Tag Archives: Authenticity

I Was Never Good at the Popularity Contest

17 Tuesday Nov 2020

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Molefi Asante speech, Philadelphia, PA, September 13, 2014. (AP photo/file).

If I so chose, I could be a jealous-hearted bastard, and look at every achievement of all the folk in my life as, “Well, good for you, asshole!” But I learned a long time ago, maybe even when I was at high school’s end, that the main person I have to compete and contend with is me, that I am exhausting enough. Vying for popularity, kudos, or power was never a big thing for me. It was a game I’d almost always lose, for enough reasons to make my pre-Christian and depressed self actually jump off that bridge and end it all. What I learned by my mid-twenties was to allow myself a moment or two of envy, to feel like life was easier for those who achieved what seemed like cheap and easy success and fame. And then I’d think, But that’s not what I want for me. That’s their path, not mine, no matter how many parallels and similarities there may be between them and me.

What helped me get there is a story of plagiarism, of ideas, if not of actual words. It’s a story of my first attempt to publish an article as an adult, my first foray into the world of popularity, of ideas, of writing, and of extreme disappointment. It began the summer before grad school at Pitt in 1991. My friend Elaine egged me into this work, after a long and hard final semester of undergrad and three weeks on a starvation diet while working full time that April and May (I stretched $30 over 20 days). I began work on what I hoped would be my first article, comparing ideas around Afrocentric education with the broader idea of multicultural education.

The piece was originally to be her and my response to what was then a major controversy involving research into the revision of New York State’s social studies curriculum. The New York State Department of Education had given a committee the task of figuring out how to make the state’s K-12 curriculum more inclusive and representative of the state’s tremendous racial, ethnic and other forms of diversity. 

By July, I had gone from disinterested to fully engaged, minus the young woman in whom I no longer had an interest, now working on a piece that had become much more academic than we had originally intended. By then, I’d already learned the names Leonard Jeffries, Asa Hilliard III and Arthur Schlesinger, Jr. I’d read articles from the New York Times and The Wall Street Journal about Jeffries’ name-calling, Schlesinger’s incredulousness about calling slaves “enslaved persons,” and about the committee in general getting along like hyenas tearing at a dead wildebeest.

By the end of September, they would produce One Nation, Many Peoples: A Curriculum of Inclusion: Report of the Commissioner’s Task Force on Minorities: Equity and Excellence. With all my revisions out of the way, I’d produce my first publishable document since elementary school. I titled it “Comparing Afrocentric and Multicultural Education: Why American Education Needs Both.” I had reviewed much of the leading literature in the field at that point, between James A. Banks, Cherry McGee Banks, Christine Sleeter, Robert Slavin, Maulana Karenga, Frances Cress Welsing, 

I mailed it to three journals, including the Journal of Black Studies. It was then that I realized that one of the folks whose writing and research I had referred to in my review was also the editor of the journal. It was the one and only Molefi Kete Asante. He was also the founder and chair of the Department of Afro-American Studies (now Africology and African American Studies) at Temple University in Philadelphia. His The Afrocentric Idea (1987) was half the basis for my understanding what Afrocentricity could look like as pedagogy at the K-12 level.

But I had problems with that pedagogy. I chafed at the idea that there was any litmus test to what was and was not authentically Black or African. No, I’m not sure if “chafed” is the right word. The idea that anyone — including folks like Asante, Karenga, Welsing, Jeffries, and John Henry Clarke — could arbitrarily decided that ragtime isn’t authentically Black or African, while say, rap and hip-hop was definitively so? It seemed like a bunch of bullshit to me.

I knew why reading Asante’s work made me feel that way, too. Those three-and-a-half years spent living in a Hebrew-Israelite household. Those times were with a man who claimed to be my stepfather, the one who could quote the Torah. All while eating squid and crabs and lobster tails, cheating on my Mom while begetting other kids he never fed, and beating on his “womens”, too.

That’s ultimately what I saw in Asante’s work, hell, in the work of the Afrocentric set across the board. That none of them grew up in Accra, Lagos, Dar es Salaam, Gaborone, Nairobi, or Jo’Burg or were Africanists who spent years and years living somewhere on the continent before committing to this litmus test. Intellectually, it made as much sense as a “reincarnated” Balkis Makeda in her 70s living in my Mom’s master bedroom at 616 in 1984 while we eight lived by rules like me cooking for the family at 14 because Mom had “unclean issues of blood.” Or, this fake-ass Balkis Makeda telling us that we could no longer use Ivory soap because she dreamt about rats gnawing on it. Authenticity has its costs, no?    

I didn’t write all this in my essay, though. I merely wrote that between an authentic African-centered education and an authentic multicultural curriculum, the latter made the most sense in a multicultural nation like the US, in a multicultural state like New York. I justified this because I only grew up in New York State, in and around New York City. I justified it because the fact was and remains, American Black folx are, well, Americans, who have cobbled together a culture of resistance, and joy within that, both multicultural American with shards and pieces of African Blackness, and all at the same time.

