The American Race

The Best Of (the) Times

Two great columns on race and American identity, to ourselves and in the world, in today's New York Times.

Roger Cohen delivered another inspired, nearly rhapsodic piece about what the idea of Barack Obama means to the world.

And Nicholas Kristof here presents some intriguing (however intuitive, at least to me) research on nature versus cultural nurture in our perception of race. My favorite finding:

A flood of recent research has shown that most Americans, including Latinos and Asian-Americans, associate the idea of “American” with white skin. One study found that although people realize that Lucy Liu is American and that Kate Winslet is British, their minds automatically process an Asian face as foreign and a white face as American — hence this title in an academic journal: “Is Kate Winslet More American Than Lucy Liu?”

 More evidence of the amazing year of Obama opening once hidden doors in the American mind. 

Not Who's Next...(more)

Did you catch Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton at the big Democratic Convention finale on Thursday??

If so, shoot me a You-Tube link, and pat yourself on the back 'cause you're damn good.

If, in fact, it's even on You-Tube.

(I tried, but I had to settle for this still.)

Actually I did see them, way past the midnight hour on CNN or MSNBC. I'm sorry ( but no longer ashamed) to say I wasn't really listening; I thought it... strategic...to give my wife some full face time, after gorging my eyes and ears on the 6 hour Obama-fest.

Not that I wish them anything but every minute of life God spares them. But I couldn't help thinking about how my recent post, noting the passing of Rep. Stephanie Tubbs Jones, also applied to them. The Revs. Al and Jesse may not have a foot in the grave, but they definitely have one whole leg and a few additional toes in retirement.

It does not make me happy, much as it causes their haters joy. It doesn't make me sad, either. The word for what I feel, as I see them clawing for a little bit of reflected light, long after the confetti has fallen, is wistful:

wist*ful : having or showing a feeling of vague or regretful longing

Yeah, that's what I feel. But this, like so many feelings in this head spinning year, is fleeting. Too many others to process...

Tubbs Jones, Upshaw...It's Not Who's Next, But What

Thinking about the recent spate of prominent African-Americans passing. And it dawns on me: it's death, not Matt Bai, that will be having the last word on the end of black politics. And sooner than we think.

Think about it. Without naming names, think of any long tenured black 'leader' you know meeting their maker as per the inevitable actuarial schedule. Think of who's on or close to the doorstep.

Then think of their replacements.

Done straining your brain yet?

Soon and very soon the only people who might be pointed to as black leaders are gonna look more and more like Barack Obama, and other what have been called Ivy League "no mustache niggers" than Jesse Jackson or Maxine Waters or Al Sharpeton. I 'm not saying it's a good or bad thing, though I'm always hoping for better. But it's just fact.

I don't know what comes after that. But I do know what we've called the post civil-rights period of American history will be over, and without a conclusive, defining battle determining who won the war, or even what we were fighting for.

Hilary or Not, Here It Comes

On the eve of Obama's vice-presidential announcement, here's a quick hit, adapted from a note I just had to dash off to one of my favorite shows.

I'm sick and tired of a few things:

1-You know I was a working journalist for over 20 years, and taught it for about 6. So I know how you feel about charges of media bias, because I generally feel that way too. But I have to say that from the start much of your coverage of the presidential campaign was like the way the local announcer covers the hometown baseball team: you've sounded like 'homers' for Hilary.

I would concede a rationale for that during the primary--she is still our senator. But as coverage makes its way toward the convention in Denver, with all the continuing emphasis on the white Democrats who loved Hilary but, strangely, can't abide Obama,  I have to conclude you're still at it; the reporting feels like all that mattered was that Hilary carried New York.

2- If nothing else,you need to remember that while Hilary got about 60+ percent of the state as a whole, Obama got 90+ percent of black New Yorkers. Every single show you do on the whole Hilary angst, and her die hards, that does not even mention the equally deep passion of black New Yorkers feels like a wedge in the heart.

I once really admired Hilary (and Bill) and voted for her gladly for Senate. Then, though I didn't have anything against her, I preferred Obama for President.

But since the rest of the primary season played out with her as Lady Macbeth, I've come to dislike her strongly. And, as I hear stories of how some of her supporters would still like to bring Obama down, for reasons that always sound tissue thin, when they are articulated at all, I've begun to HATE Hilary Clinton. Funny thing: I realize it's not all her fault; this kind of coverage aggravates a sentiment that violates my personal morality and professional ethics.

3-I'd like to see you go after the root of all this, as journalists. Call the freakin' question: are people who support Hilary, can't articulate a real policy difference between her and Obama yet can't bring themselves to vote for him (despite her so-called urging) motivated by racism?

Because that, I think, is what the black New Yorkers (more and more I've noticed) listening to your show are screaming as they follow this and similar coverage.

4-Finally, though I now almost loathe her, and the racist blackmail that could possibly still press Obama to select her, I'd almost like to see Hilary on the ticket as VP.

