Blognoir

This isn’t change we’ve been waiting or working for. The American Prospect reports that the penalty disparity between crack and power cocaine still remains.

The compromise was that Durbin would accept Sessions’ amendment to change the disparity from 100 to 1 to 20 to 1. In return, Sessions offered to withdraw his amendments that would have narrowed the circumstances under which a judge could reduce penalties for offenders who acted with “fear, impulse or affection,” and would have imposed a 10-year mandatory maximum for simple possession rather than eliminating the five-year mandatory minimum for simple possession entirely.

The bill goes to the Senate floor soon. I urge people to write to protest this persistent unequal treatment. House Representative contact list is here. Senate list is here.

Am sadden to hear of her death.

I once heard Maya Angelou speak and read poetry, hers as well as others.  She extolled the power of poetry. She said that we should keep it in our minds and hearts. We should use it as a translator of sorts for our souls, in good times and bad, helping us comprehend what otherwise cannot be comprehended.

Whether it is a poem about her hips or about the brutal beheading of James Byrd, Clifton provided us with her words when our mouths were mute through no fault of our own.

jasper texas 1998

by Lucille Clifton

for j. byrd

i am a man’s head hunched in the road.

i was chosen to speak by the members

of my body.   the arm as it pulled away

pointed toward me, the hand opened once

and was gone.

why and why and why

should i call a white man brother?

who is the human in this place,

the thing that is dragged or the dragger?

what does my daughter say?

the sun is a blister overhead.

if i were alive i could not bear it.

the townsfolk sing we shall overcome

while hope bleeds slowly from my mouth

into the dirt that covers us all.

i am done with this dust.   i am done.

Just finished watching probably the last half of the PBS special. It was great to see Smokie Robinson, Joan Baez, Bernice Reagon and her daughter Toshi jamming on the guitar, and so many other artists. The Blind Boys of Alabama were marvelous. Yolanda Adams “owned” How Great Thou Art. I loved it when Bernice Reagon admonished the audience to get with the “program” and SING! As the NY Times reported:

Some of the songs sounded ready to accompany new struggles. Ms. Reagon led the Freedom Singers as a trio, wearing African-tinged choir robes and backed by her daughter Toshi on guitar. The Freedom Singers, who sang for rallies alongside Dr. King, are elderly now, but they tore into “Ain’t Gonna Let Nobody Turn Me ’Round” with fierce, jubilant call-and-response. Ms. Reagon paused the music partway through to instruct the audience.

“You have to actually sing this song,” she said. “You can never tell when you might need it.”

I was watching with a self-identified rhythmically impaired person. It took a little while for her to clap off the beat. And then…and then…the camera pans over to Barack. Let’s just say he was clapping in the very best tradition of all the prior Presidents.

Just when I was reflecting on the half way decent job Chris Matthews did on the “town hall” he hosted last week with Tom Joyner, Melissa Harris Lacewell, John McWhorter, Steven A. Smith, et al, he evidently has forgotten that words matter. Commenting on President Obama’s State of the Union address, “I forgot he was black tonight.” [Read more →]

The Chronicle this morning ran this about the Univ. of Maryland’s plans to offer online courses perceived to be in competition with historical black colleges and universities:

Last week, 25 new students began training at University of Maryland University College to become community-college administrators.

But none of them live in Maryland. In fact, the university has been barred from offering this online doctoral degree to state residents.

The bizarre situation stems from a turf struggle between UMUC and Morgan State University, a historically black institution in Bal­timore that objected to the UMUC effort because it would duplicate a similar program that Morgan State offers as a blend of face-to-face and online course work.

This “turf war” is only going to heat up. There will be challenges to protections HBCU’s have had for decades. In some cases the protection is warranted. This not one. [Read more →]

This isn’t the first time, but it had been about year since the last time it happened. Perhaps I should have titled this post “Finding James Baldwin”. First, let me backup a bit.

A few days ago at my local public library, I checked out an audio book version of The Fire Next Time. The very talented Jesse L. Martin narrates. Driving up to SF State today, I popped the CD in. Jesse did a great job. In fact, I was hearing both their voices while I was driving. After doing some prep work for the Spring semester, I stopped off at Borders to buy another copy of the text: a copy I could mark, while reading and inwardly digesting it again.

But where was Baldwin to be found? The Fire Next Time is non-fiction. Must be shelved under non-fiction. Let’s see. What kind of non-fiction? History? African American history? Lots of King, Dyson on King, Cornel West. No Baldwin. Oh, that’s right. Borders combines “Fiction and Literature”. Maybe they put all the Baldwin, fiction and non-fiction, together. I looked. Nothing. No James Baldwin in the entire store? And then I found him.

Segregated under “African American Literature”.