Nearly two months pass. The Black Action Society at Pitt had brought in Asante to speak, a week and a half before Thanksgiving. The ballroom BAS used in William Pitt Union was jam-packed. BAS heads Justin and Doug looked so proud of themselves that evening. And Asante was just as full of himself. He spoke for between 45 minutes and an hour, about Eurocentricity, about Afrocentricity, about creating a path where Black boys (and sometimes, girls) could become proud Afrocentric men (and sometimes women). Really, it wasn’t much different than anything I heard from temple during my Hebrew-Israelite years.

Then, he turned to multiculturalism and the controversy over the revisions to the New York State global studies curriculum. Unbeknown to the nearly 300 students in the room — aside from yours truly — he began parroting my submitted article. Not quite word-for-word, though. You see, he used my arguments as fodder for sarcasm while on stage, to point to “how the poison” of Eurocentricity “flows” in multicultural curriculum across the US. Asante believed that multicultural education was a mere euphemism to disguise the “Eurocentric in the multicultural.”

“He stole my ideas. He quoted me to crush me,” I told my friend Marc, who attended the talk with me that evening. Marc thought I was wrong, that Asante wasn’t quoting me at all. Yeah, sure Marc, I thought.

Two months later, I received my first article rejection. It was a week after I finally got my driver’s license, and two weeks before I published my first piece, a book review for a small scholarly journal. It was from Journal of Black Studies. I do not remember what the rejection letter said, but I read it as, “Nice try, but you’re not Black enough for this publication.”

This was my first foray — but hardly my last — into this world, where popularity mattered more than reality, perception more than evidence, and power more than anything.

But I do consider myself lucky. A few months later, I presented another paper at a conference at Lincoln University. Bettye Collier-Thomas was in attendance, and we ended up in a conversation. She invited me to apply for the PhD program in history, where I could work with her and esteemed people like Asante. I listened and respectfully declined. 

A year later was my joint article with Marc about the pitfalls of Afrocentricity. And with it, two months of Asante’s sycophants, er, students sitting in seminar rooms writing scathing rebuttal letters questioning if between the two of us we had enough brainpower to spell Black. To learn from one of his former students in 2007 that my imaginations of what could have happened in Asante’s seminars was actually true? Well, I was so glad he had used my words as a baseball bat to my head back in 1991.

I grew up with phony proselytizers. I didn’t need to follow another one. Plus, where’s my Afrocentric gravy? Does it go with my Jollof and Brussels sprouts, too?

Black Power Generation

24 Wednesday Feb 2016

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Black Panther national chairman Bobby Seale, wearing a Colt .45 and defense minister Huey Newton with a bandolier and shotgun, poster, Oakland, CA, 1968. (AP via http://pbs.org).

Black Panther national chairman Bobby Seale, wearing a Colt .45 and defense minister Huey Newton with a bandolier and shotgun, poster, Oakland, CA, 1968. (AP via http://pbs.org).

This year marks a half-century since the official shift of the Civil Rights Era from the traditional Civil Rights leadership of the Black Church toward one of “Black Power.” Between Stokely Carmichael/Kwame Touré’s famous 1966 speech, Huey Newton and Bobby Seale’s founding of the Black Panther Party that October, and riots that began with Watts in L.A. the year before, this was a pivotal year in American and African American history. Of course, as historians and other scholars like Peniel Joseph and Alondra Nelson have illuminated in recent years, while 1966 was a pivotal year, it was not a departure from a long history of the Black freedom struggle, but part a continuity. For Joseph and Nelson (not to mention, Robin D. G. Kelley and Michael Eric Dyson), Black Power was a continuation of radical ideas and actions in order to stand in opposition to American capitalism and racism as an intertwined system of oppression. The roots of which go at least as far back as Black sharecroppers and their union organizing efforts during the Great Depression, if not in fact to the radicalism of Martin Delany of the 1850s.

These wonderful scholars are absolutely right to dump the simplistic narrative of Black Power as a symbol of/departure from the struggle for civil rights or as a philosophy that advocates violence against Whites, especially Whites in law enforcement. They are also more than right to point out how Black Power and the Black Panther Party did way more good on a policy level than most Americans would ever give their leaders credit for. Fred Hampton and Newton and the Free Breakfast for School Children Program that started in Chicago and Oakland between 1969 and 1972. The People’s Free Medical Centers (PFMC), Free Ambulance Service, and other direct community involvement to provide free access to health care and screenings for thousands of impoverished Black families. Free food programs for the destitute.

Angela Davis on Newsweek cover after 1970 arrest, October 26, 1970. (http://pinterest.com). Qualifies as fair use due to adjustments for low resolution.

Angela Davis on Newsweek cover after 1970 arrest, October 26, 1970. (http://pinterest.com). Qualifies as fair use due to adjustments for low resolution.

