Tuesday, February 28, 2012
Friday, February 17, 2012
National Black Political Caucus, Pittsburgh, PA---Moore named city's new police chief
The Ronald B. Saunders Project
National Black Political Caucus Archives
Pittsburgh, PA
February 17, 2012
 |
My organization, The National Black Political Caucus conducted a relentless, intensive campaign to have Alphonso Jackson appointed as the Public Safety Director for the City of Pittsburgh who had been the Public Safety Director for the City of St. Louis. We also demanded that Mayor Richard Caliguiri appoint William Bugsy Moore to the position of Chief of Police for the City of Pittsburgh. I was honored to attend his swearing-in ceremony at the City County Building. |
Black Leadership, Power and Privilege— Where we are and where we must go Black Leadership, Power and Privilege— Where we are and where we must go
Black Buzz News Service
Mound Bayou, MS
Special Report
February 17, 2012
By: Itoro Udofia
The source of my commitment to struggling for a just world lies in the belief that the emancipation of all human beings from all forms of exploitation is on the horizon. Another reservoir of energy comes from my belief that the majority of Black peoples in the world will see true liberation from our harsh material conditions and lead a self-determinate future. In this way, I keep a hopeful heart. We have a brilliant tradition of organizing and resistance, over 500 years old, to give us some examples for the way forward. The best and most ordinary of us have risen out of this legacy to break chains, raise consciousness and do pivotal work.
The place where I have chosen to wage this struggle has largely been done through education. To sort out the contradictions present in this work, I often re-visit particular analyses that contain great relevance when speaking to the present state of Black people and the U.S. educational system. In doing so, I have come across great thinkers and activists who inform my theory and practice. One social activist and feminist that represents an expression of theory meeting practice is Grace Lee Boggs. Boggs’ article, “Education the Great Obsession,” first published in September 1970, will serve as a guide in framing the discussion in regards to the present struggles within the educational movement, while shedding light on possible ways to move forward.
Boggs names education as a key site of possibility within the Black community, where it can serve as the training ground for consciousness raising and political organizing.
The themes she presents, education for liberation, self-determination and struggle, may resonate differently in its form when looking at our educational system today. Yet, the essence of her words remains vital to our recent struggles for autonomy. Education is one of the most contested sites of struggle, as most stakeholders involved understand that it is rife with either the possibility for true liberation, or the securing of subordination for lucrative profit maximization. With recent activities such as the banning of the only ethnic studies program to exist in k-12 education, it appears that the scale has been tipping in the latter direction. Voices in opposition to these dangerous trends cleverly name these exploitative practices, the education industrial complex. Indeed, we are living in a time that calls for a mass movement, armed with the historical awareness and discernment to sift through the highly organized confusion and cunning of the ruling classes.
Dominant discourse on education is often not described within the context of poverty, white supremacy and imperialism. Rather it is seen within an a- historical vacuum and viewed as a neutral entity that will magically perform the feat of solving our problems. Boggs speaks of how many people, including Black folks, have fallen prey to this ideology that a good education ensures economic fulfillment. As a result, this thinking has led the dominant analysis to often call for reformist policies taking on a dangerously neo-liberal agenda, foregoing a complete restructuring and re-visioning of education.
Boggs elaborates on the false consciousness present within prevailing educational ideology, when analyzing the material reality of most young black people in this country. She states: “But the more black kids finished high school the more they discovered that extended education was not the magic key to upward mobility and higher earnings that it had been played up to be. On the job market they soon discovered that the same piece of paper that qualified white high-school graduates for white-collar jobs only qualified blacks to be tested (and found wanting) for these same jobs” (Boggs, “Education the Great Obsession”). Currently, the wealth gap within the United States shows this cruel contradiction. According to the Pew Research Center, “the median wealth of white households is 20 times that of black households and 18 times that of Hispanic households” (Pew Research Center). As the “post-recession” deepens, many of us look for work with credentials and degrees in hand only to be turned away. Although Boggs’ speaks to an educational context, we can extend this to an imperial context as well when considering white patriarchal capitalist hegemony’s predominance in shaping our knowledge, ideas and actions on a global scale and the continued exploitation of peoples in the Global South. The majority of us Black and Brown folks are the ruling classes chosen losers and targets.
Boggs’ lays out the relations of how the majority of Black and Brown folks in this nation and our world are treated. She states: “those closest to the Founding Fathers in background and culture rule over those who have the furthest to go in achieving this ultimate goal and who meanwhile need to be inculcated with a Founding-Father complex” (Boggs). Here, the internal contradiction of white supremacy is exposed as we find ourselves deemed the “furthest from the founding fathers.” Despite all the efforts and struggles waged in black communities for equity, within such racialized capitalism, our pauperization and degradation is needed for the benefits of a largely white ruling class. Boggs finally asserts that this is a severe problem. She states: “the black community is now unalterably convinced that white control of black schools is destroying black children and can no longer be tolerated” (Boggs).
To clarify my use of Whiteness and white supremacy, I am defining it as operating within a political-economic system that reproduces ideology and reinforces specific practices that carry white skin advantage. Within these constructed social relations present in the United States white supremacy is, “a political, economic, and cultural system in which whites overwhelmingly control power and material resources, conscious and unconscious ideas of white superiority and entitlement are widespread, and relations of white dominance and nonwhite subordination are daily reenacted across a broad array of institutions and social settings” (Ansley, 592).
When speaking of a white supremacist ideology that we have been taught to espouse as the order of the day, I am also speaking to all of us in our external and internal efforts to abolish this particular social relation needed to continue the exploitation many poor folks (often dark skinned folks) are facing in the world. In one way or another we have subscribed to this ideology, as we continue to subscribe to false assumptions about the automatic “upgrading quality” of educational achievement in the face of our worsening material conditions.
Boggs’ article highlights the many internal and external complexes we must sift through to reach a point where we can move to clear action. To deepen this conversation, I am not only talking about the complex of increased high stakes testing, school shut downs, standardized curriculums, or the criminalization and further mis-education of our Black and increasingly Brown youth. I am also speaking about the power and privilege often exercised from the well intentioned, so called radical educators.
Within education, Black consciousness is predominantly in the hands of white folks. The ideology often taught to the exploited is one that drenches us in the milk of a supremacist view. Ultimately, we internalize this hatred so deeply we begin to hate our own reflection. Many critical thinkers have said this in one way or another; therefore what I am saying here is nothing new. Yet, it is often sidestepped in conversations of education as a practice of freedom. Michelle Wallace’s Black Teachers on Teaching highlights this underlying dynamic at work amongst educators, specifically white educators who ultimately carry the destructive view that, “almost any white person could do a better job educating black children than black teachers” (Wallace, x). Unfortunately, this sentiment, as Wallace so astutely puts it has “often been repeated in one form or another” (ix). The proof can be seen in our almost all white teaching field, which is 90% white female, middle to upper class (National Collaborative on Diversity of the Teaching Force, 2004). During the recent interview featuring professor and historian Robin Kelley on on Your World News, he speaks of College Campuses as Academic Slave Plantations. Kelley’s experience and knowledge speaks to a dynamic we see far too often within the educational systems. Within such an anti-black environment “Black people are not seen as the purveyors of knowledge.”
This ideology is fed into the minds of our children, who are often without the adequate tools to analyze the particular power and economic dynamics they face inside and outside the classroom, leaving many of our young people damaged. Concurrently, these teachers who have been taught to remain willfully ignorant of their power, guilt, and privilege, also contribute to their internal damage. They miss the fact that their liberation is intimately tied to their student living in poverty. Rather, it is more comfortable to fall into an insidious savior-superior complex than do the labor of challenging oneself and working with others who reflect that challenge.
