Taking Our Cues From Martin : When dealing with modern-day racial conflict, there may be no better model than MLK.

It’s been weeks since his arrest, but here we are still shouting about what happened that fateful day in Cambridge, Mass. And while it is somewhat striking that the murders of Oscar Grant and Sean Bell failed to generate anywhere near the same level of national attention as the Gates-Crowley affair, it is not surprising that Professor Gates’ arrest is front and center on the American stage. The fact is that the outcome of this incident holds great promise, the potential for substantive dialogue on racial profiling, effective policy change and the reduction of unfair and unnecessary arrests against minorities.

African Americans have a long history of protesting mistreatment: Frederick Douglass got into a fist fight with his slave master; Ida B. Wells-Barnett took her anti-lynching campaign all the way to President McKinley, and Medgar Evers courageously spoke out against police brutality before his untimely death.

Years later, here we are, witnessing Professor Gates stand up against injustice. But in all his protest, has Prof. Gates become an agitator? Has the unassuming scholar become another divisive figure of race relations in America or a moral crusader for the cause of justice?

It’s too early to tell.

The criticism that Gates and his supporters have voiced against racial profiling and police brutality has been bereft of a strongly progressive moral component—all debate and no discussion. But how is it possible to shout out against injustice and make strides toward positive change in the justice system?

When it comes to such a heated issue, perhaps, there’s no one better than Martin Luther King Jr. for us all to take our cues from.

The civil rights leaders’ emphasis on a radical ethic of love is instructive. This aspect of King’s work has been discounted at the expense of his other political accomplishments and social organizing. Many believe that King’s moral theories on civil disobedience have no place in contemporary culture. But what these dissenters fail to see is that radical love is the best tactic to use when navigating controversial issues. As the tumult of the Gates case increases, we all must learn to avoid the trappings of reactionary politics.

Part of King’s talent here derives from the fact that his ethic of love was a spiritual discipline, not a comfy compassion or a rhetorical resistance. This type of love is, first and foremost, a painful challenge. King contended that our world would only improve if we could extend compassion without bias. He charged us to love equally those that loved us, those that hated us and those that never thought of us. The starting point for political justice is in our own hearts.

Further, King’s genius was that he clearly used his moral voice to anchor the movement in social justice. King tried to help us understand that all social progress was based on expanding our hearts, nurturing our tenderness and extending love to others in the human family, no matter what they did. To this end, he asked us to be “dangerously unselfish.” King’s classic “Letter from a Birmingham Jail” is a prime example of his commitment to justice through a discipline of the heart.

King, it is worthy to note, never publicly uttered a negative word when it came to Bull Connor, the notoriously racist and violent police commissioner of Birmingham, Ala. who unleashed dogs and turned hoses on black children and sanctioned the beating of legal protesters. When King mentioned Connor publicly, he only challenged that Connor didn’t “know history.”

If Gates’ arrest is to yield something substantive and positive, we must confront the complexities that lie beneath the surface. Gates and Crowley, like the rest of us, are imperfect and acted imperfectly. Convenient categories such as white vs. black, Cambridge vs. Harvard, working class vs. upper class allow us easy illusions and simple deceptions.

We need a prominent progressive moral voice, like that of Martin Luther King Jr., so our conversations about racial profiling, criminal justice and policing are not merely power struggles. Speaking out is not enough. What matters is the message.



Andre C. Willis is an assistant professor of the philosophy of religion at Yale Divinity School.

Alpha Kappa Alpha Sorority President in Trouble??

(CNN) -- Members of the nation's oldest black sorority have accused the organization's president of using her sorority credit card for personal items and its board of directors of spending too much on her.
The suit alleges that the Alpha Kappa Alpha Sorority's board of directors signed off on spending hundreds of thousands of dollars on President Barbara McKinzie and commissioned an expensive wax figure of her.

McKinzie denied the allegations, saying they are "without merit."

The most "outlandish representation" in the lawsuit, she said, is the allegation that the sorority spent $900,000 on a wax figure of her.

Two wax figures -- one of McKinzie and one of the sorority's first president, the late Nellie Quander -- were purchased by the hostess chapters of the sorority's centennial convention last year, not the national AKA organization, for a total of $45,000, McKinzie said.

The lawsuit says the sorority's board of directors approved the use of $900,000 for the wax likeness of McKinzie ahead of the centennial celebration.

Edward W. Gray Jr., an attorney representing the plaintiffs, acknowledged that the sorority disputes the lawsuit's account of the statue's price tag.

However, he said, "we have no way of knowing what the actual number was. We hope that it was as little as they say."

He added that $45,000 is still a large amount of money, although, "certainly, it's a lot better than $900,000."

He called the alleged conduct "shocking and bordering on illegal."

The wax figures are to appear in the National Great Blacks in Wax museum in Baltimore, Maryland, according to AKA. The museum said they are on a traveling exhibit.

The lawsuit, filed last month in a Washington superior court, also accuses McKinzie of using her sorority credit card for "designer clothing, lingerie, jewelry, gifts and other excessive and inappropriate expenses of a personal nature."

It demands that the sorority fire McKinzie and the board of directors and that the alleged damages be repaid.

The lawsuit says that by using her credit card for personal purchases, as well as for "properly reimbursed expenditures," McKinzie amassed American Express points, which she then redeemed for a 46-inch television and gym equipment.