But more than that. The idea that Black communities could work to provide services and opportunities otherwise denied to them by American society was to be a major takeaway from this era of the overall Black freedom struggle. And of course, the idea that police served as an oppressive occupying force, and that Black citizens had every right to defend themselves against police brutality. Though direct armed struggle with law enforcement was in the Black Panther Party toolbox, the notion of policing the police, community control over schools, a community using its available resources, is still more positive than negative. These remain implementable ideas that have and do provide an outlet to the daily grind of racial discrimination and deep poverty in so many parts of the US.

Culturally, the freedom struggle as expressed through Black Power and the Black Panther Party, particularly by leaders like Angela Davis, Assata Shakur, Amiri Baraka, and Kwame Touré, was one of what we know would call Afrocentricity today. This was/is far more than wearing Afros, daishikis, sea shells and beads (or for that matter, black turtlenecks and tight pants). It would mean advocating for and getting universities (both predominantly White universities and HBCUS) to adopt Black Studies programs. It would mean influencing a whole generation of Black artists (the arts, music, and cinema) to adopt a “I’m Black and proud” stance in their work, from Marvin Gaye and the Lost Poets and Gil Scott Heron, to movies like Shaft and that first mainstream miniseries, Roots.

The Black Power Generation (kind of like Prince and The Revolution that tried to incorporate a mesh of messages between 1979 and 1986), for all of the elements that survived Huey Newton and his purges of the 1970s and early 1980s — not to mention their continuing influence in American pop culture, in Black intellectual thought, and in Black movements in general — was hardly perfect. Some, like the late Kwame Touré, promoted Black Power as a sort of authentic Blackness, a kind in which one had to buy all of the options on the table in order to be authentic. The “Uncle Tom” accusation or its equivalent was thrown at Martin Luther King, Whitney Young, Arthur Ashe, and others whose support of Black Power was less that full-throated. Not to mention, the tensions between leaders within the Black Panther Party and among African American intellectuals who attempted to ride the wave of Black Power, as nearly forgotten Black intellectuals Harold Cruse and Nathan Wright, Jr. noted in the late-1960s.

Gemasolar Thermosolar Plant (solar power concentration, converting solar energy to thermal turbine power generation), Fuentes de Andalucía, Seville province, Spain, June 22, 2014. (Wikipedia via http://vice.com).

Gemasolar Thermosolar Plant (solar power concentration, converting solar energy to thermal turbine power generation), Fuentes de Andalucía, Seville province, Spain, June 22, 2014. (Wikipedia via http://vice.com).

That lingering legacy of Black Power is part of its appeal and one of its limits — the ability to redefine ourselves and retell our history in a way that brings nuance and truth. But nuance and truth are not always absolutes. In many respects, Black Power over the generations shares a similarity with Marxist thought and action. Just as Marxism represents a dialectical opposition to capitalist oppression, Black Power has always represented a dialectical resistance to Whiteness and the racist/capitalist oppression that comes with Whiteness. It just doesn’t represent the only form of resistance there is, at least not as Newton, Touré, and others lived their resistance. Black Power is more than resistance, and more than just an amorphous idea standing in opposition to Whiteness. It’s just not the only form of Blackness there is. My own upbringing would be a further testimony to this (to be continued…).

Fifteen Years + 1 Million Men Equals?

16 Friday Oct 2015

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Million Man March, Washington, DC, October 16, 1995. Source: http://www.flickr.com/photos/yoke_mc/12469525/flick.com This file is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic license.

I wrote this five years ago, but the same questions can be asked, for better and worse, with an addendum. That in the light of what Black men should do and shouldn’t, should expect and shouldn’t expect — of themselves and of the world — this is a very narrow-minded way of thinking. Concentrating on some limited definition of Black masculinity neglects the need to address inequality, systemic racism, the theft of hopes and dreams, not to mention, relationships and the intersection of race, class, gender, sexual orientation, religion, and everything else (though Black women and women of color have to deal with intersectionality every day, the issue goes mostly neglected and — if ever thought about — misunderstood by Black men).

If the past five years have shown anything, the issues addressing Black men have never existed in a vacuum. Police brutality and regular killings, White vigilantism, joblessness, debt, a dismantling of already under-resourced public schools, mass incarceration. These cannot ever be divorced from the issues facing Black women, women of color, the Black LGBT community, Latinos and Latinas, Native Americans, the poor and low-wage workers of color. Nor should they have been twenty years ago.

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Today’s date has meaning for millions of people. Forty-one years ago, the New York Mets won their first World Series, beating the heavily favored Baltimore Orioles in five games. Crush #2 was also born forty-one years ago on this date (Happy Birthday!). But for a select group of African Americans — especially for over a million on the National Mall — today’s date marks fifteen years since the Million Man March.