Although there are many teachers dedicated to working for social justice within this field, the issue of true autonomy and control is something that has not been interrogated fully, as we see that most schools, whether radical or conservative are largely administrated by whites. It is not only enough to teach liberation to underprivileged folks. As many radical educators have said, we must also find ways to practice liberation in our chosen economic and political activities.
This also requires us to re-envision our present leadership and its ruling ideology. The essence of the problem we are seeing, whether well or ill intentioned, is that the fundamental political and economic relations are not changing. To invoke Robin Kelley’s argument of the plantation dynamic, lets put this into plantation talk. Whether or not the slave master is kind to the slave should matter very little if the slave master is still tied to keeping the structure and power that comes with the plantation, and for those of us who find ourselves oft exploited, whether the slave master is kind should not lessen our political resistance. Nor make us more willing to concede for small gains on the slave master’s terms.
As an educator who has had firsthand experience in the field, I challenge our current hiring practices in terms of finding people of color to teach our students. Teachers of color have been systematically excluded from participating in the liberation of our children’s’ minds; which has been another way to institutionally alienate us from our children and their needs. Perhaps one of the most well hidden practices concerning the systematic exclusion of teachers of color teaching can be traced back to the passing of the Brown vs. Board of education legislation passed in 1957. The long history and tradition of Black teachers educating Black children under the Jim Crow system is not considered as relative to this struggle as much as it should be. The movement for integration was needed to ensure adequate resources for black children. However, the huge economic disparity that happened through the “mass closures of black schools and the mass layoffs of black teachers during the integration process” was a process not accounted for (Wallace, x). While black children were assimilating into largely white administered classrooms, black adults, were facing economic displacement in terms of their livelihoods from the resulting layoffs.
Not to say that hiring teachers of color will automatically solve the problem. Many of us carry reactionary ideas that often comply with maintaining the status quo. Rather, such a point highlights a historical condition where the school expected that black people were capable of learning, and these ideas were exemplified predominantly through black female teachers, who also had the radical idea that black people could lead. Presently, many young Black and Brown people walk through the school doors told the opposite.
This legacy continues, through school shut downs and hiring practices that continue to privilege white people from specific class and ideological backgrounds. Wallace speaks more in depth about similar hiring and recruiting practices in our recent past. She states: “…extensive efforts were made to bring into Baltimore schools white Peace Corps workers who were not trained as teachers,” at the expense of “African American candidates who had completed at least four years of teacher education at one of the locally historically black colleges or universities” (x). In this way, the logic of our system becomes clear. The displacement of the majority of people of color is needed to reinforce this specific class hierarchy, where we are tracked into lower paying jobs, often wage labor or prison work.
There is nothing inherently wrong with White teaching color and vice versa, as we must struggle to do this work together. Yet, within the United States, the likely scenario will be the former example. The specific history of how this has come to be the norm and why it is an accepted norm cannot be escaped.
The deeper problem also lies with our Black and Brown children being molded in the image of a white supremacist culture and serving its ultimate needs for permanent second-class status. Within the social justice circles of those working for a more egalitarian world, this need for control and leadership is a messy contradiction often rife with feelings of guilt, “good intentions,” and a genuine longing to rid ourselves from such human relations. Still, it does not excuse the false actions that arise from controlling the movement’s most potentially radical parts, inhibiting full change and ultimately securing supremacist control. Of course, there are some of us Black folk who have also given in to false action and as a result allow ourselves to be fooled or tokenized.
These are the skins we will have to shed to effectively challenge these power dynamics. The fundamental challenge of Whiteness constantly being at the helm of leadership is called into question, exposing this as an act of white supremacy and possible co-optation of true solidarity in itself.
Throughout history we have seen that White supremacy, does not only need a pale face to espouse its ideologies, Walter Rodney quoted this phenomena from his Black brothers as, “black skin, white heart” or “white hearted black men” (Rodney, 33). Through the insidious workings of neoliberal policies many of us within the black community have aligned ourselves with an ideology, which strengthens a nation that furthers its war on the poor and people of color. Robin Kelley’s article, “Neoliberalism’s Challenge,” written as a response to Michael C. Dawson’s book on the recent shift in Black political discourses, highlights this prevailing ideology amongst a more dominant strain occurring in Black America, specifically when speaking of the Black left. Such an alliance has produced an overwhelming refusal to openly challenge dominant black leadership and align with black folks who do not share our class interests, never mind care for the full emancipation of most blacks from such conditions. Perhaps, it is easier to “continue white America’s mistakes,” and fall into victim blaming, culture of poverty thinking and false pretenses of having “moved on” past the reality of history.
Within dominant black political discourse, there has been a shift in taking more conservative positions on key political issues and professing allegiance with the black one percent for a sense of “unity,” rather than dealing with a more nuanced class struggle that would force us to strengthen our analysis and radically tell the truth.
An analysis of class struggle must also be applied to the educational system, and we cannot be fooled by neo-liberal policies such as No Child Left Behind and Race to the Top Programs. Furthermore, we must further break the silence around the educational system and how it is an apparatus to silence the majority of us into a life of constant domination, rather than be content with a few of us climbing up the capitalist ladder only to be further alienated from the exploitation of the black and brown masses.
The labor of struggling to liberate supremacy from itself is a deep-rooted issue we must all contend with. In our collective psyche, we can easily recall many experiences and movements where we have had to swallow the truth of this fact when our differences became the point of departure. These differences are inextricably rooted to the web of knowledge we have gained battling a world where the most basic necessities are not guaranteed to many of us. And unfortunately, we are still seeing how liberal discourse has yet to go far enough to include the darkest of the dark and the poorest of the poor in its vision of equality.
With such gross material realities and conditions becoming ever present in the black community, a consciousness within darker souls has to grapple with who is at the helm of leadership and if we are allowing ourselves to be misled. We have seen our movements largely co-opted and led by those who are not of our communities, and often cannot fathom themselves working beside us as equals. Although this is not an easy statement to make, the truth of our present power relationships and its manifestation in determining Black folks economic and political options must be had. The struggle for our communities, a movement that is led by our vision, where people can be humble enough to work beside us and do the internal work necessary to improve their tactics must be acted upon now. Everybody knows that education is of the utmost importance; this is why our greatest enemies seek it as a commodity and are rigorously campaigning to standardize the curriculum and deaden the possibility of fundamentally changing the current political-economic state of relations. The question of our Black children being taught in a way where they are at the helm of their learning and see themselves as co-creators is also a necessity to this movement. Much has been done to destroy this as a prospect. Yet, there is still enough room to dream and Boggs call this type of education an “education of governance.”
It is up to us to fight for our spaces and humanity, as well as find alternate places where we can teach our children and pool our resources together. Our communities have much work to do in our process of decolonization and emancipation. As many of us find ourselves unemployed or underemployed, the question of our own autonomy and right to a self-determinate future is also at the center of this movement.
We know that building collectives is also vital, as the wealth gap widens and we find many more of our families and friends suffering in our neighborhoods and in the Global South. Building solidarity with other communities who also battle this harsh terrain could strengthen our core so long as we are willing to struggle. So, as a way to come together and re-imagine human relationships outside the chains of our current political-economic relations, addressing the movement’s internal contradictions is an attempt to further break the silence and to dream.
With this in mind, I must emphasize that despite the odds stacked against us, this is a critical time where we have much opportunity to turn the tide.
Itoro Udofia is an educational activist and contributing columnist for Your World News. She can be reached at: itoro.paula@gmail.com
Posted in American Politics, Education, Race and Culture
Mound Bayou, MS
Special Report
February 17, 2012
By: Itoro Udofia
The source of my commitment to struggling for a just world lies in the belief that the emancipation of all human beings from all forms of exploitation is on the horizon. Another reservoir of energy comes from my belief that the majority of Black peoples in the world will see true liberation from our harsh material conditions and lead a self-determinate future. In this way, I keep a hopeful heart. We have a brilliant tradition of organizing and resistance, over 500 years old, to give us some examples for the way forward. The best and most ordinary of us have risen out of this legacy to break chains, raise consciousness and do pivotal work.
