Please Mr. Cantor, don't hurt The Count!

Come on Man….!! Tell me Eric, John, Jim, and Tom (R - House Majority Leader from VA, R - House Speaker from OH, and R - US Senators from SC and OKL respectively) don’t really want to kill ‘Sesame Street’, ‘The Electric Company’ and ‘All Things Considered’ do they?

The budget bill passed by the House last month would end funding the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, which supports programs distributed on NPR and PBS. CPB is getting $430 million in the current fiscal year.

Fellas lean in and listen up. I gotta little story to tell you ….…

In 1975 Gary Simon, a White elementary school teacher working in the hell that had become the South Bronx, by then, teamed up with the Columbia Teachers College, to pluck myself, Steven Sapp, and Frankie Cruz from our 3^rd grade classes at PS 140 and began to “accelerate” our lives.

For the next 3 years, all I remember - between legendary dodge ball games, destructive fires, learning Hebrew, first kisses, hip hop jams, and Reggie Jackson’s titanic home runs – are:

• A whirlwind of books; A Wrinkle in Time, The Lord of the Rings, Great Expectations, Tess of the D’Urbervilles, Things Fall Apart;
• Trips to the coolest NYC spots; the Bronx Zoo, the Museum of Natural History, the Hayden Planetarium (where that first kiss took place by the way), and
• Broadway Plays (full disclosure - loved Annie & the Whiz. At 10 -12 years of age though, Cats, Jesus Christ Superstar & Pippin all enforced my young perception that there was something seriously wrong with white people!)

The program Mr. Simon began with the three of us, along with a handful of other Black, Brown and poor children is Prep for Prep, the internationally recognized, leadership development program. Prep for Prep

Ok, still wit’ me fellas? Here’s where the story gets really interesting……In ‘76, to place in one of the Ivy Feeder schools that ring NYC, admission required a type of IQ test called the Independent Entrance Exam (back then popularly known as the ERB). One of the questions on the test asked “what is a juggler?” I panicked. Remember I said we went to the Zoo, Broadway, and Yankee Stadium. I had no idea people with clown noses threw bowling pins in the air, so at 9, the context of the potential answers made no sense. And as far as I could tell, no circuses had ever come to South Bronx (in hindsight, probably best for the elephants, huh?). 

Eventually after what must’ve seemed a life time for Mr. Simon, I blurted out what I had learned from the famous Sesame Street character Count von Count. I remember the Count like it was yesterday. Cool… fly....and could hypnotize cats - I was hooked! I liked him so much in fact that not only did counting become cool, but I began consuming all things Dracula, (unfortunately, at the time that basically consisted of my older brother’s comic book collection – but hey ‘twas the hood. I took what I could get).

What happened next shocked me. Mr. Simon stopped the test. I thought I had failed, that I had messed up, and that he was angry.  Wasn’t till about a year later I realized that my answer about the internal and external jugular veins, their venous bpi, and the amount of time it would take a grown man to bleed to death once punctured, convinced him testing time was over. Result – my IQ in 155 -165 range, went on to attend the prestigious Horace Mann School, and the rest as they say….. 

Since then Prep for Prep, arguably the nation’s most successful program at identifying and preparing Black and Brown students for achievement, has shepherded approximate 4,000 students through Ivy League and other highly competitive colleges and universities. According to the Prep website 

"Prep alumni now include176 JDs; 102 MBAs and MBA candidates; 60 PhDs/EdDs and PhD/EdD candidates; 64 MDs and medical students; 7 Fulbright Fellows; 2 Truman Scholars; 2 Marshall Scholars; 2 Harlan Fiske Stone Scholars; 2 Rockefeller Fellows, and a Rhodes Scholar" for good measure.

At least a tiny part of that success gentlemen, can be attributed to the unlikely story of a single small, ghetto child - connecting with an impish, purple, vampire puppet, in what has got to be one of the most unlikely connections in modern history.   