I was there, though not among the million or so on the Mall that cold, windy and sunny day. I was in DC, on the Mall two hours before the gathering. I watched the highlights on CNN on the University of Maryland’s campus, all but completely clear of Black men under the age of thirty that afternoon. I met up with many a Black guy before and after the march, on the Metro as young men had taken the day off from work, school or college classes to go. On my bus back to Pittsburgh as older men talked of their broken lives, their remaining hopes and dreams. Most of all, I heard many speak of how inspired they were to go, as if God was calling them down to the Mall to find their true selves.

I didn’t go because I’d come down to the area that weekend for my dissertation research (including interviews) and to spend time with my long-distance girlfriend, who was a grad student at University of Maryland at the time. While I had some regrets about not attending, it’d been a while since I’d been involved with anyone on more than a passing occasion. Plus, I figured that my doctoral thesis on Black Washington and multiculturalism provided a significant intellectual exception to attending.

Louis Farrakhan, Million Man March, Washington, DC, October 16, 1995. Source: http://www.africawithin.com

Maybe I wasn’t being truly and authentically Black because I didn’t attend the march live, because I refused to stand in a sea of bodies to hear Louis Farrakhan’s voice encouraging Black men to take charge over themselves, their lives, their families. Maybe I did see myself as being above the fray because I saw all of this as a whole bunch of sound and fury signifying nothing but symbols. Maybe, in the end, being around so many Black men doing the same thing at the same time made me uncomfortable, just because I wasn’t sure what they expected to get out of the march after it was over.

Of course, symbols and inspiration are important, because without them, there is no action, no activism, no movement toward a goal that will ultimately change our lives, individually or collectively. But in listening to dozens of men who did attend the Million Man March that day and in the weeks that followed (as I traveled back to Pittsburgh, then to Minneapolis, then back to Pittsburgh, then DC, then New York in the month after the march), I realized that symbols and inspiration was all they expected out of the march.

Fifteen years later, the realization that nothing has really changed in the lives of many, if not most, of the million-plus men that attended the march on this date is disheartening. Those in poverty on that date may well still be in poverty. Those with years of addiction, or lives of crime, or without the compassion and skills necessary for fatherhood, all still struggling with these issues. That the cultural gap between Black men and Black women has widened since ’95 is obvious.

Yet there’s always hope, inspiration, and symbols that show that not all was for naught on Monday, October 16, ’95. It brought major issues facing African American males front and center to America and African America, and inspired many to work for social change and social justice for Blacks and for Black males in particular. Even if the messages of Farrakhan and company were mixed, contradictory, hypocritical, even sexist and bigoted. The march at least provided the realization that many Blacks cared deeply about finding themselves and finding solutions to issues that haunted them then, and haunt us still. Symbols are a powerful thing, even if it means we need many more of them before change can truly take hold.

Million Man March (Wide Above Shot), October 16, 1995. Source: Smithsonian Institution-http://photo2.si.edu/mmm/mmm08.gif

 

Not Finding My Musical Center

16 Tuesday Jun 2015

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Glass Tiger, The Thin Red Line (1986) album cover, June 6, 2015. (http://www.amazon.ca).

Glass Tiger, The Thin Red Line (1986) album cover, June 6, 2015. (http://www.amazon.ca).

June ’15’s calendar is exactly the same as the one I lived through in June ’81, June ’87, June ’98, and June ’09 (you can look it up). But June ’87’s the month I graduated from Mount Vernon High School. At seventeen, my Blackness, my authenticity as a young man and as a Black man, my place in the world, all were question marks. Between Black administrators like Estelle Abel and Brenda Smith (not to mention White ones like Richard Capozzola and Carapella), teachers like David Wolf and my guidance counselor Sylvia Fasulo, plus the fifty or so “cool” kids with their ’80s pre-Nu Jack Swing/post-Purple Rain Prince look, I might as well have been an alien from another planet. That’s not even counting my strange and out-of-character incident with Dahlia, the humiliation of the Sam and Laurell Awards Show, the dissonance of dealing with Mom, my idiot stepfather Maurice and my siblings at 616, my father Jimme’s drinking, and the run-ins with not-so-normal Crush #2 in Phyllis.

The day I realized most how differently the world outside of Mount Vernon viewed me from how I viewed myself came the day after graduation at Tower Records on West 66th and Broadway. I’ve told this story before, here and in Boy @ The Window, about how some NYPD officers working security there accosted me and accused me of stealing tapes that I had bought the previous week. What I have left out, though, was my state of mind in the two-week period prior to this incident. As I said in the memoir

I had my latest Walkman, my first Sony Walkman, actually, and my book bag with my recent tape investments, including a few I’d bought at Tower Records the previous Friday. Investments like Fleetwood Mac’s Tango In The Night, Genesis’ Invisible Touch, Whitney Houston’s Whitney and Glass Tiger. Glass Tiger, by the way, was a good indication of my state of mind. Boy was I pathetic!