The place where I have chosen to wage this struggle has largely been done through education. To sort out the contradictions present in this work, I often re-visit particular analyses that contain great relevance when speaking to the present state of Black people and the U.S. educational system. In doing so, I have come across great thinkers and activists who inform my theory and practice. One social activist and feminist that represents an expression of theory meeting practice is Grace Lee Boggs. Boggs’ article, “Education the Great Obsession,” first published in September 1970, will serve as a guide in framing the discussion in regards to the present struggles within the educational movement, while shedding light on possible ways to move forward.
Boggs names education as a key site of possibility within the Black community, where it can serve as the training ground for consciousness raising and political organizing.
The themes she presents, education for liberation, self-determination and struggle, may resonate differently in its form when looking at our educational system today. Yet, the essence of her words remains vital to our recent struggles for autonomy. Education is one of the most contested sites of struggle, as most stakeholders involved understand that it is rife with either the possibility for true liberation, or the securing of subordination for lucrative profit maximization. With recent activities such as the banning of the only ethnic studies program to exist in k-12 education, it appears that the scale has been tipping in the latter direction. Voices in opposition to these dangerous trends cleverly name these exploitative practices, the education industrial complex. Indeed, we are living in a time that calls for a mass movement, armed with the historical awareness and discernment to sift through the highly organized confusion and cunning of the ruling classes.
Dominant discourse on education is often not described within the context of poverty, white supremacy and imperialism. Rather it is seen within an a- historical vacuum and viewed as a neutral entity that will magically perform the feat of solving our problems. Boggs speaks of how many people, including Black folks, have fallen prey to this ideology that a good education ensures economic fulfillment. As a result, this thinking has led the dominant analysis to often call for reformist policies taking on a dangerously neo-liberal agenda, foregoing a complete restructuring and re-visioning of education.
Boggs elaborates on the false consciousness present within prevailing educational ideology, when analyzing the material reality of most young black people in this country. She states: “But the more black kids finished high school the more they discovered that extended education was not the magic key to upward mobility and higher earnings that it had been played up to be. On the job market they soon discovered that the same piece of paper that qualified white high-school graduates for white-collar jobs only qualified blacks to be tested (and found wanting) for these same jobs” (Boggs, “Education the Great Obsession”). Currently, the wealth gap within the United States shows this cruel contradiction. According to the Pew Research Center, “the median wealth of white households is 20 times that of black households and 18 times that of Hispanic households” (Pew Research Center). As the “post-recession” deepens, many of us look for work with credentials and degrees in hand only to be turned away. Although Boggs’ speaks to an educational context, we can extend this to an imperial context as well when considering white patriarchal capitalist hegemony’s predominance in shaping our knowledge, ideas and actions on a global scale and the continued exploitation of peoples in the Global South. The majority of us Black and Brown folks are the ruling classes chosen losers and targets.
Boggs’ lays out the relations of how the majority of Black and Brown folks in this nation and our world are treated. She states: “those closest to the Founding Fathers in background and culture rule over those who have the furthest to go in achieving this ultimate goal and who meanwhile need to be inculcated with a Founding-Father complex” (Boggs). Here, the internal contradiction of white supremacy is exposed as we find ourselves deemed the “furthest from the founding fathers.” Despite all the efforts and struggles waged in black communities for equity, within such racialized capitalism, our pauperization and degradation is needed for the benefits of a largely white ruling class. Boggs finally asserts that this is a severe problem. She states: “the black community is now unalterably convinced that white control of black schools is destroying black children and can no longer be tolerated” (Boggs).
To clarify my use of Whiteness and white supremacy, I am defining it as operating within a political-economic system that reproduces ideology and reinforces specific practices that carry white skin advantage. Within these constructed social relations present in the United States white supremacy is, “a political, economic, and cultural system in which whites overwhelmingly control power and material resources, conscious and unconscious ideas of white superiority and entitlement are widespread, and relations of white dominance and nonwhite subordination are daily reenacted across a broad array of institutions and social settings” (Ansley, 592).
When speaking of a white supremacist ideology that we have been taught to espouse as the order of the day, I am also speaking to all of us in our external and internal efforts to abolish this particular social relation needed to continue the exploitation many poor folks (often dark skinned folks) are facing in the world. In one way or another we have subscribed to this ideology, as we continue to subscribe to false assumptions about the automatic “upgrading quality” of educational achievement in the face of our worsening material conditions.
Who’s Doing the
Teaching?
Boggs’ article highlights the many internal and external complexes we must sift through to reach a point where we can move to clear action. To deepen this conversation, I am not only talking about the complex of increased high stakes testing, school shut downs, standardized curriculums, or the criminalization and further mis-education of our Black and increasingly Brown youth. I am also speaking about the power and privilege often exercised from the well intentioned, so called radical educators.
Within education, Black consciousness is predominantly in the hands of white folks. The ideology often taught to the exploited is one that drenches us in the milk of a supremacist view. Ultimately, we internalize this hatred so deeply we begin to hate our own reflection. Many critical thinkers have said this in one way or another; therefore what I am saying here is nothing new. Yet, it is often sidestepped in conversations of education as a practice of freedom. Michelle Wallace’s Black Teachers on Teaching highlights this underlying dynamic at work amongst educators, specifically white educators who ultimately carry the destructive view that, “almost any white person could do a better job educating black children than black teachers” (Wallace, x). Unfortunately, this sentiment, as Wallace so astutely puts it has “often been repeated in one form or another” (ix). The proof can be seen in our almost all white teaching field, which is 90% white female, middle to upper class (National Collaborative on Diversity of the Teaching Force, 2004). During the recent interview featuring professor and historian Robin Kelley on on Your World News, he speaks of College Campuses as Academic Slave Plantations. Kelley’s experience and knowledge speaks to a dynamic we see far too often within the educational systems. Within such an anti-black environment “Black people are not seen as the purveyors of knowledge.”
This ideology is fed into the minds of our children, who are often without the adequate tools to analyze the particular power and economic dynamics they face inside and outside the classroom, leaving many of our young people damaged. Concurrently, these teachers who have been taught to remain willfully ignorant of their power, guilt, and privilege, also contribute to their internal damage. They miss the fact that their liberation is intimately tied to their student living in poverty. Rather, it is more comfortable to fall into an insidious savior-superior complex than do the labor of challenging oneself and working with others who reflect that challenge.
Although there are many teachers dedicated to working for social justice within this field, the issue of true autonomy and control is something that has not been interrogated fully, as we see that most schools, whether radical or conservative are largely administrated by whites. It is not only enough to teach liberation to underprivileged folks. As many radical educators have said, we must also find ways to practice liberation in our chosen economic and political activities.
This also requires us to re-envision our present leadership and its ruling ideology. The essence of the problem we are seeing, whether well or ill intentioned, is that the fundamental political and economic relations are not changing. To invoke Robin Kelley’s argument of the plantation dynamic, lets put this into plantation talk. Whether or not the slave master is kind to the slave should matter very little if the slave master is still tied to keeping the structure and power that comes with the plantation, and for those of us who find ourselves oft exploited, whether the slave master is kind should not lessen our political resistance. Nor make us more willing to concede for small gains on the slave master’s terms.