OK folks, here’s the irony;

Rep. Marsha Blackburn (R-Tenn.), managed the debate on this topic on behalf of the House majority. When speaking about NPR’s bloated coffers she referenced the number of NPR’s $1million + donors saying “This is how wealthy the sponsorship and subscribership base is”….”it’s time for us to remove the federal support system they’ve relied on.”

Translation - screw the folks who would be most affected by a significant cut to the CPB - Rural White Americans. 243 of the 585 station receiving CPB support are rural (40 people per square kilometer). In ’09, $140 million or 35% of the CPB’s total federal appropriation leveraged an additional $1billion in support of these outposts of White America. So let’s see….lower fundraising capacity, higher engineering costs, more desperately needed jobs, and a vacuum of information and communication. Yep sounds like “winning” to me.  

The House’s Public Broadcasting Caucus has been one of the few areas that both sides of congress have agreed is worthy of support for well over a decade. Apparently the Tea Party has begun to punk certain members into believing their support is no longer good for their political careers. My god, what a metaphor for the new bizzaro world of American politics folks. An NFP created by Congress in 1967 that’s met its mandate of providing all (urban, suburban and rural) with free, quality, informative programming is threatened with having their federal funds withdrawn – Come on Man…!!!

Steven Sapp - Founding Member, Universes Universes

Frank Cruz – Director of Development Dream Yard Project Dreamyard

The Fab Five, Bitches and Toms

Come on Man……!! Tell me ESPN’s most recent “30 for 30” documentary about Michigan’s “Fab Five” wasn’t fly! Hell, it was the most thought provoking documentary I’ve seen in some time on TV, DVD, YouTube or any other media platform. It wryly delved into the socio-economic, cultural, historical, and psychological rifts produced by the ascension of the Michigan Wolverines’ 1991 freshman recruiting class. Also, because the show was produced partially by the Michigan players themselves, we got to see/hear them speak in their own brash - and refreshingly bracing - flow. We also glimpsed how, as mere freshmen, these five players represented the polarizing, intensely urban, vaguely foreign (and therefore vaguely frightening), ethos of the hip-hop generation.   

In many ways almost every commentary/response I’ve seen about the documentary so far misses the point. Despite the histrionics and obligatory angry responses from Duke Players and others, more than anything the documentary was a testament to the idea that social mobility in the United States still thrives. The sub-title of the show could easily have read “The Fab Five; how unlike almost anywhere else in the world, a group of marginalized, undereducated, socially and economically deprived Black youth could overcome their fragility, their relative anonymity, and their early obstacles to not only explode into our collective consciousness, but to accumulate phenomenal wealth in the process.”   

The American context in which these Black young men found themselves is not unique. The current Arab unrest illustrates that the globe is full of angry, marginalized young men on the sidelines of life waiting to get in the game. What is extraordinary however, is how much our national mythology depends on the occasional Cinderella story like this to justify our high threshold for both huge social-economic inequality, and our decreasing sense of social mobility. Our collective acquiescence to the ravages of urban and rural poverty depends on the masses of Black, Brown, and poor - as well as America’s predominantly white middle class - to both subscribe to the belief that either group culture or individual will determines outcomes. Simultaneously, we’re encouraged to reject the idea that the historical, episodic shredding of our social contract trumps individual agency. 

I loved that the documentary deftly portrayed this tension by juxtaposing the “grimy”, urban Wolverines (yeah I know its funny) against their arch nemesis, the “affluent, suburban” Duke Blue-Devils. Both Jimmy King and Jalen Rose spoke artfully about how they chaffed under the perceived perfection, and perceived "bitch-ass-ness", of the Duke Players; an increasingly class based existence in which everyone seemed to have a father, steady work, good grades, and a nice home. And Grant, though I understand why you felt obliged to defend the perceived attack against you and your fam, your response proves again why Racism Bores Me. Seriously dude, you missed the whole point. Jalen & co. were striving to give voice to those young men from 20 years ago who had none. It was through their teenage, brash, angry, ignorant & profane eyes that they were speaking. Your discussion of your family’s legacy, and resiliency only enforces Jalen's point.