It also says that the sorority's board of directors had agreed on compensation for McKinzie without the approval of the sorority's policy-making body. The compensation, it says, included a $4,000-a-month stipend that McKinzie is to receive for four years after she leaves office.

The board of directors also voted to buy a $1 million life insurance policy for McKinzie, a purchase that was also not approved by the policy-making body, the lawsuit says.

McKinzie denied the accusations.

"Allegations about personal use of AKA funds are false and unsupported by the organization's audited books," she said. The "malicious allegations leveled against AKA by former leaders are based on mischaracterizations and fabrications not befitting our ideals of sisterhood, ethics and service."

The lawsuit also blames McKinzie and Betty James, the executive director for the organization's corporate office, for financial decisions they made for the sorority.

The sorority's claimed deductions on its federal tax returns in 2006 and 2007 were "unreasonably large and inappropriate, thus exposing the sorority to potential IRS claims and obligations," the suit says.

Furthermore, the sorority's policy-making body has not approved McKinzie's investment philosophy, which "has caused the shifting of several million dollars of the sorority and foundation funds from cash and cash equivalents to stock and bond investments."

McKinzie said in her statement that under her leadership, "accounting and budgetary practices have been tightened, erasing past IRS liabilities and cost overruns."

In addition to McKinzie, James and the sorority, the lawsuit names other members of the board of directors and the AKA Educational Advancement Foundation Inc. as defendants.

AKA was founded in 1908 and is based in Chicago, Illinois.

Bicycling while Black?? Yep

I would like to set at the outset, that this post is from Dr. Mark Anthony Neal blog, the author of the post is Dr. Lawrence Jackson Associate professor of English and African American studies at Emory University. I am re-posting it because I thought it was a fascinating story.

Well, here is the story:

Bicycling While Black
by Lawrence Jackson

When I was seventeen and the undercover policeman put a pistol to my head until I urinated on myself and accused me of stealing my father’s car, I was powerless to do anything.

When I was nineteen and the policeman detained me while I was walking to the bus stop for the regularly scheduled bus, I was powerless.

But as a forty-one-year-old Emory University professor I don’t have the excuse of powerlessness. And as the father of two Georgia-born sons I have the responsibility of making sure their native land does not persecute them on account of their gender and color.

This was what went through my mind one night in June at 10:50 p.m. when I was detained and fined by three Decatur City police officers in two patrol units (#1016 and #1017) for twenty-five minutes on brightly lit Clairemont Road across from the YMCA for… riding my bicycle without a light. My house, where I have lived for the last six years, was a mile-and-a-half away. Emory University, where I am tenured faculty member in two departments, was a mile away. I was across the street from the Y where my son plays soccer and T-Ball, next to the credit union where I bank.

Sunday night, I decided to ride my bicycle after three quarters of Laker dominance. But do I really need an excuse to go bike riding? Between downtown Decatur and Oakhurst village I had seen multiple police units several times, marked and unmarked. I was certainly happy to be on a bicycle where I felt some degree of immunity from them. I should have avoided the police at all cost, as I did the week before when I drove around a block in the Grant Park neighborhood to evade some stopped patrol car with blue lights. The police are professionally suspicious of black men—“Number One Males” in their lingo--and in Dekalb County they have a reputation for shooting unarmed black men.

When I was returning home on Clairemont, on my way to Desmond, as fast as I could pedal, a police patrol car with flashing lights sat parked in the right hand lane. Another patrol car without lights raced by me near the intersection of Scott Boulevard and stopped beside the first car. The Decatur police were now blocking both lanes of northbound traffic. From my vantage they seemed to be having a discussion with one another in a non-emergency situation.

I rode past the two units blocking the street. Both cars then began pursuing me and sounding different sirens and horns. Like most people who don’t believe they have broken any laws, I assumed that they had some useful purpose unconnected to me. But I was their target. After I stopped my bicycle I said to them that I couldn’t believe that they did not have more useful ways to spend their time. My Stanford roommate once was forced from his bicycle and taken to the station where they photographed his thighs. I was boiling. When I walked toward their car to give them a piece of my mind they reacted as if I meant them bodily harm and their useful police training took the entire situation to another level.

Personally, I can’t remember containing that level of fury. The eight thousand dollars in tax I paid to Georgia last year, squandered so relentlessly in “over-policing.” I’m still furious, as I was standing there in a spotlight, being monitored by a man in pre-shooting position with his hand on his gun, paces away from so that he could have enough room to unloose his weapon if I proved unmanageable. During the whole stretched out circus in the 2,000 watt spotlight and Mason’s blue light, as gawking drivers cruised past, I couldn’t stop thinking about the inevitably puzzled look my boss Jim Wagner would have if he happened to drive by with his family. “Is that Jackson, but he seemed responsible...”

I am awfully curious to know how many of my white neighbors have been detained and fined for breaking any bicycle operator’s code in Decatur that didn’t involve an accident. I am going to try to find out. I know it can’t have been many because it took three officers with computers more than fifteen minutes to locate code number 40-6-296 of the purported infringement that I had made. If that’s how Decatur’s police are keeping busy then the city and the county should spend their money more wisely.