Hiring Practices
As an educator who has had firsthand experience in the field, I challenge our current hiring practices in terms of finding people of color to teach our students. Teachers of color have been systematically excluded from participating in the liberation of our children’s’ minds; which has been another way to institutionally alienate us from our children and their needs. Perhaps one of the most well hidden practices concerning the systematic exclusion of teachers of color teaching can be traced back to the passing of the Brown vs. Board of education legislation passed in 1957. The long history and tradition of Black teachers educating Black children under the Jim Crow system is not considered as relative to this struggle as much as it should be. The movement for integration was needed to ensure adequate resources for black children. However, the huge economic disparity that happened through the “mass closures of black schools and the mass layoffs of black teachers during the integration process” was a process not accounted for (Wallace, x). While black children were assimilating into largely white administered classrooms, black adults, were facing economic displacement in terms of their livelihoods from the resulting layoffs.
Not to say that hiring teachers of color will automatically solve the problem. Many of us carry reactionary ideas that often comply with maintaining the status quo. Rather, such a point highlights a historical condition where the school expected that black people were capable of learning, and these ideas were exemplified predominantly through black female teachers, who also had the radical idea that black people could lead. Presently, many young Black and Brown people walk through the school doors told the opposite.
This legacy continues, through school shut downs and hiring practices that continue to privilege white people from specific class and ideological backgrounds. Wallace speaks more in depth about similar hiring and recruiting practices in our recent past. She states: “…extensive efforts were made to bring into Baltimore schools white Peace Corps workers who were not trained as teachers,” at the expense of “African American candidates who had completed at least four years of teacher education at one of the locally historically black colleges or universities” (x). In this way, the logic of our system becomes clear. The displacement of the majority of people of color is needed to reinforce this specific class hierarchy, where we are tracked into lower paying jobs, often wage labor or prison work.
There is nothing inherently wrong with White teaching color and vice versa, as we must struggle to do this work together. Yet, within the United States, the likely scenario will be the former example. The specific history of how this has come to be the norm and why it is an accepted norm cannot be escaped.
The deeper problem also lies with our Black and Brown children being molded in the image of a white supremacist culture and serving its ultimate needs for permanent second-class status. Within the social justice circles of those working for a more egalitarian world, this need for control and leadership is a messy contradiction often rife with feelings of guilt, “good intentions,” and a genuine longing to rid ourselves from such human relations. Still, it does not excuse the false actions that arise from controlling the movement’s most potentially radical parts, inhibiting full change and ultimately securing supremacist control. Of course, there are some of us Black folk who have also given in to false action and as a result allow ourselves to be fooled or tokenized.
These are the skins we will have to shed to effectively challenge these power dynamics. The fundamental challenge of Whiteness constantly being at the helm of leadership is called into question, exposing this as an act of white supremacy and possible co-optation of true solidarity in itself.
A Time to Break the
Silence
Throughout history we have seen that White supremacy, does not only need a pale face to espouse its ideologies, Walter Rodney quoted this phenomena from his Black brothers as, “black skin, white heart” or “white hearted black men” (Rodney, 33). Through the insidious workings of neoliberal policies many of us within the black community have aligned ourselves with an ideology, which strengthens a nation that furthers its war on the poor and people of color. Robin Kelley’s article, “Neoliberalism’s Challenge,” written as a response to Michael C. Dawson’s book on the recent shift in Black political discourses, highlights this prevailing ideology amongst a more dominant strain occurring in Black America, specifically when speaking of the Black left. Such an alliance has produced an overwhelming refusal to openly challenge dominant black leadership and align with black folks who do not share our class interests, never mind care for the full emancipation of most blacks from such conditions. Perhaps, it is easier to “continue white America’s mistakes,” and fall into victim blaming, culture of poverty thinking and false pretenses of having “moved on” past the reality of history.
Within dominant black political discourse, there has been a shift in taking more conservative positions on key political issues and professing allegiance with the black one percent for a sense of “unity,” rather than dealing with a more nuanced class struggle that would force us to strengthen our analysis and radically tell the truth.
An analysis of class struggle must also be applied to the educational system, and we cannot be fooled by neo-liberal policies such as No Child Left Behind and Race to the Top Programs. Furthermore, we must further break the silence around the educational system and how it is an apparatus to silence the majority of us into a life of constant domination, rather than be content with a few of us climbing up the capitalist ladder only to be further alienated from the exploitation of the black and brown masses.
Leadership
The labor of struggling to liberate supremacy from itself is a deep-rooted issue we must all contend with. In our collective psyche, we can easily recall many experiences and movements where we have had to swallow the truth of this fact when our differences became the point of departure. These differences are inextricably rooted to the web of knowledge we have gained battling a world where the most basic necessities are not guaranteed to many of us. And unfortunately, we are still seeing how liberal discourse has yet to go far enough to include the darkest of the dark and the poorest of the poor in its vision of equality.
With such gross material realities and conditions becoming ever present in the black community, a consciousness within darker souls has to grapple with who is at the helm of leadership and if we are allowing ourselves to be misled. We have seen our movements largely co-opted and led by those who are not of our communities, and often cannot fathom themselves working beside us as equals. Although this is not an easy statement to make, the truth of our present power relationships and its manifestation in determining Black folks economic and political options must be had. The struggle for our communities, a movement that is led by our vision, where people can be humble enough to work beside us and do the internal work necessary to improve their tactics must be acted upon now. Everybody knows that education is of the utmost importance; this is why our greatest enemies seek it as a commodity and are rigorously campaigning to standardize the curriculum and deaden the possibility of fundamentally changing the current political-economic state of relations. The question of our Black children being taught in a way where they are at the helm of their learning and see themselves as co-creators is also a necessity to this movement. Much has been done to destroy this as a prospect. Yet, there is still enough room to dream and Boggs call this type of education an “education of governance.”
It is up to us to fight for our spaces and humanity, as well as find alternate places where we can teach our children and pool our resources together. Our communities have much work to do in our process of decolonization and emancipation. As many of us find ourselves unemployed or underemployed, the question of our own autonomy and right to a self-determinate future is also at the center of this movement.
We know that building collectives is also vital, as the wealth gap widens and we find many more of our families and friends suffering in our neighborhoods and in the Global South. Building solidarity with other communities who also battle this harsh terrain could strengthen our core so long as we are willing to struggle. So, as a way to come together and re-imagine human relationships outside the chains of our current political-economic relations, addressing the movement’s internal contradictions is an attempt to further break the silence and to dream.
With this in mind, I must emphasize that despite the odds stacked against us, this is a critical time where we have much opportunity to turn the tide.
Itoro Udofia is an educational activist and contributing columnist for Your World News. She can be reached at: itoro.paula@gmail.com
Posted in American Politics, Education, Race and Culture
From Duke Ellington's ivories to Satchmo's riffs: The black and white images captured by Charles 'Teenie' Harris that re-tell the musical history of black America in the 20th Century e Teenie-Harris-Photographer-An-American-Story
By Jennifer Madison
He was known as 'One Shot Harris'. Charles 'Teenie' Harris earned the nickname because he often captured his most moving images in his first take.The late photographer's archive of nearly 80,000 is said to be the most expansive record of African American urban culture known today.
Now, fourteen years after his death, Mr Harris' work is being lauded in a retrospective exhibit, featuring rarely-seen images of Lena Horne, Sarah Vaughan, Louis Armstrong and other enduring names.
Cutting up: Duke Ellington at the piano, with dancer
Charles 'Honi' Coles and Billy Strayhorn looking on, in the Stanley Theatre, c
1942-1943
Side-by-side: An undated photo of Louis Armstrong and Ann
Baker in a booth at Crawford Grill No 1 restaurant in Pittsburgh,
Pennsylvania
Behind the lens: Charles 'Teenie' Harris, holding his
camera on the sidewalk at an unknown location, c 1938
After ten years of research into the archive, Teenie Harris, Photographer: An American Story, was put on display.
Photos of baseball star Jackie Robinson, and leaders such as John F Kennedy and Martin Luther King Jr are featured among the most well-known names.