Language is powerfully intentional. We collectively refer to your family’s story as objects; an object of admiration, object of affection, objects to be emulated, as in your life story is an object lesson in how to work hard and get ahead. You, Christian and Bobby attended Duke as objects.

Jalen, Chris, Juwan and the other freshman came to Michigan as subjects. You subject someone to ridicule, doubt, investigation, disdain, strip search, punishment, etc. Hell, what do we call folks beholden to authority - subjects! It makes perfect sense that those teenage kids, (they were first generation survivors of that time period's wave of structural violence - the destruction of light industry and benign neglect that took place in the 60’s and 70’s), would not only come to a predominantly white university angry, but come as hip hop heads. The whole point of the music is to switch subjects and objects.  

1989 Public Enemy – Fight the Power

Elvis was a hero to most
But he never meant s%*t to me………
Straight up racist that sucker was
Simple and plain
Mother f%$#k him and John Wayne
Cause I'm Black and I'm proud
And I’m hyped plus I'm amped
Most of my heroes don't appear on no stamps
Sample a look back you look and you’ll find
Nothing but rednecks for 400 years if you check

During the two years in which they played together, the unified gravitational force of the Fab Five forced us to witness the brashness of these particular young Black men, together  on the national stage. As Cornell University PhD candidate Vernon Mitchell Jr. expressed it recently, “In the wake of Rodney King, etc., (they) came to symbolize the expressive nature of African American youth culture in very real and salient ways that redefined the way we saw ourselves both on and off the court."

They wanted desperately to let the world know they had swagger, and yes that they liked baggy shorts and black socks. Typically, we blunt the impact of these “troublemakers” throughout our k-12 education system, by marginalizing them in in special ed. classes, or prisons, maintaining their status as subjects. Not since a young Muhammad Ali had America been faced with such boisterous athletic self-determination. 

I for one enjoyed their time on the stage, and on behalf of millions of marginalized youth I thank them for expressing so clearly what so many were trying to say both then and now; we’re here, we’re not invisible, we exist!

Black Girl Pain

Thursday, March 9, 2011

Love Letter to lil’ Weezy  

Come on Man!!....tell me this video ain't have you reaching for the Kleenex box too! In the video, entitled "Letter to Lil Wayne" 3 little Black girls aged 10, 9, and 5 of the trio Watoto From The Nile, ask Lil Weezy, in their best little girl voices, to grow the hell up and stop blatantly disrespecting Black Women.  The video has created a sensation and unfortunately as one might have expected, some blow back regarding the financial motivations of the adults behind these young women. 

Putting aside the insanity of pitting their commercial aspirations against Vivendi, (the global, French, conglomerate that owns Universal Music Group, under which Lil Wayne’s recoding company Cash Money is housed), I’m interested in exploring the vested economic interests aligned against these little girls and whether or not their parents might have discovered the one potentially indefensible method capable of slowing misogynistic recording industry juggernauts – genuine black girl innocence.

According to the web site aChart.us which “provides quantitative impression(s) of the current developments in the global music industry by chart history”, Lil Wayne’s impact for Vivendi has been nothing short of astronomical.

AChart.usa states “Lil Wayne has 6 albums and 70 songs which made it to the charts as of week 10/2003. The songs have spent  a total of 2827 weeks on the charts, and the albums a total of 321 weeks. Go D.j. was the first song to hit the charts on week 40/2004, the last songs to appear on a chart were 6 Foot 7 Foot, Bow Chicka Wow Wow, Down, Hit The Lights, Look At Me Now, Welcome To My Hood and Welcome To My Hood on week 10/2011. The most successful song was Down which spent a total of 370 weeks (13%) on the charts. The most successful songs by peak position are Down and Lollipop which peaked at number 1. The least successful songs are 3 Peat, American Star, Bill Gates, F**k Today, I Am Not A Human Being, I'm Me, I'm Single, Last Of A Dying Breed, Maybach Music 2, War and Welcome To My Hood they spend both 1 week on the charts. Tha Carter was the first album to hit the charts on week 29/2004, the last album to appear on a chart was I Am Not A Human Being on week 10/2011. The most successful album was Tha Carter Iii which spent a total of 173 weeks on the charts. The most successful albums by peak position are I Am Not A Human Being and Tha Carter Iii which peaked at number 1. The least successful album is Tha Carter it spent 22 weeks on the charts.”