Since my middle child was born in 2005 I have looked admiringly at City of Decatur schools and considered seriously trying to buy one of the expensive homes in “The Great Lakes” or Winona Park. Now I have a hard time thinking the sacrifice worth it.

***

Lawrence Jackson is Associate Professor of English and African American Studies and the author of Ralph Ellison: Emergence of Genius (Wiley 2002; Georgia 2007) and Renaissance of Indignation: A History of African American Writers and Critics, 1934-1960 (Princeton 2010). He can be contacted at lpjacks@emory.edu

Hundreds die in Nigeria

I was just reading on CNN, and since I am into Intercultural studies, I couldn't help but to notice this article. It is very devastating to hear about whats going on in Nigeria, and other parts of the country. According to CNN, more than 400 people have been killed in a deluge of violence in Lagos, Nigeria. Also, more than 150 people have been arrested by Nigerian officials. I am blogging about this because this in turns affects everyone, and I think it is sad that so much violence is going on around the world.

Well, here is the article from CNN:

LAGOS, Nigeria (CNN) -- More than 400 people have been killed in a spate of violence in northern Nigeria, the president of a human rights group said Tuesday.
The violence has pitted Islamic militants against government police and troops in the north-central part of the nation, officials said.

Attacks continued Tuesday in the suburbs of the northern city of Maiduguri, said Shehu Sani, president of the Civil Rights Congress, a human rights organization based in northern Nigeria. People there are seeking refuge in police and military barracks and in hospitals, he said.

Police and troops were dispatched to the militants' hideouts after they began attacks on government establishments Sunday, said police spokesman Moses Anegbode. As authorities exchanged fire with the militants, 41 people, including a soldier and a policeman, were killed, Anegbode said Monday. In addition, some 176 people were arrested in Bauchi, he said.

Besides Bauchi, militants also staged attacks on the nearby states of Yobe and Borno on Sunday and Monday, said Emmanuel Ojukwu, spokesman for the national police.

Yobe's police commissioner, Alhaji Muhammed Abbas, said that 23 suspected militants were arrested in connection with a bomb attack at a police station in Potiskum that killed a policeman and a civilian and wounded seven people.

The official News Agency of Nigeria reported that as many as 100 members of a religious sect led by Sheikh Mohammed Yusuf may have been killed in a confrontation with police.

In Borno, police spokesman Isa Azare said that two policemen were killed in an attack on police headquarters late Monday.

"The religious fanatics took the police unawares," Azare told the government-affiliated New Nigerian newspaper. "That was why they succeeded in killing all the officers on night duty."

Panicked residents stayed inside in all three states, and businesses shut down, even though officials said the situation was under control.

The militants used guns, bows and arrows and machetes in the attacks, officials said.

The militants disagree with the government's teaching of Islam in the region, maintaining that the government allows itself to be influenced by Western values, and have been attacking government offices and Islamic clergy.

There is a history of religious violence in central Nigeria, where majority-Muslim north Africa meets largely Christian sub-Saharan Africa. Human Rights Watch estimates that more than 1,000 people were killed in riots in 2001.

The human rights organization alleged last week that police and soldiers killed at least 133 people during two days of riots between Muslims and Christians in Nigeria last year. Most of the victims were young Muslim men, often unarmed, the group charged in testimony before a state commission examining the riots and in a separate report. More than 700 people died in the violence, the organization said, citing local religious authorities on both sides of the divide.

Mos Def Politically Savvy??

The subject line was ominous: "This is difficult to watch," it said. I probably shouldn't share with you what sort of video I was expecting to find upon opening the message, but I can tell you that the enclosed clip, though not what I imagined, was indeed difficult to watch, especially for a huge hip-hop fan like me.

If you like politics and have HBO, or are just into YouTube, perhaps you've seen the video of rapper Mos Def and author Christopher Hitchens, bookending Salman Rushdie and Bill Maher on Maher's talk show, engaged in a conversation about the Taliban. It is a conversation that quickly devolves into the sort of scene that usually precedes a shouting match, or even a fistfight. In and of itself, angry, televised ranting about politics is a vulgarity too often tolerated by Americans (a problem The Root has touched on before), but what made this heated bickering particularly cringe-worthy was the imbalance of it.

Mos Def was overwhelmed by men far more learned about the topic at hand than himself, and in the carnage that ensued, viewers were exposed to one of the sadder problems plaguing parts of the African-American community today: an immovable distrust of everything.

Without a doubt, for blacks in America, maintaining a cautious disposition is a good idea. Many African Americans who have let their guard down in the past have paid for it, sometimes dearly. But caution becomes problematic when it goes from simple self-preservation technique to worldview, something affecting a person’s every interaction. Like the shellshocked soldier who sees even his comrades as enemies, a person who has come to trust nothing is a danger to everything and everyone—most of all himself.

Shun the government completely, and you’ll miss out on the occasional JFKs of the world. Distrust the entirety of the mainstream media, and you’ll never be privy to the brilliant work of Woodward and Bernstein. You believe white people are out to get you? Then how to account for John Brown?

The true danger in mistrust is that it ultimately leads to fear, which in turn can lead to any number of negative outcomes. It was mistrust and fear just as much as it was a bullet that cut down Martin Luther King Jr., and it was mistrust and fear that caused black activist Kamau Kambon to proclaim on C-SPAN that the answer to the world’s problems is the extermination of all the whites. More recently, mistrust and fear mucked up what should have been a very simple interaction between Henry Louis Gates Jr. and a Cambridge police officer.