Why? Because then all those suspected  Democrat racists out there in the so-called heartland will have to put up or shut up. They'll have to tell Hilary to her face why they're still not voting for Obama.

I hope to heaven they prove me wrong.

Where's Leon Now...

...I'm at the Pentecost 2007: Taking The Vision To The Streets conference in Washington D.C., sponsored by the Sojourners/Call to Renewal organization. The vision is putting the eradication of poverty at the center of the 2008 presidential race.
I know it sounds like a tall order, but as a woman in the main hall is chanting into a cell phone, "whatever God wants is what God wants."

Oh, did I say that Sojourners is perhaps the tip of the spear of a rising wave of progressive Christians determined to take back the mission of Christianity from Christian Right?
More on this later. In an hour or so Hillary Clinton, John Edwards and Barack Obama will be addressing us in the Lisner Auditorium (GWU). It's live on CNN at 7 pm EDT.

What, you may wonder, does this have to do with race, reconciliation, identity and Revival?
Well, duhhhh, the Revival part should be obvious. But I feel called to be here because I believe the road to racial reconciliation runs through the city of economic justice. As one activist participant said to me minutes ago, "black folks don't to be friends with white folks for friendship sake."

I'll expand on this in a few posts over the next 36 or so hours. From the road!
Meanwhile, I gotta make sure I get a good seat with the hottest ticket in town in my pocket!

You MUST see "Passing Strange"

It's Memorial Day, and my wife would kill me if she knew I was working. But we saw the rock-musical "Passing Strange" at the Public Theater on Saturday, and we were wowed!

Of the many, many, many killer lines:

"We're just a couple of brothers passing for black people."

I'm not supposed to be working. But any of you blessed to live (or be visiting) New York between now and the scheduled closing on June 3 should see this show.

Link to everything you need to know about "Passing Strange" at my man Rob Field's blog "Bold As Love".
(there's also a good listing there of music coming from a black rock place this weekend; too bad I didn't think of this on Saturday night...)

And enjoy the holiday, whatever you do.

Peace

Why Black Rock? (oh, and another thing)

Sometime after posting "Why Black Rock?" recently, I reran the first few episodes of the mind-opening 1995 PBS series "Rock & Roll" (wasted a half-hour trying to find link to the normally great PBS web page for this classic). I was blown away, again, by this quote from Ben E. King (you know, the original "Stand By Me" vocal?) the former lead singer of The Drifters.

James [Brown] covered what blacks felt they needed...to survive the Beatles. The Beatles had all of what the whites [rock n' roll acts] needed to keep them going. The thing we had created with the Drifters was in the middle of all that. There was no separatism there. We had collected a people to listen to a music. But when [The Beatles] came along... with that long straight hair... that changed the whole attitude of the music in a racial way. So there was no competition...we couldn't compare with that if we tried for another 200 years. Maybe...if we had had Michael Jackson...maybe.

King was talking about the moment in rock history when race was allowed to divide the consumers and the creators of the music then known as rock n' roll. Until the Beatles and the "British Invasion" followed, that category included everything from the most sophisticated versions of black "doo-wop" (e.g. the Drifters) to Elvis to Ray Charles to California surf sounds (Beach Boys) to early Motown and "girl groups" like the Shirelles and the racially ambiguous Ronettes.  And much more. The Beatles—still arguably the most important musical group of the last 50 years—had no idea of the collateral damage they caused. But, as the Shirley Reeves of The Shirelles points out in the documentary, many black acts were pushed off the pop charts as British acts covered their songs.

My point: We need "black rock"—the spirit if not the music of a specific group— to point the way back to the hot minute when the Civil Rights movement and the racial unity in the music of a new generation were about to merge. As King (Ben E.) said, they had collected a people, despite the mountain of political contradictions and sheer racism that stood (and in some ways still stands) between them. These are the people I call "The American Race."

It wasn't just The Beatles or their hair, of course. It was the strain that the bitter, inconclusive first finale of the Civil Rights movement (the assassinations and riots of 1968) put on the entire culture, musical and political. James Brown moved into (but didn't exactly invent) funk with the anthem "Say it Loud: I'm Black and I'm Proud." No non-blacks were invited to follow him.

Meanwhile the white session musicians that were instrumental in creating  the funkiest, grittiest  "soul music" churned out of Memphis and Muscle Shoals, Ala. (think Otis Redding, Wilson Pickett and Aretha Franklin) had their collaborations abruptly cut off within a year of Martin Luther King's murder. Their interviews are telling and deeply moving.

I think the Rock & Roll series (a co-production of WGBH, Boston and the BBC) is available on DVD. This is the kind of "where we came from" that matters for anyone concerned about where we're trying to go.

Why Black Rock?