http://acharts.us/performer/lil_wayne

In the era of bit torrents, iTunes, mp3’s, tera bytes of cloud storage, and other killer apps, his ability to sell albums and – along with his Cash Money label-mates, Drake, Niki Minaj (yes, I do suppose I’ll have to come back to her in a subsequent post won't I?), & Bow-Wow – subsidize the other 20 other artists on the label you’ve never heard of , is so valuable that ordinarily three people whose collective height doesn’t total ten feet would never stand a chance against this recording label Philistine.  

However, before you dismiss their chances, remember this country has borne witness to the power of little Black girls on several previous occasions and the results have irrevocably changed societies around the globe. 


And no, before you even go there, I am not referring either to Black Girls Going XXX-tra Crazy Volume 3; 3 Black girls dancing to Stanky Leg; and especially not to 3 Black Girls Take Suburban Carjacking Spree and Collapse in Court.

No, the Black girls I’m referring to are:

• Linda Brown, a single tiny Black girl, who after being denied admission to her local elementary school in Topeka Kansas because of her race, combined her case with several others that eventually reached the Supreme Court, where recently appointed Chief Justice Earl Warren, broke with long tradition and held for the first time that segregation under law in public schools violated the principle of equal protection guaranteed by the Fourteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. - Kans. Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka — Infoplease.com http://www.infoplease.com/ce6/history/A0809176.html#ixzz1G9LoyBNb

• The six young Black girls brave enough to integrate a high school in the capital city of Little Rock, Arkansas in 1957 with the support of Virgil Blossom, the Superintendent of Schools, who had courageously submitted a plan of gradual integration to the school board on May 24, 1955, which the board unanimously approved. The ensuing Little Rock Crisis, in which the students were initially prevented from entering the racially segregated school by Arkansas Governor Orval Faubus, and then attended after the intervention of President Eisenhower, is considered to be one of the most important events in the African-American Civil Rights Movement. On their first day of school, troops from the Arkansas National Guard would not let them enter the school and they were followed by mobs making threats to lynch them.
• The four little Black girls killed in the 1963 bombing of the 16^th Street Baptist Church in Birmingham, Alabama. An explosion which - along with the horrifying death of Emmett Till 8 years earlier – served as two critical milestones during the  U.S. 1960s Civil Rights Movement and contributed to support for passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964., and more recently, 
• Shaniya Davis, a 5-year-old Black girl, found dead in 2009. Her mother, Antoinette Nicole Davis, allegedly sold her into sexual slavery to Mario McNeill to pay a drug debt. Both still face a litany of charges including first-degree kidnapping, human trafficking and felony child abuse involving prostitution. Bradley Lockhart, Shaniya’s dad is White, is in agony over the fact that this case has dragged on so long. To date Shaniya’s death has led to the creation of Women Fighting Crime Against Children (WFCAC), “dedicated to uniting women and all who care about children from all over the world to be a voice in seeking justice as well as preventing crimes against children”. Their facebook page can be found at http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=362450742963

There’s an element to this “Letter” video that reminds me of the initial controversy surrounding Don Imus’ and his partner’s asinine comments about the Black women of the Rutgers Basketball Team when Imus called them hard core” and “nappy headed hos.” http://mediamatters.org/research/200704040011

I recall the quotes coming fast and hard from his show’s corporate sponsors. Actually  I most clearly recall that so many sponsors implied their distance from the controversial radio host was only temporary and that they’d be “observing the situation”.    