Luckily for Mos Def, thus far, his mistrust and fear have just made him look pretty silly on television.

It began innocently enough, with Mos calmly asking, "What are al-Qaeda and the Taliban's political ambitions?" It was an odd inquiry, as decades of violent attacks and fiery rhetoric from Osama bin Laden have clarified for most people the goals of those groups. Nevertheless, it was also a question for which Hitchens, Rushdie and—to a lesser extent—Maher, had a variety of answers:

* The return of an Islamic empire
* An ultra-puritan agenda
* A fascist state
* The death of all Jews, Hindus and secularists

In the end, Maher tied it all together, pointedly telling Mos, "They're bad motherf--kers!"

For many, a Hitchens-Rushdie assurance that the Taliban is committed to reckless and violent ends would be reason enough to close the debate and move the conversation on to something else. Despite what you think about the controversies surrounding both men, it's undeniable that they are both well-versed in Middle Eastern radicalism (Rushdie was once even forced to hide out from an Iranian fatwa). Yet Mos Def pushed back against the assertions in the strangest ways possible.

Seemingly ignorant of the insidious ways of both the Taliban and al-Qaeda—"You're sounding as if you've only just heard of this," Hitchens noted—the talented hip-hop artist grew obstinate at the three men before him, at one point declaring, "I don't believe that someone's bad just because you say so." He sounded both childish and churlish, the statement coming across like something a teenager who's just discovered punk music would shout at his parents. Then Mos went further off the rails, bringing up Assata Shakur, a former Black Panther convicted of murder who escaped prison and has since lived in exile in Cuba. The rapper’s point being: "There have been lots of crimes leveled against people which they didn't do."

Mos might have made sense had bin Laden et al. not released multiple videos over the past decade affirming their roles in several heinous crimes and assassinations. When Hitchens suggested Mos watch those videos, Mos, a devout Muslim, contended that he didn't trust the media's translations of the videos. A few moments later, when Hitchens, grinning and catty, said Mos should "do some work on [his] own account" and look into the Taliban's crimes, the rapper, angry now, shouted, "Don't start no shit, Mr. Hitchens! I'm from Brooklyn! I'm not afraid of nothin'!"

That's when I stopped the clip, clicking it off the way someone at a bullfight might turn away from a speared, dizzy, increasingly lifeless bull.

To be sure, after watching that video, I was embarrassed for Mos Def, a smart guy who went up against equally smart guys and lost both the argument and his cool, but I was also fully aware of why he flamed out so horribly.

Growing up as a person of color in America, you're often astounded to learn how poorly your ancestors were treated. From slavery to the three-fifths compromise to lynchings to redlining practices, the horror stories are endless, and they can plant in you an onion of bitterness and suspicion. If you're unlucky, it's not only stories of prejudice that will add layers to that onion but actual incidents of bigotry, too. For some, eventually, that ball of embitterment can simply grow too big, leading them to trust only themselves and their own kind, even if that means forsaking rationality. It’s one of the cruelest paradoxes of the black experience: an unreasonable fear of the world around you, and it happens for good reason.

Such was the case, I'm afraid, with Mos Def that night on Real Time with Bill Maher. In just a few short minutes, before HBO viewers' very eyes, Mos revealed a pain so deep that he was unwilling to believe mainstream (read: white) media reports about something as simple and irrefutable as the maliciousness of Osama bin Laden.

Ultimately, you have to wonder if Mos Def actually believes that the news stations would collude to intentionally deceive viewers with fudged translations of bin Laden's terror rants. If he does, then you mustn't giggle at him, the way Chris Hitchens did—you have to feel sorry for him, and then wonder how much pain it takes to get to where he is.

Cord Jefferson is a writer living in Brooklyn. Some of his other work has appeared in National Geographic, The Daily Beast and on MTV. You can contact him here.

Why White Americans have a different Opinion then Blacks

I read this article on The Roots; discussing how Black and White Americans have different views of the Gates case. Which is true, and that is the way it should be. Because White Americans have not been through the historical experience Blacks have been through; like myself or any other Blacks. Moreover, Dr. Lawrence Bobo did a superb job with explicating the historical differences that Black and White Americans have been through. Which, to me, is why a lot of Whites do not understand why this is such a huge deal to African Americans especially males and those who are very educated such as Dr. Henry Gates, Jr. One young White American man said to me, "I don't understand why this is such a big deal, why is race being played out in this situation?" I told him, because you have not lived or walked in the shoes of a Black man, and you never will; also, we have had history with racial profiling by police authorities.

Ok, enough of me talking here is the article:

Some tools used in statistics courses are useful for understanding race in America. In statistics, you learn about overlapping and non-overlapping “sets.”

Black and white America are like two Venn diagrams, circles that share substantial common or overlapping space and that have some areas that do not overlap at all. In many ways, the area of common overlap is now probably larger than it has ever been. And there is good reason to expect that overlap to grow in the future to the point of becoming completely co-terminus. Whenever that day comes, America will be effectively post-racial.

