat

After seeing this on Facebook and watching it twice, I showed it to Boxer, who said, "Show it again" and then, "You gotta post this on your blog."

Okay. Here it is.

White Girl sings, "There's must be more than this to a hood rat's life!"

Is there? What do you say?

Have You Heard About The Slaughter?

What if the U.S. military shot to death and disappeared the bodies of more than one thousand Black soldiers at an Army camp in southwest Mississippi in the middle of World World II? I know, I know. But what if it really happened? Would you want to know about it? Would you just shrug and say "let sleeping dogs lie," "don't stir up stuff you can't do anything about," "that was then and this is now"? Or would you hover around the fire to hear the tale told?

I'll be listening to Blog Talk Radio on Sunday, July 1st, at 8:00 p.m. (CST) to hear Antoinette Harrell and her guest, author Carroll Case, talk about The Slaughter ~ An American Atrocity. What about you?

Born to Fight

 The daily demand of In-Your-Face Women is continuing to kick my ass. I'm not complaining, you understand. At least, not most of the time. I'll be half way through the project tomorrow and so far, it's a success. It's now read in nearly one hundred countries (though Why Am I Not Surprised? is read in nearly two hundred, to give you a sense of perspective). And the campus radio station wants to submit recorded segments from IYF Women to the Public Radio Exchange (which will take it global in a whole 'nother medium). Satisfying, indeed.

Nevertheless, if In-Your-Face Women is my mistress, Why Am I Not Surprised? is -- still -- my wife. And for the time being, I will go forward as things are, hoping my "wife" doesn't pack up her shit and drop my cell phone in the garbage disposal on her way out the door.

By way of apology, I'm posting Tracy Chapman this morning, singing in South Africa in 1990, and I'm dedicating it to Albert Woodfox, who I just visited last weekend in prison up in BumFreak, Louisiana. We talked about boxing, our respective relationships, and the campaign to free him and Herman Wallace after forty years in solitary confinement. And we argued about gender relations in the abstract. The usual.

But as I watched this video today, I thought of him, languishing away in a tiny cell year after year. Born to fight. And I hope he knows how many fight beside him.

A New Perspective on the Motor City

I write a lot about the negative effects of five hundred years of aggressive White oppression against people of color.  Here's a stunning example of one of the positive effects: tried-in-the-fire, full-tilt-boogie, way-way-over-the-top wonderfulness!  The phoenix, indeed, rises out of the ashes in full glory.  Lead us, children, to the light.

Momentum for Racial Healing

A couple of months ago, I took one of my fairly frequent trips down to New Orleans to meet with Southern University Law School Professor Angela Allen-Bell and Keith Weldon Medley, author of We As Free Men ~ Plessy v. Ferguson about the fight against legal segregation. We met on the second floor of a bank building at what must surely be one of the best kept secrets in downtown New Orleans, over a delightful lunch of fried catfish, collard greens rich with flavor and buttered corn bread. And before we parted ways, I had bought Medley's book to add to my collection of autographed volumes.

Since then, I've been rushing -- as always -- through my life, barely hanging on by my fingertips, and I only just realized that a rash of emails I recently started getting, but to which I had not paid any attention, has been trying to make me aware of the work of the folks presented in this YouTube video.

I'm paying attention now, Keith. ;^)

The Phoenix Will Rise

“If you cannot remember or imagine what it is to lie down finally and wait for an end – that or deliverance; if you cannot consciously feel the pull of your wretched past or the pitiful attempts at a carefully planned life for yourself, there can be no windows or answering tools with which to say ‘this is so’ or ‘this is why.’ And there is no joy, no secret part of your thoughts that can exalt at simple pleasures, simple achievements. You must be fired in adversity, greatly torn, to take any satisfaction in having lived. Pity the poor who’ve never fallen, never lost; the sum of their losing now can be pitifully small and a great price for them alone.”  ~  Charles Ricehill (False Spring, 1974)

Release the Angola 3 Now!!

I will be in class today. I will be talking about religion as a social institution and the sociology of gender. I will be holding office hours and speaking with students on the campus about their grades or their extra credit or their problems. But my heart will be in Baton Rouge, standing on the State House steps with the other Angola 3 campaign supporters, with representatives of Amnesty International, the Congressional Black Caucus, the National Action Network, and others, to present a petition with tens of thousands of names from all over the world calling for the immediate release of Albert Woodfox and Herman Wallace, the remaining members of the Angola 3 still incarcerated after forty years in solitary confinement.

Forty years. Forty years. Forty years. My heart cries. Because ten days ago, I stood in the visiting room, hugging Albert's neck and leaving him behind...again. Because solitary confinement is torture (see the film above). And because the administration at my place of employment demands that my presence in the classroom take precedence over my taking a stand personally on the State House steps today.

We are kept in position by our slavery to wages, but my soul will stand tall beside Albert's and Herman's on the State House steps this afternoon. If you look very hard at the faces in the crowd, you will see us there. As we always and forever will be wherever truth speaks to power.

By Way of Explanation

I have, from time to time, over the six years since I began writing this blog, been less available to it than usual. When this happens, it wrecks my life on some level, following me around at my heels like an orphan child asking for alms or food or attention. Still, it is what it is.

Do I have things to say about the socially-constructed, political notion of "race"? Oh, yeah. Do I walk around accomplishing the more pressing matters of my life with a half-baked post turning to stone in the oven of my mind? Ad nauseum. Yet, in the greater scheme of things, there are only twenty-four hours in the day and I'm already using seventeen of them -- on average -- at break-neck speed.

Are African-Americans Citizens Or Not?

"We refuse to believe this country, so powerful to defend its citizens abroad, is unable to protect its citizens at home."

~Ida Wells-Barnett, journalist/activist
April 9, 1898

Amnesty International Demands That Louisiana Do The Right Thing For The Angola 3!

The following is the text of a mass email Amnesty International sent out this week. If you didn't receive it or didn't as yet sign the petition to demand the release of Albert Woodfox and Herman Wallace, please consider doing so now. I'll be going up to visit Albert tomorrow and I'd hate to have to tell him you weren't on board. (Yes, I would rat you out to him in a minute, so don't make me go there.)

Two Black men, confined to isolation in tiny cells for the last 40 years.

No human being deserves this.

Skolnik: From Martin to Martin (Hoodies Up On the Mountaintop)

The following was posted today by Michael Skolnik at Global Grind. Please read and pass it on.

The echo of Martin's last words ring in my head. It rained that night. A drizzle. Not a downpour, just a Memphis, Tennessee drizzle. It seemed like he knew. It seemed like someone had let him know. His words that night would be his last. The mountaintop. Not getting there with us. But, as a people, we would get there. Somehow we would get to the top of that mountain without Martin. He told us that, that night, his last night. And we believed him.

How to Get Away With Murder and Other Things the Killing of Unarmed Black Teen Trayvon Martin Teaches Us

This post by Max Read appeared originally at gawker.com. If you'd like to follow its embedded links, you may find it there.

If you want to kill someone and get away with it, do it before the NBA All-Star game.

Technology R Us (Whites, That Is)

Hope and Hopelessness

Shuffling around my kitchen this morning before the break of day, I was thinking about a couple of young Black men I spoke with this week. They're different from each other, in different situations, and I suspect they will ultimately reach quite different outcomes. But one thing I picked up from both, though manifesting itself differently in each case, was an undercurrent of hopelessness on some level.