• Proctor & Gamble - "At P&G we're accountable to our consumers," says P&G spokesperson Jeannie Tharrington. "Any venues where our ads appear that is offensive to our target audience is not acceptable, which is why we're evaluating this situation further."

• American Express - "As of early yesterday afternoon, we notified the networks not to schedule any American Express advertising on the “Imus In the Morning show," says company spokesperson Judy Tenzer. "Our policy is not to advertise on controversial or offensive programming, and we work with various networks and media buyers to make sure that this policy is understood and followed."
• General Motors – “General Motors obviously does not condone the comments Don Imus recently made in reference to the Rutgers University women's basketball team," says GM spokesperson Ryndee Carney. "Mr. Imus has publicly apologized, and admitted his comments were completely inappropriate and offensive. He has
  also stated his intention to make changes to his show.  We acknowledge and welcome these actions.  We have decided, however, to suspend our advertising while we continue to monitor the situation.  It should be noted that GM has been and will continue to be a strong supporter of Mr. Imus' extensive and on-going charitable efforts to assist children dealing with the challenges of cancer and autism.”
• Bigelow Tea Company.  – “While Bigelow Tea has been an advertiser on the 'Imus in the Morning' show, the company does not condone or support in any way the unacceptable comments made by Imus with regard to the Rutgers University women's basketball team," said Co-President Cindi Bigelow. "Bigelow Tea is a family company that prides itself on honoring and respecting all individuals."

Consider that Lil Wayne’s music sales alone dwarfed Imus’ advertising rates of approx. $1,333 to $1,500 for every 1,000 listeners. In ’08 Tha Carter Iii’s album sales estimates were in the 850,000 - 950,000 range for the first week alone. 

Hillary and Barack Both weighed in with Hillary saying "Don Imus' comments ....were nothing more than small-minded bigotry and coarse sexism," and "showed a disregard for basic decency and were disrespectful and degrading to African Americans and women everywhere." At the time Obama said, "The comments of Don Imus were divisive, hurtful, and offensive to Americans of all backgrounds."

Funny thing is Imus’ comments about the Rutgers women paled in comparison to his earlier, incredibly painful and moronic comments about two other fantastically famous and accomplished Black women, Venus and Serena Williams; referring to Serena as some sort of over-sexualized, animalistic Venus Hottentot we'd be more likely to see in National Geographic magazine before Playboy. It hit me then that Imus’ chastisement would have had much more weight had it come from the NCAA - whose scholar athletes he defiled - and not the NAACP.  

But Come On …Man, the sad and honest truth folks, is if the problems little Black girls faced were diamonds, both Lil’ Wayne and Imus would be about a hazy, misshapen, eight of a carat with lots of inclusions. Other Black Rappers - male and female, - represent the Hope Diamond.

Rapper Bushwick Bill...... “I’m sorry if I talk about what I've experienced in my lifetime. I call women bitches and 'hos because all the women I've met since I've been out here are bitches and 'hos."

And what do you call your mother? a female reporter asks. "I call her woman, but I'm not f -- -ing my mother.   If I was f -- -ing you, you'd be a bitch."

In the words of my friend “Leon”, .......
“these scenarios always boil down to Power for me above and beyond even race. The power that we could have and the Power that we relinquish in the face of such events…… We pick and choose what rises to the level of outrageous. We yell, we scream, blurt something out about suffering the slings and arrows - and then we send in Al Sharpton……..Our entertainers do far more damage to us than ten Don Imus' could possible inflict. We violate our women more than anyone else. It’s the hypocrisy that sucks us dry, reduces us to school children complaining about the teacher and how unfair homework is.We keep a filthy home and then complain when someone calls our house dirty...I would love to see Al Sharpton bring Nellie on air to apologize for every video, every rap lyric that degrades black women and paints black men as women hating thugs…… It's ok for black people to call each other ni$$ers, bitches and hoes, well, because, we mean it in a nice way. Almost as though it were a political statement  - taking words used to oppress us and turning them on their head) - and not the signs and symptoms of culture nearing moral bankruptcy. We hold the capital to bail ourselves out, but it’s an investment we choose not to make. ”

Collectively Black girls have been subject to such an intense stream of invectives and degradation within a hyper-connected digital age for so long now that they are regularly accosted as sex trade workers or loose women standing at bus stations, airports, and hotel lobbies from Holland to Nairobi, and from Brazil to Brooklyn. 