Yet, the remarkably polarized reactions to the recent arrest of Harvard Professor Henry Louis Gates Jr. exposes one of those areas of non-overlapping, or unique, space. It reveals one of those acutely painful subjects where much of black and white America share all too little commonality of outlooks. It is that point of everyday interaction where race plays out in a face-to-face encounter. In particular, it involves the type of encounter involving respect for police authority on the one hand and, on the other hand, respect for the rights of citizens who happen to be African Americans.

For most blacks, this police-black citizen interaction is an acutely sensitive terrain. For many African Americans, it is a space marked by live wounds, personal and familial memories of injury and insult, and the heavy weight of group experience of injustice. For most whites, however, there is nothing so close, so profoundly emotion-laced or so fundamentally defined by an ascriptive feature such as one’s perceived racial background. It is, in short, a place where the Venn diagrams of white America and black America generally do not overlap.

As a consequence, it is one of those topics where miscommunication is not merely easy, but where potentially explosive mutual misunderstanding is quite likely. I know this in a very personal sense. A good friend whom I’ve known since high school got in touch with me following the news of Gates’ arrest on disorderly conduct charges. She passed along the initial news reports, which were based largely on parts of police reports that were inappropriately released and, at best, one-sided. To my mind, it sounded as if Gates had behaved wildly. I was as flabbergasted to hear that as to hear my friend’s conclusion that both sides had erred. I responded with, frankly, a blistering, liquid hot fusillade of facts and background as to why saying that just wasn’t good enough.

She conceded that, viewed in context, my take on the incident was probably the right one. She also said that my reaction and tone had brought her to tears. At this point, it is worth noting that she is white and I am black. We’ve probably seen one another only three or four times since her graduation from Wellesley and mine from Loyola Marymount, but we have a connection that I am certain will survive this intensely fraught moment.

I was passionate in my reaction to her “split the difference/everybody acted badly” response to the Gates arrest for three tightly interlaced reasons. First, the world at that point had heard only one side of the story, that of Sgt. James Crowley, via a leaked police report. Second, anyone who knows Skip Gates knows that he is probably the very last black person on earth to blame racial bias for what happens to him. The charge of disorderly conduct was just not credible at all. Third, like most black men, especially one living and working in a largely white environment, I worry frequently about establishing my “bona fides” and wondering who might be available to “vouch” for me, especially in a circumstance where police might be involved—a worry that I know is not a preoccupation of any of my white colleagues.

To return to the bitter disagreement with my high school friend, the larger point is that she is a person with scrupulously progressive politics and whose values and basic instincts are almost completely co-terminus with my own. But then there comes this aspect of the racial divide where, to stick with the metaphor, the Venn diagrams simply do not overlap. Indeed, not only do they not overlap but the intensity of experience and belief on my side of the circle is completely absent in hers. The distance between even good friends was almost unbridgeable.

I say “almost” because we are, of course, still friends. In this vein, I perfectly understand President Barack Obama’s decision to call the officer who arrested Skip Gates and then placed a call to Gates himself. (I do not attach much significance to who got the first call because Gates had to change his private cell phone number after it was released publicly and, as it played out, the White House had to find me on Martha’s Vineyard to get a direct, workable phone number for him). Much of Obama’s politics, and certainly his larger life experience, has been about summoning the perspective and courage needed to seek mutual healing and transcendence in the face of long-standing racial fissures of this kind. So I hope the president is successful in bringing together Sgt. Crowley and my friend Professor Gates, at least as a symbol of the possibility of racial healing and comity.

It is ironic, of course, that Henry Louis Gates Jr. should become the global poster child for the evils of racial profiling and be cast as an anti-racist agitator. Nothing could be further from the path he has trod to this point (as others, including Melissa Harris-Lacewell, writing in The Nation, have ably pointed out). Like Obama, Gates has been a dedicated and consummate builder of bridges across the racial divide. From family history, to personal biography, to a long and prominent intellectual and professional life, he has been about resisting the oversimplifications, the polarities, the easily invoked catchphrases and slogans, the totems and symbols, and the choosing of sides along a great racial divide that constitute so much of the burden of race in America. Thus, it is unfair and, frankly, tragic that so much of the media coverage of this event has treated Gates as if he has ever walked around shouting “racism” or “yo’ mama” at police officers. Absurd in the extreme.

My friend and I reached a point of intense friction over this episode. Just imagine how difficult it is for white and black Americans (and Latino and Asian and Native Americans as well)—who may not have 20 or 30 years of personal friendship to rely upon in creating the commitment to keep on listening—to do the work required to really hear a message from a place in the other person’s experience (Venn diagram) that has no immediate parallel in one’s own set of experiences. It is not easy, and the din of a media circus is rarely a good setting to bring together members of communities that are at loggerheads. Everybody is too concerned about sending symbolic messages of solidarity to those normally on “our side” (i.e., police unions, the Congressional Black Caucus) to engage in any real work of communication and reconciliation.

Yet we can, as Obama and Gates and many others suggest, take this as a teachable moment. That is what needs to happen now. My high school friend and I will remain connected. And I am confident that with the wisdom and commitment to racial understanding that Barack Obama and Skip Gates have long exhibited, we as a nation will continue the slow, difficult, inexorable work of bringing more fully together the members of two circles of lived experience, one black and one white, all heading toward that point of e pluribus unum.