Duke Ellington, pictured signing autographs through a crowd, Lena Horne dancing with William 'Woogie' Harris, Josephine Baker accepting a Hill City membership card, big bands, dancing girls and carnivals feature in the expansive collection.
Icons: Eartha Kitt leaping though poster to launch a
Citizens Committee on Hill District Renewal program, left, and Nina Simone
holding cigarette and seated in chair c 1965, right
Star: Josephine Baker accepting a Hill City membership
card from Leslie Powell, with George Fairley holding police badges honouring
Dean Martin and Jerry Lewis, and Howard McKinney. Unknown man in background, c
1951
A meditation: Lena Horne reflected in mirror in dressing
room at Stanley
Charming: Lena Horne standing next to cake inscribed
'Greetings Lena Horne', with Bill Nunn Sr on right, in Loendi Club, October
1944
Cutting the cake: Billy Eckstine and Lena Horne, centre,
with Miriam Sharpe Fountain in background on left, in Loendi Club, October
1944
Slow dance: Lena Horne dancing with William 'Woogie'
Harris, with Julia Bumry Jones on left in background, in Loendi Club, February
1938
Jubilation: An undated photo of Frank Bolden, left, and
Sarah Vaughan, right, with another woman and man at piano, in an unknown club
with a portrait of Ann Baker
Fanfare: Duke Ellington signing autographs in a crowd,
including Isabella Marble, Marverine and Blanche Cathcart, c
1946-1947
Backstage: Singer and actor Ethel Waters in costume before
she takes the stage, c 1940
All smiles: Bill 'Bojangles' Robinson seated with child on
his knee, and surrounded by three other children, in Hill City, c 1940
Taking a bite: Bill 'Bojangles' Robinson pretending eat a
large Eskimo Pie ice cream bar, with a WWSW radio station announcer behind the
microphone, c 1941
The first gallery features 'immersive
life-size projections combined with a newly commissioned jazz soundtrack',
according to the museum.
In the next hangs a chronology of Mr Harris' selected 987 photographs - and first-person narratives, including those from Harris' family, subjects and colleagues to guide viewers through the tour.
The final section of the exhibition is dedicated to an in-depth evaluation of Harris as an artist.
Born in 1908 in Pittsburgh, Mr Harris began his career as a semi-professional athlete, but after buying his first camera found his niche, and he turned to photography in the 1930s.
![]()
Initially, he specialised in glamour portraits, and eventually opened his own photography studio.
He turned to news years later, and began freelancing in 1941 for the Pittsburgh Courier - the leading African American newspaper at the time.
He became a widely-respected photojournalist before he retired in 1975, capturing on camera a colourful chronicle of the black urban community during the Jim Crow and civil rights
In the next hangs a chronology of Mr Harris' selected 987 photographs - and first-person narratives, including those from Harris' family, subjects and colleagues to guide viewers through the tour.
The final section of the exhibition is dedicated to an in-depth evaluation of Harris as an artist.
Born in 1908 in Pittsburgh, Mr Harris began his career as a semi-professional athlete, but after buying his first camera found his niche, and he turned to photography in the 1930s.
Wide-eyed: Children line up at a cotton candy booth at an
unknown location, c 1945
Something sweet: Two young women eating caramel apples in
front of an unknown school, c 1940-1945
All the right notes: Cozy Harris playing piano sheet music
for 'Mother of Mine,' with cigar in his mouth, next to an unknown woman, c
1950-1955
Happy together: Earl 'Fatha' Hines, Erroll Garner, Billy
Eckstine, Maxine Sullivan and Mary Lou Williams gather around a piano in Syria
Mosque in Pittsburgh for Night of Stars, August 7, 1946
Blow man, blow! Musicians gathered around Roy Eldridge
playing trumpet, backstage of the Stanley Theatre, July 1941
Shaking hands: Saxophonist Benny Carter squatting on stage
to greet fans in Savoy Ballroom in Harlem, New York, October 8,
1945
Jazz: Group portrait of six-piece Honey Gun band,
including Martin Kimes on guitar and James 'Honey Gun' Colbert on drums, with
trumpet, bass, and saxophone, in Harris Studio, c 1940-1945
Inspired: Trumpet players Pete Henderson, Will Austin,
Charles 'Chuck' Austin, and Tommy Turrentine, standing behind Will Smith with
bongos, in Harris Studio, left, and a dancer performing in front of Darlings of
Rhythm band, 1945, right
Victory: Billy Eckstine Orchestra performing with Art
Blakey on drums in Hill City Auditorium (Savoy Ballroom), October 1944, left,
and The Ink Spots, with James G Thompson, Doc Wheeler at the Savoy Ballroom,
1942, right
Piano men: Duke Ellington at piano, with band and drums
initialed 'S. G.' on stage, c 1944, left, and five men including Nate Harper,
gathered around piano played by Billy Taylor at Pittsburgh Jazz Festival, Civic
Arena June 18-20, 1965, right
Flash: 20th Century copy of Flash Magazine with a cover
photo of Charles 'Teenie' Harris, c 1938-1939, left, and Harris' own
self-portrait taken in Harris Studio, c 1940, right
Initially, he specialised in glamour portraits, and eventually opened his own photography studio.
He turned to news years later, and began freelancing in 1941 for the Pittsburgh Courier - the leading African American newspaper at the time.
He became a widely-respected photojournalist before he retired in 1975, capturing on camera a colourful chronicle of the black urban community during the Jim Crow and civil rights
Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2099132/Teenie-Harris-Photographer-An-American-Story.html#ixzz1mfXUbA9X
Wednesday, February 8, 2012
Saturday, February 4, 2012
NBPC Pursues Proposed Butler Saturn Site For Area
Black Buzz News Service
Ronald B. Saunders Project
National Black Political Caucus Archives
Pittsburgh, PA
February 4, 2012
Ronald B. Saunders Project
National Black Political Caucus Archives
Pittsburgh, PA
February 4, 2012
 |
| New Pittsburgh Courier, March 30, 1985 Important Black History which is also Pennsylvania History. Even though General Motors did not locate the Saturn plant in Pennsylvania, the efforts to do so on the part of the Natioanl Black Political Caucus were extraordinary.   |
America’s Origins of Terror: An Often Unspoken History
Black Buzz News Service
Special News Report
College Park, MD
February 4, 2012
The words “terror”, “terrorist” and “terrorism” seemed to take on new meaning after the tragedy that occurred on September 11, 2001—a day that will live on in infamy. However, if one did not know better, you might think that the aforementioned words failed to exist prior to 9/11. Unfortunately, due to a combination of factors, many Americans behave as if these words, and their trepid meaning, were unfamiliar inside America. Mass racially motivated propaganda has juxtaposed the word “terrorist” next to that of a Muslim person of color. Unfortunately for countless Indigenous people and Africans, who were mass murdered on “American” soil—they came to fully understand terror in some of the worst possible ways. The face of their terror was white and originated throughout Europe.
Terror on American soil has existed for hundreds of years, dating back to the arrival of ill intentioned invaders from Europe. These invaders/illegal aliens (commonly mislabeled as ‘settlers’) came to a land that was foreign to them in innumerable aspects. It was prosperous, abundant with resources, communal and egalitarian. It was only a “New World” to their limited way of seeing the world. Turtle Island (North America) had been inhabited by indigenous people for tens of thousands of years. These people lived in prosperous communal settings where private land ownership was quite literally a foreign concept. They respected the earth/nature (and the animals), which they used to feed, clothe, and shelter their communities. Despite living in lands abundant with resources they never over consumed. In 2012 over-consumption is synonymous with American society. In essence, these people lived in a way that was in balance with nature itself. Unfortunately, with the arrival of scores of European invaders, the prosperity they enjoyed would soon come to a “terrifying” end.