Here I was, attempting to discover myself through what was then my normal coping strategy of escapism via eclectic music. Given my long periods of deprivation from pop culture between religion, abuse and poverty, I’d really only been at this discovering music thing for a little more than three years. I was basically a preteen in terms of pop culture and musical development outside of choir in elementary and middle school and playing the trombone and fife.

Seriously, I look at this Canadian group Glass Tiger’s ’86 album cover The Thin Red Line now and think, “this stuff isn’t even Michael Bolton worthy!” Songs like “Don’t Forget Me (When I’m Gone)” and “Someday” were actual Billboard chart-toppers in ’87, though, and because I had no friends in whom I placed trust, I trusted my coping strategies and Casey Kasem.

That, and Columbia Record Club, which I signed up for off and on between ’86 and ’89, with my high point for using their Terra Haute, Indiana mailing operation being the spring and summer of ’87. I could use them to find music I wouldn’t dare buy even at Tower Records or Crazy Eddie’s. I bought new age music by Phillip Glass, took a hand at jazz with Dizzy Gillespie, bought Van Halen’s 1984 and 5150 (California-crazy me), and went for it with Big Daddy Kane, MC Lyte and Salt ‘n Pepa.

Thompson Twins, Here's to Future Days (1985) album cover, June 6, 2015. (http://audiokarma.com).

Thompson Twins, Here’s to Future Days (1985) album cover, June 6, 2015. (http://audiokarma.com).

But for every Simple Minds‘ Once Upon A Time (1985), there was Toto’s The Seventh One (1988), or Thompson Twins’ anything, really. For every song that stuck with me, like Sting’s “Be Still My Beating Heart” (1987) or Anita Baker’s “No One In The World” (1986), there was Whitney Houston’s “Love Is A Contact Sport” (1987) — one of the worst songs I’ve ever heard a voice as awesome as Whitney’s sing — and Howard Jones’ “Things Can Only Get Better” (1985). “Things Can Only Get Better,” by the way, is in my iPod’s random rotation, as I have come around to it again in the past decade.

I was trying to figure out what I liked and didn’t like musically on the fly, having lost a significant amount of time growing up for the triviality of enjoying music. This was hard to do, though, in a world in which my peers and many adults assumed that I knew myself well at the ripe old age of seventeen. No matter what my IQ score was in ’87 (about a 130, for the eugenicists out there), my emotional and psychological development probably put me about five years behind my now former classmates.

So my music tastes varied from genius to God-awful. They still do. The difference is, I recognize I may be the only one who listens to DMX for comic relief, because there’s no way to take him or his rap seriously. Or that I find Tupac and Eminem equally compelling and equally problematic. I still

Taco Bell's Waffle Taco w/ syrup, sausage, eggs and cheese, March 27, 2014. (http://vice.com).

Taco Bell’s Waffle Taco w/ syrup, sausage, eggs and cheese, March 27, 2014. (http://vice.com).

don’t understand the genius of Miles Davis, no matter how many times jazz enthusiasts like my friend Marc try to convince me to keep listening. Still, half of my music comes from the period between May ’87 and October ’97, and the rest crosses boundaries in time, genre, race and language (Deep Forest, anyone?).

I also recognize complete schlock, too. Unfortunately, commercial music these days is about as emotionally and mentally nutritious as a McDonald’s Big Mac and a Taco Bell Gordita combined. I try every few weeks to find out about the latest artists, just in case my son ever becomes interested in music again. Thank goodness, though, there’s no Lil’ Wayne, Rick Ross, or Iggy Izalea in our house! I’ll take my Glass Tiger (not really) any day over that!

Copying, Lifting, and Cultural Appropriation

19 Thursday Mar 2015

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Pharrell Williams and Robin Thicke at the 56th Annual GRAMMY Awards, Beverly Hills, CA, January 25, 2014. (Larry Busacca/Getty Images, via http://images.musictimes.com/). Qualifies as fair use under copyright laws, via Getty Images agreement with CC-SA-3.0.

Pharrell Williams and Robin Thicke at the 56th Annual GRAMMY Awards, Beverly Hills, CA, January 25, 2014.
(Larry Busacca/Getty Images, via http://images.musictimes.com/). Qualifies as fair use under copyright laws, via Getty Images agreement with CC-SA-3.0.

I’m sure all of you have heard about the recent court decision that gave Marvin Gaye’s estate a $7.3 million award, finding that Pharrell Williams and Robin Thicke committed copyright infringement stemming from their 2012 hit single “Blurred Lines.” They lifted the melody and rhythm for their song from Marvin Gaye’s 1977 single “Got To Give It Up.” The two songs do sound similar enough, and interviews with Williams do show that he was heavily influenced by Gaye’s work. I find myself agreeing with the jury on this because of Williams’ Whiteness rhetoric about being the “new Black” last year, as well as Thicke’s constant cultural appropriation in his videos and music.