Lawrence Bobo is the W.E.B. Du Bois Professor of the Social Sciences at Harvard University.

Black Hair, Child Abuse

At first blush, it looks like a familiar ritual in many black homes: A little girl with abundantly gorgeous, kinky-curly coils sits down with her mother/caregiver for a little grooming. Like most little girls, she’s none too happy to be participating in said ritual. So she lets her displeasure show.

And that’s when a harmless little ritual morphs into YouTube infamy, sparking a furious debate about black parenting styles and the difference between hair care and child abuse: We watch the mother/caregiver as she proceeds to “brush” the girl’s hair, pulling at it with a ferocity, yanking and yelling and telling the little girl to move her “goddamn hand.” “I’m trying to get these f****** naps out of your head so you can look like somebody,” she tells her.

It’s hard to listen to the little girl scream. It’s also hard to watch her try to escape, and to watch her mother—if it is indeed her mother—run after her, pinning her down with her thighs, “brushing” her hair with a vengeance, cursing her the whole time. You can see clumps of hair floating about.

The anonymous girl’s big sister—who posted the event on YouTube under the heading, “My Lil Sis,” and “Nappy Ass Hair 2,” films it all, laughing so hard that sometimes she can’t film straight: “America’s Funniest Home Videos!” she chortles.

Most of the viewers watching it on YouTube didn’t find it funny. It was flagged for child abuse, taken down from the site and then posted again. And then it went viral, cropping up on sites like Naturallycurly.com, Longhaircareforum.com and Cafemom.com. Some bloggers played detective, tracking down the provenance of the video and reporting it to authorities. (It looks like the video originated in Detroit.) Hell hath no fury like bloggers on a mission to save a child.

The video serves as a Rorschach blot for the female sector of the blogosphere, be they black, white or other: They see the little girl, and they see themselves. There’s cynthiarf, who posted her own reaction video. She saw unrepentant child abuse:

“The stuff that she’s putting into that child’s psyche is gonna be irreversible. I’m damn near 40 years old, I ain’t forgot shit. …. It’s been a long time since I was 5, and I remember it like it was yesterday. … If you ever see this shit, say something. … I just hope this bitch is in jail.”

Then there are those who watched the video and saw a little girl with a little too much attitude, a little girl who, above all, needed to calm down and submit to the brush. Their mothers brushed their hair with similar force, so what’s the problem? Says beauttty07 who re-posted the video on YouTube after it had been taken down by site administrators:

“its just a trip how the girl is actin all that screamin and stuff and throwing stuff cuz she dont want her hair brushed the little girl is actin way over the top and the mother means no harm.”

Let’s just say that I disagree with that assessment: The mother seems to be getting sort of grim pleasure from the girl’s pain. There’s no reassurance: there’s no soothing; there’s no attempt to be gentle. When the little girl, who looks to be about 5, screams, “I want my daddy,” she is told, “You ain’t got no f****** daddy.”

Then, in another video—it comes in three parts—her sister, the videographer tells her, “You’ll be pretty, baby, again.”

As if.

The message she’s getting, the message too many little black girls get: Your hair is ugly; therefore you are ugly, too. To be beautiful, to “be somebody,” you need to have your hair smoothed into submission. There’s no room for spirited hair—or spirited little girls.

Some note that the anonymous little girl appears to be of mixed race and that her mother is dark-skinned and appears to be wearing a weave; therefore, the reasoning goes, the mother must be jealous and is exacting her revenge on the little girl’s head. We don’t know these people; we can’t ascribe motives to their actions. Their actions are troubling enough. A whole lot of psychological mess is getting played out in that little 5:46 video.

Hair is such a loaded issue for us; the legacy of 400 years of slavery and brainwashing, good hair vs. bad hair, wannabes vs. the jigaboos, yada, yada, yada. I’m not trying to minimalize the impact, because our wounds go deep. Really deep. I’m just tired of seeing it played out again and again.

Talking about it doesn’t seem to help. Books have been written about our issues with hair; Spike did a movie about it; Oprah’s talked about it; India.Arie sang about it; Chris Rock did a documentary on it; and we still can’t seem to get beyond it. True, in the blogosphere, there’s a whole natural hair revolution going on, with scores of sisters resolving to love the hair they were granted and documenting that love—and obsession—in countless videos, blogs and online organic hair recipes. (Part of the horror generated by the video is the fact that someone in the girl’s environment is savvy enough to upload a video to YouTube but isn’t hip to the fact that brushing kinky or curly hair is a recipe for disaster.)

But even beneath the love for all things “naptural,” we’re still stratifying and categorizing black hair, ascribing numbers to assess the degree of kink and coil, with “4b” being the ultimate in Negritude.

So we talk, and talk, and talk some more. Maybe one day we’ll talk ourselves into a healing place. I’m not so sure. Talking about it is akin to picking at a fresh scab, again and again and again. In the meantime, there’s another generation of little girls, little girls like the girl in the video, who are listening, and taking notes. And running when we reach for the brush.

Teresa Wiltz is The Root’s senior culture writer.