Sharing land that was not theirs was an unacceptable option for these cretins from Europe—they rejected the indigenous people’s hospitality, opting for genocide instead. It was not long before the white man began a killing spree that would have made Hitler blush. Hitler would have felt compelled to take copious notes on the effectiveness, diversity, and sheer barbarity of their murderous ways. Within years to decades many native communities were on the verge of extinction. The white man spared no one, killing man, woman, the elderly and children. They sometimes would burn them alive in their homes, other times decapitating them—subsequently placing their severed heads on poles to send doomsday messages to other native peoples. Giving the native peoples blankets infected with small pox (a disease foreign to the natives and therefore no immunity) was one of the earliest forms of biological warfare. Biological warfare is something future generations of Euro-Americans would experiment with, on the likes of Africans/blacks (Tuskegee Experiment) and Central Americans (Guatemala)—to name couple of well known blatant examples. Now in 2012 the decedents of the indigenous of “America” are decimated in sheer numbers and relegated to impoverished reservations, on land that was their ancestors. If this historical snapshot detailing the multitude of atrocities unleashed on these once prosperous people is not terrorism, this author does not comprehend the meaning of this word.
European terrorism had no boundaries when it came to the non-white people of the world. They showered hundreds of years of brutality and murder upon the Africans they kidnapped and brought to the so-called “new world”. Millions upon millions were tortured and killed on the boat rides from hell, across the Atlantic Ocean. Those who survived the several months long trips, stacked upon one another like sardines and forced to defecate upon themselves, were forced to work in hellish conditions by shiftless amoral “people”. As if working up to 16-18 hour days in the blazing hot southern sun (and muggy evenings) was not enough—these European monsters beat, raped, mutilated and mass murdered countless enslaved Africans. The brutality they carried out upon the Africans had an array of vile forms. Some Africans were hunted down like dogs and then lynched—-all the way in to the middle of the 20th century. This unfortunately was not half of this reprehensible experience. These barbarians would often slowly burn the African/black people to death as they mutilated their bodies, all the while showcasing these events in front of thousands of people, including their wives and children. The kind of person that could repeatedly carry out these kinds of atrocities, let alone in front of children, is soulless and riddled with pure evil. They were not only terrorists, they were devilish.
These European serial murderers were proud of the brutal campaigns of death and mutilation they carried out—so much so that they routinely took pictures of the charred lynched bodies and sold them, by the tens of thousands, as postcards. They not only terrorized and mass murdered, they had no remorse for their crimes against humanity. Euro-Americans carried out their genocide of Africans in America from the 1600s until well in to the 20th century. However, many would contest that this genocide continues today in the form of community-wide police orchestrated brutality and terror. When looking at the cases of people like Sean Bell and Oscar Grant, it is hard to argue against that valid assertion. And the institution of slavery has taken upon another name, in the form of Mass Incarceration/Prison Industrial Complex. The massive prison warehousing of African/black people is big business within the white settler state now known as America.
I have not even begun to scratch the tip of the iceberg when it comes to Euro-American atrocities carried out upon people of color, within, and outside of the stolen US borders. I have not touched upon the mass rapes of African and indigenous women. I have not detailed how they stole babies and broke up families, all in the name of slavery. Most children were destined for a life of brutal servitude, beatings and possible murder. And I have not yet to discuss how Africans were renamed, prevented from being literate, and force fed Christianity (as a means of pacification). These are all facts that no honest historian can deny. This was also terror by any description.
Despite what masses of mentally programmed Americans may believe, the fact remains that Euro-American terror continues to inflict damage—throughout the globe. Mass indiscriminate bombings in places like Libya, Afghanistan, Pakistan, and Iraq has taken the lives of (at least) hundreds of thousands of civilians. This is terror, in the raw. This is terror similar to that which was carried out on 9/11, except on a much larger scale. There is little difference. Knowingly killing masses of civilians, in an effort to intimidate and accomplish an imperialist end game, is terrorism—plain and simple. Those civilians (men, women, and children) had nothing to do with the tragic events of 9/11; however that mattered little to the US government, and much of its populous. Many Americans wanted blood, they wanted revenge—-and it did not matter whose blood it was so long as it came from people thousands of miles away. In some sadistic way, it made them feel better knowing others had died. Little time was spent reflecting on the fact that the majority of people killed in places like Iraq, were in fact, too, civilians. These actions are terror just as the lynching of African/black people in the United States.
One can attempt to rename terror all they want, however it does not escape the fact that it is terror, murder, and brutality. If most Americans understood this or recognized these truths, they, too, would know that some of the planet’s worst atrocities have been committed by their own government. The US, particularly Euro-Americans, have inflicted vicious acts of terror, not only on people within this country, but throughout the world. Mass propaganda and indoctrination has conveniently blinded most Americans of these facts. This social myopia makes it all the more difficult for a better, more humane, world to be envisioned. And without a critical mass of social justice visionaries, the quest for social justice (and peace) become even more burdensome to social activists whose work remains critically vital.
Terror did not begin with the catastrophic events of 9/11. Terror began long before that infamous day in history. Americans, especially those of European decent need never to make blatantly false racist generalizations stating that all terrorists are Muslim, unless they willing to discuss the terrorist acts their ancestors, and government, have committed. Their crimes of terror are responsible for taking the lives of countless people—-well into the tens of millions (conservatively). Why doesn’t America mourn the lives of the masses of slain Iraqi, Pakistani, and Afghans, just as they do Americans who lost their lives on 9/11? Most Americans don’t mourn them because they have been programmed how to think and feel. They don’t see these people as fellow human beings, similar to themselves. This hollow thought process allows the globally deleterious actions of the US government from ever being challenged by a critical mass of its own citizens. Americans’ indifference is essential to the sustaining of destructive US foreign policy. America, as a nation, may never repent for its terrorist crimes against humanity, however if it ever does—it will be the very first crucial step towards building a much better global society. Until that happens the work of social justice surgeons remains critical—this is a socially sick society in desperate need of repair. A world of Peace, Justice, Equality and Prosperity depend upon it.
Solomon Comissiong is an educator, community activist, author, public speaker and the host of the Your World News media collective (www.yourworldnews.org). He can be reached at: solo@yourworldnews.org
Special News Report
College Park, MD
February 4, 2012
By Solomon Comissiong
The words “terror”, “terrorist” and “terrorism” seemed to take on new meaning after the tragedy that occurred on September 11, 2001—a day that will live on in infamy. However, if one did not know better, you might think that the aforementioned words failed to exist prior to 9/11. Unfortunately, due to a combination of factors, many Americans behave as if these words, and their trepid meaning, were unfamiliar inside America. Mass racially motivated propaganda has juxtaposed the word “terrorist” next to that of a Muslim person of color. Unfortunately for countless Indigenous people and Africans, who were mass murdered on “American” soil—they came to fully understand terror in some of the worst possible ways. The face of their terror was white and originated throughout Europe.
Terror on American soil has existed for hundreds of years, dating back to the arrival of ill intentioned invaders from Europe. These invaders/illegal aliens (commonly mislabeled as ‘settlers’) came to a land that was foreign to them in innumerable aspects. It was prosperous, abundant with resources, communal and egalitarian. It was only a “New World” to their limited way of seeing the world. Turtle Island (North America) had been inhabited by indigenous people for tens of thousands of years. These people lived in prosperous communal settings where private land ownership was quite literally a foreign concept. They respected the earth/nature (and the animals), which they used to feed, clothe, and shelter their communities. Despite living in lands abundant with resources they never over consumed. In 2012 over-consumption is synonymous with American society. In essence, these people lived in a way that was in balance with nature itself. Unfortunately, with the arrival of scores of European invaders, the prosperity they enjoyed would soon come to a “terrifying” end.