The decision, though, made me think about how much copying has gone on in music over the years. It made me think about the first time I heard Madonna, off her first self-titled album, on the airwaves in the fall of ’83. It was her first Billboard Top 40 single “Holiday.” Except that the first dozen or so times I heard it, I thought at first it was “And The Beat Goes On,” a late ’79/early ’80 disco hit from the group The Whispers.

It was the first time I realized that music artists could copy each other, or at least, have similar sounds, rhythms, tones and other musical arrangements in their songs. The lyrics were obviously different, but both “And The Beat Goes On” and “Holiday” were “forget-the-cares-of-this-world” dance-pop songs with heavy R&B influences.

I’d wondered for years whether Madonna ever gave The Whispers any formal credit for sampling their music for one of her very first tracks. I did find an answer in the Madonna (1983) album’s liner notes. Nope, not a single mention, not a word of acknowledgement. But John “Jellybean” Benitez was mentioned as producer. There’s no way in this world that he and the other folks who worked on “Holiday” didn’t know who The Whispers were or hadn’t heard their song “And The Beat Goes On.” It’s possible that Madonna herself didn’t know, but given her constant credits to the disco era, I seriously doubt that, too. Take a gander below, folks, and tell me how similar the two songs were/are:

Keep in mind, though, this was before Madonna had become “Like A Virgin” Madonna, “Material Girl” Madonna, and “Vogue” Madonna. And copying, sampling, and lifting was more acceptable in the early 1980s than it is today. Especially since at the time, neither The Whispers nor Madonna were music icons. Of course, lifting from relatively obscure Black artists to mainstream a song or music genre is nothing new. Just ask Al Jolson and Elvis Presley!

Thirteen years later, The Fugees released their big hit, “Ready Or Not” (1996). As soon as I heard it, I knew they had sampled Enya’s “Boadicea” (1987), because I’m that kind of eclectic music enthusiast. They didn’t give Enya credit in their initial liner notes, either, and hadn’t obtained permission to use her music in their song. Enya threatened to sue over this rather obvious copyright infringement, and The Fugees and Enya settled the issue out of court.

By ’96, the rules for sampling other music artists’ work had become tightened, and Enya herself was a well-known, if not iconic, new age music artist. The up-and-coming Fugees picked the wrong Irish singer to copy without permission or acknowledgement.

What does all of this mean? For starters, you should never plagiarise someone whose work is well-known. Vanilla Ice, meet Queen and David Bowie. The Verve and “Bittersweet Symphony” from ’97? Let me introduce you to The Rolling Stones!

But the “Blurred Lines” decision means much more than the message that one should steal from an unknown without a major music contract instead of stealing from Marvin Gaye. The legal decision blurs the distinction between illegal sampling and inappropriate cultural appropriation. Really, Madonna’s use of The Whisper’s “And The Beat Goes On” is just as blatant, and so was her appropriation of disco, R&B and other Black and Latino dance rhythms between ’82 and ’93. Unlike Pharrell Williams and Robin Thicke, though, Madonna’s appropriation wasn’t seen as such, at least during her first years of fame. Heck, I knew more than a few Black folk who though Madonna was either Black or biracial prior to the Like A Virgin (1984) album, likely because like me, they didn’t have cable to watch MTV ad nauseam.

I guess that Pharrell’s and Robin Thicke’s act has worn thin with the fickle public. This may well point to the larger fact that mainstream popular music and the artists that are creating today’s music are about as creatively collaborative and eclectic as a dunker in basketball with no jumpshot and no defensive skills. This isn’t your father’s White Soul, aka, Michael McDonald, Darryl Hall & John Oates, or even Kenny Loggins, working with Earth, Wind & Fire or Kool & The Gang. Today’s music artists can only do their music one way, and need “inspiration” to “create” a “new sound.” One that is too often lifted from the past, yet never placed in context, and sampled with and without permission.

“Animals” and “Respectability”

27 Wednesday Aug 2014

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Rev. Al Sharpton waiting to speak at Michael Brown funeral, Friendly Temple Missionary Baptist Church, St. Louis, MO, August 25, 2014. (AP Photo/St. Louis Post Dispatch, Robert Cohen, via http://www.wkbn.com).

Rev. Al Sharpton waiting to speak at Michael Brown funeral, Friendly Temple Missionary Baptist Church, St. Louis, MO, August 25, 2014. (AP Photo/St. Louis Post Dispatch, Robert Cohen, via http://www.wkbn.com).

With America’s history of racial oppression, it should come as no surprise that the range of reactions to events like the police killings of Eric Garner and Michael Brown (among many others, male and female, Black and Latino) have been on the side of racial stereotypes and assumptions. On the one hand, police officers, ordinary Whites and some ultraconservative Blacks have used the terms “animals” and “thugs” interchangeably because Garner and Brown were big Black guys, the stereotypical boogeymen, lurking and ready to rape, maim and kill scared-shitless White folk.