 

Rapper Trina……….

Trina: YO! I want my ass smacked

Ludacris: Legs wide

Trina: Front back

Ludacris: Side to Side

Trina: P***y wet

Ludacris: Slip-N-Slide, Yup everything gon' be al-right

Trina: Wait bitch I'ma blow my kisses

Get pissed and throw my dishes

Y'all niggaz know just who this is

WHOO! WHOO! and the head so vicious

With me this shit gone cost

You short than that’s your loss

You know this ass is soft

Make a nigga go to breaking off

Tell me that you love me baby

And get high and f**k me crazy

Get a towel and wipe me off

You want a bitch with no type of flaws

My girls be shopping hard

These hoes be buying cars

In the club buying bars

Nipples hard is a sign of bras

(skip to last lines )

Look girl you don't know my angle

A hundred thou on a platinum bangle

My niggaz will slow your roll

P***y power we in control

Ahhhh, but the otherworldly dichotomy thickens. Trina’s Diamond Doll Foundation donates toys to hospitals and specifically targets Black girls for support. Could she be the game’s first female Rapper Baron? ™(more on that later as well). 

According to the artist, “To me, the Diamond Doll Foundation is about being able to help young girls. Those girls in the inner city, who aren't as privileged and girls that are kind of lost, those that don't come from a great home or who don't have older influential people in their lives to help them become great women. I travel a lot and I meet so many young girls and everyday life for them is a struggle. Everyday life for them is a different day of facing some sort of obstacle that they feel that can't endure. It can be girls who get pregnant at early ages, girls that are on drugs, who have been abused emotionally and physically. My life is great, but I've been through a lot of different things that makes me have the strength that I have and to be able to give that back to girls that may be weak, who have low self-esteem or don't have enough confidence, that I'm here for them."

Read her purpose statement again and then read it once more,...closely. It might start to sound like Ali’s famous quote just prior to his fight with Foreman when  apparently, we were still Kings; “I'm gonna fight for the prestige, not for me. But to uplift my little brothers who are sleeping on concrete floors today in America, black people who are living on welfare, black people who can't eat, black people who don't know no knowledge of themselves, black people who don't have no future. I want to win my title and walk down the alleys, set on the garbage can with the winos. I wanna walk down the street with the dope addicts, talk to the prostitutes. So, I can help a lot of people.” 

We’ve had marches folks. We've also had rallies, redemption songs, congressional hearings and fantastic documentaries (See Byron Hurt’s Beyond Beats and Rhymes, etc.) about misogyny in our music and how it’s choking the souls of little Black and Brown girls globally. In 2007, a Chicago Reverend even ran a bill-board campaign entitled “Stop Listening to Trash”.  Despite the continued wailing and gnashing of teeth, the dissertations, the histrionics, and the marches, the music plays on people, - while we continue indulging our guilty pleasures.  

One powerful quote I recall from the whole Imus affair, came from Bruce Gordon, former head of the NAACP and at the time a director of the CBS Corp. Mr. Gordon was quoted as saying that the broadcasting company needs a "zero-tolerance policy" on racism and hopes Imus is fired for his demeaning remarks about the basketball team. "He's crossed the line," Gordon said, "he's violated our community, (and) he needs to face the consequence of that violation."

 

Perhaps these 3 little Black girls - sisters Nia, 10, Nya, 9, and Kamaria, 5, can once again save us from our massive contradictions.  

Lett