Thoughts

Today, I have been thinking about my future. In regards to what I would want my career to be. As you all may already know, I am an aspiring professor and lecturer. Currently, I am double majoring in Speech Communication with an emphasis in intercultural communication and of course Psychology. Folks, may start to wonder, why psychology and communication?? Well, I will answer that, with the psychology degree I will use to gain knowledge about the formation of ones’ identity and the process in the factors that proceed with the development. As for communication, I have an emphasis on intercultural communication with a focus on Black masculinity and gender issues. Thus, I will use the two of them to see how African American males specifically form their identity as it relates to masculine roles and socially accepted norms (what ever one might define that as) moreover, I will also look at how violence play an enormous role in the development of some black males identities. Moving forward, after I receive my BS and BA degree, I will then go on to work towards my Masters and PhD in speech communication, ultimately to become a professor/writer/social activist. My goal is to teach at an HBCU school, because that is where a lot of our Black students are going, and I feel as though I can make a huge impact, and I also, personally, know how important role models and or motivators are in ones’ life. This will in turn allow me to give back to society by educating my young brothers and also making a change in someones life. NOTE: The reason why I have the picture of Dr.West and I is because he is a mentor to me, and is one of my greatest motivators of today! He is an amazing orator and a mind-bottling intellectual!

Obama Finally Sounds Like a Black Man

So the Cambridge police union wants an apology from President Obama and Massachusetts Gov. Deval Patrick for calling out the Cambridge Police Department for mishandling Skip Gates’ arrest? That’s some priceless gall considering that the Cambridge Police Department called the event “regrettable and unfortunate” and recommended that disorderly conduct charges against Gates be dropped. It’s especially nervy because the arresting officer, Sgt. James Crowley, essentially said it would be a cold day in hell before he applogized to anyone for his own actions.

Crowley got a call from President Obama on Friday, in a sort of non-apology/apology fence-mending, after Obama faced widespread criticism for saying the police department “acted stupidly.” It was a fine example of the president’s ability to be magnanimous even toward people who are unworthy of magnanimity and unable to show it to others.

Still, I was pleased that President Obama said what he said about the incident, specifically, and about racial profiling, in general. And I was very glad that he didn’t take any of it back.

“What I think we know separate and apart from this incident is there is a long history in this country of African Americans and Latinos being stopped by police disproportionately,” he said. “That’s just a fact.”

It is indeed a fact, and it’s a fact that people of color live with every day. This is why what happened in Cambridge is so much bigger than Gates and Crowley. It’s also why it was entirely appropriate for President Obama to wade into this racially charged imbroglio and help shape the national discourse about what some people would like to believe is simply an overblown case of mistaken identity, clashing egos and political opportunism.

I was surprised that the president chose to speak out as forcefully as he did. It was a politically risky move, but one that was likely given much thought. We all know that the president is not a shoot-from-the-hip-and-worry-about-the-repercussions-later kind of guy, especially on matters of race. If anything, he’s usually too cautious. He inserted himself in a national public discourse that was long overdue because he knows and we know that if anyone can lead or shape such a discussion, he can.

We know, too, that his views on race are nuanced, not reactionary, and that his outlook is unique because of his biracial background. We’ve heard him talk about race at the 2004 Democratic National Convention and in Philadelphia in a way that made people across the racial spectrum feel respected and understood. Most importantly, we know that Obama, through his words and deeds, and by virtue of his election, has made many Americans explore their own internal racial biases, and think, really think, about how we can and should bridge this country’s deep racial divide.

Doing this requires acknowledging some cold, hard truths about racism in the United States, whether institutionalized or individualized. The president said what he felt and what he knew. Skip Gates’ arrest, he said “is a sign of how race remains a factor in this society.”

Can this fact really still be that difficult for some people to grasp in 2009 when even the country’s first black president says that as a black man, he could be shot while trying to get into his own house if mistaken for a burglar?

It’s not a stretch for many white people, or black people for that matter, to visualize a young black man, especially one from an inner-city neighborhood or who is dressed a particular way (think baggy jeans, oversized T-shirt, baseball cap) getting stopped, questioned, arrested, etc., by white policemen. You’d have to live in a cave to not have witnessed this taking place at least once on the evening news, in movies, on streets and highways. What is harder for many white people to understand is that this happens all the time, to all sorts of black people, but particularly black men, no matter what they are wearing, no matter their station in life and no matter the kind of car they drive.

It happens in all sorts of locations and under various circumstances. Whether they’re driving through a mostly white neighborhood or through a rural town, walking around a mall or department store, standing on a street corner or making a transaction at a bank, they are often viewed and treated as suspects. Forget Driving While Black, Living While Black should be the new buzz word. Believe us when we tell you that Living While Black is hard.

Most white people have never experienced such treatment and could never imagine it happening to them or their loved ones. They don’t have to. None of us should have to. But if you’re black, you’ve probably experienced an unpleasant and potentially dangerous encounter with white police officers, or you know some black person who has.

That’s why even President Obama and Gov. Patrick can relate. They know that if they were removed from their normal surroundings and the trappings of power and plunked down in some anonymous white neighborhood, at night and wearing jeans and a baseball cap, they might be confused for a burglar, too. They also understand that like Skip Gates, even a sport coat, pressed pants, sensible shoes and a fancy professional title can’t protect them from suspicion—or danger.

Marjorie Valbrun is a regular contributor to The Root.