On the other hand, the traditional civil rights establishment and its cadre of ministers have equated the lessons of Brown and the Ferguson protests with the need to stop “looting and pillaging” and to stop wearing baggy pants. That’s the fallback position for attempting to explain why the message of police brutality and militarization against communities of color because of racism and classism isn’t getting through to Whites who have mostly been silent on these incidents.

As I’ve written in the past year or two, both of these perspectives suggest that Blacks and Latinos must somehow make ourselves worthy of humanity. That way, even the most racist of Whites could see that we’re not animals or thugs, but human beings worthy of the same human rights and civil liberties that they enjoy. This didn’t work even during the height of the Civil Rights Movement some five decades ago. Medgar Evers, Martin Luther King, Jr., John L. Lewis, Michael Schwerner, Andrew Goodman, and James Chaney, and the Sixteenth Street Baptist Church in Birmingham, Alabama. Wearing suits and ties, marching with White allies, having the backing of the President of the United States. None of that swayed most Whites, as evidenced by changes in American politics since 1968.

Screen shot of CNN newscast coverage of support for Officer Darren Wilson at rally, Ferguson, MO, August 23, 2014. (http://rawstory.com).

Screen shot of CNN newscast coverage of support for Officer Darren Wilson at rally, Ferguson, MO, August 23, 2014. (http://rawstory.com).

The fact is, those Whites and sycophant Blacks who call African Americans and other people of color “animals” and “thugs” know we’re just as human as they are, if not more so. It’s their way of asserting that they’re better than us, precisely because they believe they can get away with seeing, calling and treating Blacks and other people of color as such. Especially since so many of these “animals” and “thugs” advocates have missed the full material benefits of American capitalism. And with America’s long history of allowing Whites to get away with lynchings, murders, rapes, race riots and other forms of violent oppression, why shouldn’t Whites think they’re in the right when they give money to Officer Darren Wilson for “doing his job” in murdering Michael Brown? As I’ve said before, the year doesn’t matter, the clothes don’t matter, our demeanor in public or how perfect our walk doesn’t matter to many — if not most — Whites. That may be our problem as people of color, but it’s definitely their problem as well.

Rev. Al Sharpton, sexual predator Jamal Bryant, megachurch-Gospel-of-Prosperity pastor T.D. Jakes and so many other men who spoke at Michael Brown’s funeral Monday put themselves on the other side of the “animals” and “thugs” coin with their agenda-loaded bloviations. Sharpton especially should know better, given his history of talking out of both sides of his mouth about the limits of the politics of respectability (Tawana Brawley comes to mind). Yes, being able to orchestrate nonviolent protests with proper victims in a way in which the mainstream media cannot dehumanize or engage in stereotypes was how the Civil Rights Movement gained momentum in the first place. But this methodology had its limits then, as it led to some victories that looked more like symbols than actual victories (even Dr. King said as much in his final three years). It definitely has its limitations now.

Foot on my neck and head, symbolic of oppression in terms of view of Black and Brown as "animals," April 18, 2011. (Donald Earl Collins).

Foot on my neck and head, symbolic of oppression in terms of view of Black and Brown as “animals,” April 18, 2011. (Donald Earl Collins).

We have a leadership that has grown corpulent and ossified in its stomach, pockets and spirit when it comes to oppression and how to respond. Their thinking in so many ways isn’t much different than the Whites who post pictures of President Barack Obama eating a banana with his face pasted onto the head and body of a great ape. That’s the full shame of watching a funeral that was more about individual agendas than it was about Michael Brown or his family and friends, or his life and death, or mobilizing a larger effort.

It’s already terrible that we already have a nation of millions trying to hold people of color back, if only in their own minds (to quasi-quote Public Enemy). We can no longer afford to have an aging leadership whom, even when well-meaning, is unable or unwilling to move beyond symbols and pontification to an effort that promotes new tactics and strategies and younger leadership. It’s beyond time for younger generations to take the reins, and not in a respectable way, either.

An “Acting White” Conversation

28 Monday Jul 2014

Posted by in 1, Academia, Boy @ The Window, culture, Eclectic, eclectic music, Mount Vernon High School, Mount Vernon New York, New York City, Pittsburgh, Politics, Pop Culture, race, University of Pittsburgh, Youth

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Two Oreo Cookies, February 6, 2011. (Evan-Amos via Wikipedia).

Two Oreo Cookies, February 6, 2011. (Evan-Amos via Wikipedia).

Two years ago, a conservative woman engaged me in what became an increasingly vitriolic conversation on “acting White,” blind loyalty and political ideology. The below only covers (for the most part) the “acting White” part of the conversation.