I was angry–again. Just as angry, no, angrier than I was last year we I went into Barnes & Nobles to buy a copy. Soon, my stomach was in knots, I was in a rage, and near tears. Why? Why was Baldwin relegated to a bookshelf heavy on black “romance” novels and self-help books? The irony here was that the African American Lit section was directly across from the the “B” authors in the Literature section. I had just listened to “My Dungeon Shook: Letter to My Nephew”, Baldwin’s eloquent, searing, letter to his namesake, James. I thought about Baldwin’s piercing intellect and brutal honesty. I thought about his words:

This innocent country set you down in a ghetto in which, in fact, it intended that you should perish. Let me spell out precisely what I mean by that, for the heart of the matter is here, and the root of my dispute with my country. You were born where you were born and faced the future that you faced because you were black and for no other reason.

There was Baldwin, segregated. Placed in a ghetto and for no other reason that that he was black.Was Baldwin’s fiction was not genuine fiction or literature? Did his work have no business next to Balzac?

The limits of your ambition were, thus, expected to be set forever. You were born into a society which spelled out with brutal clarity, and in as many ways as possible, that you were a worthless human being. You were not expected to aspire to excellence: you were expected to make peace with mediocrity.  Wherever you have turned, James, in your short time on this earth, you have been told where you could go and what you could do (and how you could do it) and where you could live and whom you could marry.

How ironic. Is was a though James Baldwin, the elder, was still being “told” where he could go.

I did buy a copy of the book. What I didn’t do was to look for Ralph Ellison’s Invisible Man. Where was it shelved? And where was Richard Wright’s Native Son? I may give it try just to discover where these classics of American literature are shelved.

I was glad to hear reports of the First Lady’s agenda: fighting childhood obesity. (It isn’t her first foray into addressing this problem.) There’s no question that it is an epidemic, particularly in communities of color. If her husband’s efforts at getting a healthcare program through Congress don’t pan out, we’ve got Michelle Obama’s mission to get behind. Somewhere I read that she and Barack addressed the situation with their own children several years ago. They made a conscious effort to provide leadership for their girls. They did the necessary self-examination, set the bar, and provided the support for the entire family to thrive.

I wish her every success. And pledge to do my part.

After a long sabbatical (no not that kind), I’m back! I hope that this year will be a constructive and productive.

We’re one year into the Obama administration. There’s been many hopeful signs and discouraging signs. What I found so discouraging were the outrageous displays of both rude and racist behavior against Obama. I won’t lower myself to even post the links to those displays.

My hope for this year is that (1) I do my best to challenge forcefully both anti-intellectualist and racist acts, comments, and viewpoints no matter who says it; (2) that I do my best to explore more the philosophical issues that King embraced and its connections with earlier religious and political thought; (3) I find ways to be more politically active and engaged in my local community; and (4) I find ways to encourage more minority students to give philosophy a try.

It’s a big plate. But I think I’m up for giving it a try.

You learn a lot by reading the NY Times obituraries.

I’ve discovered Sarah E. Wright. Her only published novel was This Child’s Gonna Live:

The novel centers on Mariah Upshur, the wife of a black oysterman on the Maryland shore. Set in the fictional community of Tangierneck in the early 1930s, it unsparingly depicts the hunger, disease, racism and hard labor that were the stuff of daily life.

Not only does her only novel sound intriguing, but her own life, too. What I found especially poignant was the story of her going to Howard University.

After graduating from Salisbury Colored High School, Sarah entered Howard University, where she became editor of the newspaper. She left before graduating, her husband said, “because she was literally starving.” Her parents had no money to send her for food.

“When Sarah went off to Howard, they had no idea what it meant in terms of the financial requirements,” Mr. Kaye said last week. “They gave her oilcloth that they thought she could barter with other people to obtain what she needed.”

What strikes me most is the perennial difficult students have with funding their university studies. It makes the current situation here in California depressing and a disgrace. We should be doing better. We must do more. What we should be, exactly, is huge question.

An interesting discussion of President Obama’s writing and where his autobiography stands within the canon of African American autobiographies. How refreshing after the language impaired George Bush.

The quality that most distinguishes Obama’s writing is its clarity. It sparkles like sugar crystals. His writing feels balanced and just. Although not meticulously systematic, it proceeds with the lucidity that characterizes a legal mind. His thinking is marked by a bright, positive, and outward-looking unselfconsciousness. Dreams from My Father lacks the penetrative depths of Souls of Black Folk, or the Dostoyevskian complexities of Black Boy and Invisible Man. The writer is guided less by logic, finally, than by vision. As an immature adult, Obama envisioned the father he needed. As a politician, he envisions the world he believes in. His vision, so far, has carried him a long way.