Will Downing in ‘Classique’ Form

Classique, the title of Will Downing’s new release, suggests yet another collection of “classic” soul and R&B recordings. And Downing does include several remarkable remakes, but what the recording’s title really asserts is that Downing himself is in classic form throughout the album. With more than 21 years in the business, Downing is one of the most recognizable brands in R&B and smooth jazz, and Classique finds him only adding to his considerable allure.

But three years ago, critics and fans were writing obituaries for Downing’s career. He was diagnosed in late 2006 with a debilitating muscular disease, and there was much speculation that one of the most distinctive voices of the last two decades would be silenced. The artist recorded much of 2007’s After Tonight in a wheelchair, while still recovering in the hospital. By the summer of 2008, Downing was back on the road. Talking by phone from New York City, he sounded healthy and strong, “I’m feeling pretty good,” he told me. “God’s been good.”

Classique is a collection of mostly original tracks with longtime collaborator Rex Rideout. “We’ve been friends for 16 years,” Downing says of Rideout, whose resume includes recordings with Lalah Hathaway, Mary J. Blige, Angie Stone and Maysa. Rideout has “helped shape me into the artist that you hear,” said Downing, who has worked with the producer since 1993’s Love’s the Place to Be. Rideout contributes to the bouncy “More Time (Tic Toc)” and the lead single, “Something Special,” which was co-written with Downing and fellow singer-songwriter Gary Taylor. Additionally, Downing takes the production reins himself on several tracks, including “Let’s Make It Now” and “I Won’t Stop,” the kind of mid-tempo balladry that Downing has built his career on.

When Downing began his career in the late 1980s, he seemed more interested in taking over the dance floor than becoming a stalwart of “Quiet Storm” radio. His first recording includes dance mixes of John Coltrane’s “A Love Supreme” and Deniece Williams’ “Free.” It all changed when Downing scored with a breathtaking remake of Rolls Royce’s “Wishing on a Star” from 1989’s Come Together As One.

From that point on, Downing’s musical fate was sealed. “Wishing on the Star” became the musical blueprint for Downing’s career, melding strong R&B-styled vocals—reminiscent of Luther Vandross and Jeffrey Osborne—with jazzy arrangements that recalled the music of the late-saxophonist Grover Washington and the 1970s-era albums of Norman Connors that featured Phyllis Hyman, Michael Henderson and Eleanor Mills.

As Downing recalls, “in those days, nobody knew what to call it,” referring to the style that came to be known as smooth jazz. “I hate that we have to call it anything,” Downing laments. “It’s just good music.” For a lot of folks, Downing jokes, smooth jazz “was just a free concert in the park.” As the genre began to explode, in large part because of the popularity of New York City’s now-defunct CD-101 (WQCD), so did Downing’s fortunes.

Though smooth jazz is slowly disappearing from the commercial airwaves, Downing, Gerald Albright and Rachelle Ferrell continue to tour, often headlining daylong jazz festivals. “Always working,” Downing says matter-of-factly, highlighting the fact that the so-called adult contemporary crowd—often ignored by the music industry—finds the music they like despite not hearing it on the radio. According to Downing, it’s an audience that not only continues to increase in numbers but in its diversity.

Echoing Big Daddy Kane’s famous line, Downing jokes that his audience is “8 to 80, dumb, crippled and crazy.” While Frankie, Beverly and Maze (black America’s Grateful Dead) can tour endlessly, despite not having any new music since 1993, Downing can at least point to a substantial body of work—13 studio albums—to support his efforts on the road.

One regular feature of Downing’s recordings has been his penchant to cover previous soul tracks—some classic and some obscure. Over the course of his career, Downing has recorded versions of Angela Bofill’s “I Try,” “Break Up to Make Up,” a Thom Bell and Linda Creed classic, recorded by The Stylistics; Natalie Cole’s, “Inseparable,” and the late Ephraim Lewis’, “Drowning in Your Eyes.” Downing has even covered Michael Jackson; his version of Jackson’s “I Can’t Help It” (from Off the Wall) appears on Downing’s 2002 recording Sensual Journey. “That was before the bandwagon,” Downing says with a sigh.

Downing continues the trend on Classique, covering Barry White’s “I’m Gonna Love You Just a Little More, Baby,” the Marvin Gaye penned “Baby, I’m For Real,” which was recorded by The Originals in 1970 and David Ruffin’s “Statue of a Fool.” “Baby, I’m For Real” also features Phil Perry—one of the great falsettos of this or any era—though, according to Downing, Jeffrey Osborne was going to make it a trio performance, before falling ill the day of the recording session. Downing recorded “Statue of a Fool” as a tribute to his father, who introduced him to the song when he was young. Downing’s remakes have become one of the most anticipated aspects of his recordings, much like those of one of his greatest influences, Luther Vandross.

Though Downing could have easily become a Vandross clone—a working man’s Vandross, if you will—he was fortunate in that “early on, I found my niche.” That niche has translated into longevity for Downing, something that few of his peers can say in the fickle world of popular music. For Downing, there’s no secret to his success, “Consistency … [audiences] know what they’re getting—better songs, better performance.” Classique is a wonderful reminder that Downing has no intention of changing that formula.

Mark Anthony Neal is a regular contributor to The Root and teaches African-American studies at Duke University.