 Apologies for commenting here but the Star Trek one [my blog post Why Ferengi Are Jewish & The Maquis Are Latino from 2011] had comments closed. In light of your thoughts on positive or negative stereotypes, how do you feel about the cultural phenomena of “acting white” term in Black community? (in case it needs explaining, that’s a derogatory term – by Black community – for a minority child who studies hard. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acting_white)

To which I responded:

Given how my life has evolved over the past four decades, I think I understand what “acting White” means. But the fact is, African Americans have a diversity of opinions on this issue. There are some Blacks, though, who believe in the idea of an authentic Blackness, which I’ve written about as an educator, historian and from a personal perspective over the years. Part of this is generational, and part of this is socioeconomic in nature. And this issue of authenticity has been around since the days of slavery, so it’s not new. What’s new is the increasing push-back from Blacks of various backgrounds about this issue of “acting White.” Bottom line: those who use this phrase tend to be anti-intellectual, distrustful of higher education and as bigoted as any other group in American society toward “others.”

But my visitor to my blog wasn’t done, not by a long shot:

Sorry, Wasn’t too clear in my question. Do you feel that the fact of how widespread it is in the culture (both the use and the lack of disapproval) has any *material* consequences to the socioeconomic outcomes for Blacks as a group in the 1990-2020 period? It’s clear that you disapprove of it, but do you feel it is a problem that **must** be fixed for Blacks to succeed (beyond mere “bigotry is bad” angle)?

In response, I broke down the assumptions embedded in the previous comment:

Is your head in the sand?, July 28, 2014. (http://www.thelifecoach.co.nz/).

Is your head in the sand?, July 28, 2014. (http://www.thelifecoach.co.nz/).

Your assumption here is troubling, as if 40 million African Americans all think alike on this topic. Sure, there’s a slice of Blacks who have a litmus test for “authentic” Blackness, and for them, those who can’t meet this test are considered “acting White.” But no, there’s no agreed upon definition for either in African America. Your premise supposes the sociological or psychological effect of this is a lower socioeconomic status for African Americans. Keep in mind that since the 1970s, more than 50 percent of Blacks have been middle or upper middle class, while the poverty rate for Blacks has varied between 25 and 33 percent over the past 40 years. Your question ignores other factors, including de-industrialization, expanding economic inequality, and structural racism as factors that have far more effect on social mobility than a cultural litmus test that a small slice of Blacks strictly adhere to.

There’s more, much more, and the comments section under About Me from the period August 30-September 3, 2012 has the rest. The assumption that I was protecting the race under a false sense of loyalty. The idea that Blacks who were otherwise equal in intelligence and from equally impoverished backgrounds were doing better than her because of affirmative action and other forms of alleged “reverse racism” (whatever this fiction is). My response was to treat her like one of my ideologically bull-headed student for whom facts and scholarly research matter about as much as ants inside an anthill.

President Barack Obama’s recent comments about the meaning and implications of “acting White”  has made me think about this issue — again. The fact is, there may well be individuals who decide to not go to college or medical school, take certain jobs or listen to Pearl Jam because of their notions of “acting White” and “authentic Blackness.” I know there are — including a friend of mine who committed suicide sixteen years ago after deciding to not go to medical school over this whole issue. But the idea that large groups of Blacks in poverty or as practicing Afrocentrists are avoiding success and education because it may be too White for them? Absolute bullshit! Period. Anything to come up with a simple-minded excuse to cover up structural racism, residential segregation and poverty as the factors for lack of Black social mobility when compared to Whites.

“Acting White,” or at least, being “not Black enough,” comes out of the following (between my experience and thirty years of research):

1. The idea that “acting White” = not cool. That’s all. Not about intellect per se, but more about the constant expression of high intellect in casual situations, or at least, lacking the ability to switch up from high-brow to colloquial language. I’ve been in this situation many times, with neighborhood kids in Mount Vernon, New York, at MVHS, at the University of Pittsburgh and even in my own classroom.

2. “Acting White” = doing things that Blacks have only seen Whites do. In this case, beyond language, it could include forms of dress, having eclectic music tastes, or eating fried chicken with a fork and knife. Or, more seriously, taking a political position that others can easily perceive as being against the interests of African Americans. I can attest to the comments I’ve gotten for embracing “White” music as part of my overall repertoire over the years.

3. “Acting White” = not wanting to be around or like other Blacks. In my experience, this applies even more within African American families than it does to Black neighbors, classmates or friends. My Mom wanted me to go to college, but she also wasn’t comfortable with the idea that college would change the way I saw her and the rest of the world. She was especially not happy when I decided to go to graduate school, because it meant that I might no longer be able to relate to her and my brother.

I can honestly say that even with all this, I’ve never met anyone who deliberately practiced self-sabotage in their education or in any other area of their lives to avoid “acting White.” That this is a topic of conversation at all confirms that Americans love living in denial of all things connected to racial inequality. Especially the structural racism from which they draw a benefit — material and/or psychological — every single day. Calling “acting White” a theory is an insult to the scientific method and to all Blacks, including those who’ve used the term over the years.