In a post-Imus world where hip hop is under attack (rightfully on some counts), the African American community needs Black rock now more than ever.  Do you agree?  Disagree?  I’d like to hear what you think.         —Rob Fields, Bold As Love, "Speak Out"

Before answering, I mashed up a new Pandora "radio station" based on "Sly and the Family Stone." The first song was one of the last great funky Stone tablets, "If You Want Me to Stay." The next thing the ghost in Pandora's machine served up was a righteous cover of "Thank You" (Fa Lettin' Me Be Mice Elf) by the very voodoo Dr. John. 

That's why we need the music that, for now, goes by "black rock." It reminds us of  who we are, or rather, who we were about to become before the most commercial forms of rap/hiphop hijacked control of black identity.

Now hear Sly acolyte (and true inventor of the "funk bass") Larry Graham singing bridge (to kiddie sidewalk melody "it's raining, it's pouring..."):

I'm happy, I'm happy/ 'cause my mamma loves my pappy/makes me wanna Samba/Are ya' happy? Are ya' feelin' real good?/Is everybody happy that we're still alive?/We have a will to live, and a reason to survive.

We need music that affirms the human spirit within us, especially with the kind of acapella gospel shout at the end: "Are ya' happy? Are ya' feelin' real good?"

In the song the question is rhetorical; of course you're happy clapping your hands and stomping your feet for three minutes of joy in the midst of whatever. But with my head in the question at hand, about the music that currently tries to define and confine my blackness, the answer would be "hell no, I'm not happy!"

We all need music that invites us into community, instead of sending us running for cover. The genre—black, rock, funk, pop, rock n' roll, R&B, country, blues, gospel—is irrelevant. Repeat: irrelevant.

Don't believe me? Go check out a play list from WABC-AM, NY, the most listened to station in the nation even in the early 1970's. Its double-digit share of the largest media market would be unthinkable today. Staple Singers, followed by Rolling Stones, Sly, Glen Campbell,  Dr. John, Marvin Gaye, Led Zepplin and James Brown, and nobody thought twice about it.

Even the most pop stuff of what we now call World Music—Miriam Makeba's "Pata, Pata"— was in the house. We listened, sampled each other's stuff until it was hard to say who's was who's, which is exactly what American music, and Americans should be.

We need "black rock" until an even better term comes along for what used to be the mainstream of American musical identity. We need black rock as the first stream to replenish the mighty river from which, and in which, gospel, blues, jazz, Broadway, country... all of our musics...once flowed in peace, however uneasy.

We need music that bends race and ethnic identity until they break.

GhettoNation, the Tour

Check out Cora Daniels on the Brian Lehrer show (WNYC, New York Public Radio):

Street Wise
Cora Daniels, journalist and author of "GhettoNation: A Journey into the Land of Bling and the Home of the Shameless" (Doubleday 2007) says "ghetto," is no longer a state of class or race.

Or just listen, here:

 

Norbit

A little late, but I must speak on the latest Eddie Murphy-in-a-fat-suit vehicle, "Norbit." From now on, when it comes to race, pop media must be judged as either part of the solution or ...."Norbit"

The numbers (courtesy of Rottentomatoes.com) speak quite loudly for themselves. "Norbit" has grossed just under $100 million since opening seven weeks ago and held a spot in the top-ten for all but one of those weeks.

This bit of dialog from the climactic scene also speaks loudly. Rasputia, played by Murphy under what looks like 300+ pounds of fat suit, is about to bash in the brains of her ineffectual (read nerd talking, submissive, dim but kind) husband Norbit (also Murphy) with a shovel in the public square. Suddenly we hear a shout from off camera. It's what appears to be a little old Chinese man (yeah, Murphy, again):

Old Chinese Man:    Whale ho!

Rasputia, in mid-downstroke, pauses:

Rasputia:     Did I just hear somebody call me a whale?

The Old Chinese Man  is brandishing what looks to be a harpoon longer than he is tall.

Old Chinese Man:        Yeah, and you a ho' too!

And with that he launches the harpoon, hitting Rasputia dead in her rear aperture.

Old Chinese Man:  Yessss!  Right in the blow-hole!

As the old man does an end-zone dance, Rasputia, now fully realized as a grotesque cartoon character,  runs fast-forward zigzags around the square with the harpoon up her butt.

Of course, I didn't pay money to see this. I was watching a bootleg DVD on the TV as I waited for a haircut at a Dominican barbershop in the Bronx. Most of the patrons and all of the barbers were immigrants who know little English and even less about whatever nuances of African-American culture Murphy (with producer, story and writer credits) was trying to exploit.

Given it's minuscule production values (hell, Murphy plays three of the seven major characters) I shudder to think about the message "Norbit's" huge profits have already sent the marketplace.

But what really makes me cringe is the message "Norbit" sends to people like those young Dominican men about who African-Americans are. Many of those Dominicans would appear to be African-American themselves, until they opened their mouths. But Norbit is just another reason to never make the mistake of calling one of them black.

Hell, I wasn't too proud to be black myself as I slinked out after my haircut.

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