Sharing land that was not theirs was an unacceptable option for these cretins from Europe—they rejected the indigenous people’s hospitality, opting for genocide instead. It was not long before the white man began a killing spree that would have made Hitler blush. Hitler would have felt compelled to take copious notes on the effectiveness, diversity, and sheer barbarity of their murderous ways. Within years to decades many native communities were on the verge of extinction. The white man spared no one, killing man, woman, the elderly and children. They sometimes would burn them alive in their homes, other times decapitating them—subsequently placing their severed heads on poles to send doomsday messages to other native peoples. Giving the native peoples blankets infected with small pox (a disease foreign to the natives and therefore no immunity) was one of the earliest forms of biological warfare. Biological warfare is something future generations of Euro-Americans would experiment with, on the likes of Africans/blacks (Tuskegee Experiment) and Central Americans (Guatemala)—to name couple of well known blatant examples. Now in 2012 the decedents of the indigenous of “America” are decimated in sheer numbers and relegated to impoverished reservations, on land that was their ancestors. If this historical snapshot detailing the multitude of atrocities unleashed on these once prosperous people is not terrorism, this author does not comprehend the meaning of this word.
European terrorism had no boundaries when it came to the non-white people of the world. They showered hundreds of years of brutality and murder upon the Africans they kidnapped and brought to the so-called “new world”. Millions upon millions were tortured and killed on the boat rides from hell, across the Atlantic Ocean. Those who survived the several months long trips, stacked upon one another like sardines and forced to defecate upon themselves, were forced to work in hellish conditions by shiftless amoral “people”. As if working up to 16-18 hour days in the blazing hot southern sun (and muggy evenings) was not enough—these European monsters beat, raped, mutilated and mass murdered countless enslaved Africans. The brutality they carried out upon the Africans had an array of vile forms. Some Africans were hunted down like dogs and then lynched—-all the way in to the middle of the 20th century. This unfortunately was not half of this reprehensible experience. These barbarians would often slowly burn the African/black people to death as they mutilated their bodies, all the while showcasing these events in front of thousands of people, including their wives and children. The kind of person that could repeatedly carry out these kinds of atrocities, let alone in front of children, is soulless and riddled with pure evil. They were not only terrorists, they were devilish.
These European serial murderers were proud of the brutal campaigns of death and mutilation they carried out—so much so that they routinely took pictures of the charred lynched bodies and sold them, by the tens of thousands, as postcards. They not only terrorized and mass murdered, they had no remorse for their crimes against humanity. Euro-Americans carried out their genocide of Africans in America from the 1600s until well in to the 20th century. However, many would contest that this genocide continues today in the form of community-wide police orchestrated brutality and terror. When looking at the cases of people like Sean Bell and Oscar Grant, it is hard to argue against that valid assertion. And the institution of slavery has taken upon another name, in the form of Mass Incarceration/Prison Industrial Complex. The massive prison warehousing of African/black people is big business within the white settler state now known as America.
I have not even begun to scratch the tip of the iceberg when it comes to Euro-American atrocities carried out upon people of color, within, and outside of the stolen US borders. I have not touched upon the mass rapes of African and indigenous women. I have not detailed how they stole babies and broke up families, all in the name of slavery. Most children were destined for a life of brutal servitude, beatings and possible murder. And I have not yet to discuss how Africans were renamed, prevented from being literate, and force fed Christianity (as a means of pacification). These are all facts that no honest historian can deny. This was also terror by any description.
Despite what masses of mentally programmed Americans may believe, the fact remains that Euro-American terror continues to inflict damage—throughout the globe. Mass indiscriminate bombings in places like Libya, Afghanistan, Pakistan, and Iraq has taken the lives of (at least) hundreds of thousands of civilians. This is terror, in the raw. This is terror similar to that which was carried out on 9/11, except on a much larger scale. There is little difference. Knowingly killing masses of civilians, in an effort to intimidate and accomplish an imperialist end game, is terrorism—plain and simple. Those civilians (men, women, and children) had nothing to do with the tragic events of 9/11; however that mattered little to the US government, and much of its populous. Many Americans wanted blood, they wanted revenge—-and it did not matter whose blood it was so long as it came from people thousands of miles away. In some sadistic way, it made them feel better knowing others had died. Little time was spent reflecting on the fact that the majority of people killed in places like Iraq, were in fact, too, civilians. These actions are terror just as the lynching of African/black people in the United States.
One can attempt to rename terror all they want, however it does not escape the fact that it is terror, murder, and brutality. If most Americans understood this or recognized these truths, they, too, would know that some of the planet’s worst atrocities have been committed by their own government. The US, particularly Euro-Americans, have inflicted vicious acts of terror, not only on people within this country, but throughout the world. Mass propaganda and indoctrination has conveniently blinded most Americans of these facts. This social myopia makes it all the more difficult for a better, more humane, world to be envisioned. And without a critical mass of social justice visionaries, the quest for social justice (and peace) become even more burdensome to social activists whose work remains critically vital.
Terror did not begin with the catastrophic events of 9/11. Terror began long before that infamous day in history. Americans, especially those of European decent need never to make blatantly false racist generalizations stating that all terrorists are Muslim, unless they willing to discuss the terrorist acts their ancestors, and government, have committed. Their crimes of terror are responsible for taking the lives of countless people—-well into the tens of millions (conservatively). Why doesn’t America mourn the lives of the masses of slain Iraqi, Pakistani, and Afghans, just as they do Americans who lost their lives on 9/11? Most Americans don’t mourn them because they have been programmed how to think and feel. They don’t see these people as fellow human beings, similar to themselves. This hollow thought process allows the globally deleterious actions of the US government from ever being challenged by a critical mass of its own citizens. Americans’ indifference is essential to the sustaining of destructive US foreign policy. America, as a nation, may never repent for its terrorist crimes against humanity, however if it ever does—it will be the very first crucial step towards building a much better global society. Until that happens the work of social justice surgeons remains critical—this is a socially sick society in desperate need of repair. A world of Peace, Justice, Equality and Prosperity depend upon it.
Solomon Comissiong is an educator, community activist, author, public speaker and the host of the Your World News media collective (www.yourworldnews.org). He can be reached at: solo@yourworldnews.org
Friday, February 3, 2012
In the Age of Slavery: U.Va. examines role of enslaved laborers in tribute to bell ringer Henry Martin
Black Buzz News Service
Charlottesville, Virginia
February 3, 2012
WATCH: The life of Henry Martin, bell ringer for the University
When members of the University community hear the bell toll the hour on Grounds these days, they can thank an automated system that is a nicety rather than a necessity in the information age.
For more than 50 years, however, the responsibility of marking each hour fell to Henry Martin, a man born into slavery who became a beloved figure among students and faculty during his time as the University’s bell ringer.
“It truly was a lifetime of service to the needs and interests of the University of Virginia,” says Coy Barefoot (Grad ’97), author of The Corner: A History of Student Life at the University of Virginia. In Martin’s day, the Rotunda bell could be heard far beyond the Academical Village and was a familiar sound to area residents. “In a real sense, Henry Martin was the hub of the wheel for the University community and for Charlottesville.”
Henry Martin Holsinger Studio Collection, 1889-1939, Albert and Shirley Small Special Collections Library, University of Virginia
Martin’s service and legacy will be recalled Jan. 25 in a lunchtime panel discussion and later at a service in the Rotunda as part of U.Va.’s commemoration of Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Barefoot and other panelists also will discuss the broader role of enslaved laborers at the University.
“Conversations about the legacy of Henry Martin come at a time when several universities around the country are looking at the role that slaves and former slaves played in the building of universities and local communities,” says Derrick P. Alridge, a Curry School professor who will be the panel’s moderator. “So now is a ripe time to examine the legacy of slaves and former slaves to various institutions in this country.”
Two other institutions are collaborating on similar examinations of slavery. The Thomas Jefferson Foundation at Monticello and the Smithsonian Institution’s National Museum of African American History have partnered on an exhibit, “Slavery at Jefferson’s Monticello: Paradox of Liberty,” set to open on Jan. 27.
In addition, Monticello plans a multimedia exhibit beginning in February that will focus on historians’ work to interpret and restore Mulberry Row, the hub of 21 dwellings where enslaved and free workers went about their daily labors at Jefferson’s Albemarle County home. Computer animation, apps for mobile devices, a website—all will be used in “Landscape of Slavery: Mulberry Row at Monticello.”
“We don’t shy away from slavery, we talk about slavery because we know that it’s fundamentally important to understanding Jefferson and understanding America,” Susan Stein, a senior curator at Monticello, told the Associated Press.
Left: A depiction of Mulberry Row, the group of dwellings where enslaved and free laborers worked at Monticello, during Jefferson’s time. Right: Mulberry Row, today. Photos courtesy of Thomas Jefferson Foundation at Monticello
Henry Martin provided a link between the University and its founder. According to oral history, Martin was born at Monticello on July 4, 1826—the day Jefferson died. Though sold as a slave to the family of George Carr, Martin was freed by the time he was hired as the University’s bell ringer and janitor in 1847, according to research by Catherine Neale (Col ’06) for her undergraduate honors thesis.
Martin routinely awoke at 4 a.m. to tend to his responsibilities, which he took seriously. “I [was] as true to that bell as to my God,” Martin said in a 1914 interview in Corks and Curls.
Indeed, Dr. David M.R. Culbreth, writing in 1908, recalled, “In my experience I do not recall the bell pealing out of time, and yet that must have occurred to prove human error and fallibility.”
Henry Martin and students hanging out behind 45 West Range, May 7, 1902 Photo courtesy of Eliza Brent Myers
Martin rang the bell to spread the alarm when the first wisps of smoke were discovered in the Rotunda fire of 1895. That catastrophe forced the bell ringing to be moved to the University Chapel.
By Martin’s retirement in 1909, he was a local icon, beloved for his devotion and his familiarity with members of the University. At his death at age 89 in 1915, the student newspaper said, “He was known personally to more alumni than any living man,” and “is said to have known by name ... every student who resided here during his long service as bell ringer.”
Corey D.B. Walker, a panel member and former U.Va. professor who now is a professor and chair of the department of Africana studies at Brown University, says that without detracting from Martin’s contributions and service, it’s important to look beyond one personality.
“We have to remember, these people were enslaved. No matter how much we want to romanticize it, they did not control their destiny,” Walker says. “The problem of making the assertion that he was wonderful and a beloved figure belies the very violence of the institution of chattel slavery.”
The observations and discussions at U.Va., as well as the exhibits at Monticello and the Smithsonian, provide opportunities to use the past as a lantern for the future.
“This becomes an opening for us to have a conversation,” Walker says, “but we have to be very careful with it, not to engage in a way that the past is behind us, but to engage in how the past continues to challenge the ways in which we want to develop our nation and our world.”
Henry Martin Photo courtesy of U.Va. Special Collections
Charlottesville, Virginia
February 3, 2012
by Lee Graves
WATCH: The life of Henry Martin, bell ringer for the University
When members of the University community hear the bell toll the hour on Grounds these days, they can thank an automated system that is a nicety rather than a necessity in the information age.
For more than 50 years, however, the responsibility of marking each hour fell to Henry Martin, a man born into slavery who became a beloved figure among students and faculty during his time as the University’s bell ringer.
“It truly was a lifetime of service to the needs and interests of the University of Virginia,” says Coy Barefoot (Grad ’97), author of The Corner: A History of Student Life at the University of Virginia. In Martin’s day, the Rotunda bell could be heard far beyond the Academical Village and was a familiar sound to area residents. “In a real sense, Henry Martin was the hub of the wheel for the University community and for Charlottesville.”
Henry Martin Holsinger Studio Collection, 1889-1939, Albert and Shirley Small Special Collections Library, University of Virginia
Martin’s service and legacy will be recalled Jan. 25 in a lunchtime panel discussion and later at a service in the Rotunda as part of U.Va.’s commemoration of Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Barefoot and other panelists also will discuss the broader role of enslaved laborers at the University.
“Conversations about the legacy of Henry Martin come at a time when several universities around the country are looking at the role that slaves and former slaves played in the building of universities and local communities,” says Derrick P. Alridge, a Curry School professor who will be the panel’s moderator. “So now is a ripe time to examine the legacy of slaves and former slaves to various institutions in this country.”
Two other institutions are collaborating on similar examinations of slavery. The Thomas Jefferson Foundation at Monticello and the Smithsonian Institution’s National Museum of African American History have partnered on an exhibit, “Slavery at Jefferson’s Monticello: Paradox of Liberty,” set to open on Jan. 27.
In addition, Monticello plans a multimedia exhibit beginning in February that will focus on historians’ work to interpret and restore Mulberry Row, the hub of 21 dwellings where enslaved and free workers went about their daily labors at Jefferson’s Albemarle County home. Computer animation, apps for mobile devices, a website—all will be used in “Landscape of Slavery: Mulberry Row at Monticello.”
“We don’t shy away from slavery, we talk about slavery because we know that it’s fundamentally important to understanding Jefferson and understanding America,” Susan Stein, a senior curator at Monticello, told the Associated Press.
Left: A depiction of Mulberry Row, the group of dwellings where enslaved and free laborers worked at Monticello, during Jefferson’s time. Right: Mulberry Row, today. Photos courtesy of Thomas Jefferson Foundation at Monticello
Henry Martin provided a link between the University and its founder. According to oral history, Martin was born at Monticello on July 4, 1826—the day Jefferson died. Though sold as a slave to the family of George Carr, Martin was freed by the time he was hired as the University’s bell ringer and janitor in 1847, according to research by Catherine Neale (Col ’06) for her undergraduate honors thesis.
Martin routinely awoke at 4 a.m. to tend to his responsibilities, which he took seriously. “I [was] as true to that bell as to my God,” Martin said in a 1914 interview in Corks and Curls.
Indeed, Dr. David M.R. Culbreth, writing in 1908, recalled, “In my experience I do not recall the bell pealing out of time, and yet that must have occurred to prove human error and fallibility.”
Henry Martin and students hanging out behind 45 West Range, May 7, 1902 Photo courtesy of Eliza Brent Myers
Martin rang the bell to spread the alarm when the first wisps of smoke were discovered in the Rotunda fire of 1895. That catastrophe forced the bell ringing to be moved to the University Chapel.
By Martin’s retirement in 1909, he was a local icon, beloved for his devotion and his familiarity with members of the University. At his death at age 89 in 1915, the student newspaper said, “He was known personally to more alumni than any living man,” and “is said to have known by name ... every student who resided here during his long service as bell ringer.”
Corey D.B. Walker, a panel member and former U.Va. professor who now is a professor and chair of the department of Africana studies at Brown University, says that without detracting from Martin’s contributions and service, it’s important to look beyond one personality.
“We have to remember, these people were enslaved. No matter how much we want to romanticize it, they did not control their destiny,” Walker says. “The problem of making the assertion that he was wonderful and a beloved figure belies the very violence of the institution of chattel slavery.”
The observations and discussions at U.Va., as well as the exhibits at Monticello and the Smithsonian, provide opportunities to use the past as a lantern for the future.
“This becomes an opening for us to have a conversation,” Walker says, “but we have to be very careful with it, not to engage in a way that the past is behind us, but to engage in how the past continues to challenge the ways in which we want to develop our nation and our world.”
Henry Martin Photo courtesy of U.Va. Special Collections
We encourage all people to visit Monticello and the Smithsonian to learns more about chattel slavery in the antebellum period and the impact that institution had on the nation from then until now.
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