Dear White People...
Commentary by Black Kos Editor Denise Oliver-Velez
I haven't forgotten Spike Lee's School Daze, made in 1988, which took a look at the doings of black students on an HBCU campus during homecoming weekend. Coming to a theater near you on October 17, is a new film, also looking at black college students, but this time on a white campus.
Dear White People, "a satire about being a black face in a white place," is a film offering from Justin Simien, who is making his directorial debut.
Winner of the 2014 Sundance Film Festival's Special Jury Award for Breakthrough Talent, Dear White People is a sly, provocative satire of race relations in the age of Obama. Writer/director Justin Simien follows a group of African American students as they navigate campus life and racial politics at a predominantly white college in a sharp and funny feature film debut that earned him a spot on Variety's annual "10 Directors to Watch." When Dear White People screened at MOMA's prestigious New Directors/New Films, the New York Times' A.O. Scott wrote, "Seeming to draw equal measures of inspiration from Whit Stillman and Spike Lee, but with his own tart, elegant sensibility very much in control, Mr. Simien evokes familiar campus stereotypes only to smash them and rearrange the pieces."
What I found interesting is the marketing being used, via social media, for the film, using a series of PSAs, which fall under the header of "
The More You Know (About Black People)," which deal with stereotypes and racialized memes like food stamps, "black on black" crime, and "black-sounding" names.
Many of the youtube comments under each PSA/promo are predictable (and racist), though thumbs up currently seems to be beating thumbs down.
Though the film uses satire to address daily micro-aggressions faced by black students in a white campus setting, and the clearly "not-post racial"world we live in, the real world incidents on college campuses are no laughing matter. They are being documented by The Journal of Blacks in Higher Education, with headlines like:
Soccer Player at Syracuse University Suspended After Racial Rant Captured on Video. Filed in Campus Racial Incidents on September 12, 2014
Racist Posters Appear on the Campus of York University in Toronto. Filed in Campus Racial Incidents on August 27, 2014
There are now websites available, offering advice to help young people of color cope with their campus experience.
College marks a time of firsts for many young people. First time away from home. First time doing laundry. First time using a credit card. And for students of color, the college years may include the first experiences with racism and racial alienation. This is especially a concern for minority students attending predominantly white colleges and universities. If these students grew up in diverse communities, living in a racially homogenous setting for the first time will prove challenging. Their classmates may view them through a stereotypical lens, ask culturally insensitive questions or have no idea what to make of them. Fortunately, students of color can take measures both before and during their university years to counter the racism awaiting them on college campuses.
My own liberal NYS campus has had a checkered history with "incidents". Ofttimes white students are completely unaware of the uncomfortability faced by some students of color who have never dealt with white people in the neighborhoods or high schools they have come from. Being a first year student is hard. Being a first year student of color, is often far more difficult.
The issue is not simply black-white. Relationships between and among students of color from disparate ethnic backgrounds are often tense, or non-existent.
Colleges are supposed to prepare students for life in the adult world. Shouldn't they also be helping prepare students to tackle real-world issues of racism, and examine issues of race and privilege?
This should not take place solely in the context of ethnic studies programs, or one "diversity" class.
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News by dopper0189, Black Kos Managing Editor
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When blacks exhibit the same behaviors as others, it becomes part of a greater black pathology. Slate: Blacks Don’t Have a Corporal Punishment Problem.
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At 85 percent approval, there’s no doubt most blacks support corporal punishment. But so do most whites—73 percent accept spanking as a legitimate punishment. The gap, notes Harry Enten for FiveThirtyEight, is generally a scant 11 points between the two groups. For those who “strongly agree” with spanking, the gap is 15 points, or 40 percent for blacks versus 25 percent for whites. And while you could attribute this to the particulars of the black American experience, you probably shouldn’t.
Consider that while most Americans support spanking (about 70 percent), born-again Christians are more likely to support than non-born-again Christians (80 percent versus 65 percent), and Southerners are more likely to support it than people from other parts of the country. What’s more, support for spanking is strongly related to low levels of education, high levels of poverty, and high levels of environmental stress.
With that in mind, it’s no surprise blacks are more likely to support corporal punishment—not only are they disproportionately Southern, but Southern black culture extends throughout the country by way of the Great Migration. In addition, they’re disproportionately religious, and more likely to live in low-income or impoverished areas. And other groups with similar characteristics show similar support for spanking. The Mid-South includes parts of Tennessee, Mississippi, Missouri, Kentucky, Arkansas, and Alabama, and is one of the poorest areas in the country. There, notes Aaron Blake for the Washington Post, the white/black gap on spanking doesn’t exist.
Yes, there’s a cultural component to how black parents explain and rationalize corporal punishment, but that’s true of all groups: It’s not hard to find white comedians with routines on the necessity of spanking.
Despite this, the national conversation on corporal punishment and abuse has treated it as a black problem, not an American one. Some of this stems from the particular subjects of this debate—black American football players. At the same time, it’s reminiscent of other conversations around broad-based behaviors or beliefs that become pathological and purely “black” when displayed by black Americans in elevated numbers.
You saw this in the aftermath of California’s Proposition 8. Exit polls had black support at 70 percent, and pegged them at 10 percent of the electorate—a critical segment in the fight to ban same-sex marriage.
Opposition to same-sex marriage is just one example of invented black pathology.
For many opponents of Prop 8, this made blacks and “black homophobia” the culprits.
Why do certain behaviors become “black” behaviors when displayed by black Americans?
Illustration by Lisa Larson-Walker
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The rise of Misty Copeland. The New Yorker: An Unlikely Ballerina.
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On a recent August afternoon, near Nineteenth Street, two young girls with blond hair pulled back in ponytails ran past me, one of them calling out, “Daddy, Daddy, I just saw Misty Copeland!” The tone of voice might as well have been used to announce a sighting of Katy Perry, or Snow White. A few steps later, I entered the tiny lobby of a building on Broadway, where an old electric fan was not quite keeping the doorman cool. A caged elevator took me up to the third floor, where I passed through a low-ceilinged hallway crowded with unlabelled posters of ballet greats, until I reached an expansive fluorescent-lit room with two walls of slightly warped mirrors and air-conditioning units sealed into the windows with black electrical tape. The American Ballet Theatre soloists Misty Copeland and Alexandre Hammoudi were rehearsing the pas de deux from Act II of “Swan Lake,” the scene in which we first meet Odette; an evil sorcerer’s spell has left her a swan by day and a human by night. Prince Siegfried is poised to kill the swan, but then witnesses its transformation into a beautiful young woman. “It’s not that you turn her,” Kevin McKenzie, A.B.T.’s artistic director since 1992 and a former principal dancer, told Hammoudi. “It’s that she’s startled, so she turns to you.” In the movement they were practicing, Odette is downstage left and Prince Siegfried walks up behind her. Odette is naïve, uncannily beautiful, and destined to die, but she is also, in each production, a very particular dancer. McKenzie continued, “And then you’re near this creature, and you’re both surprised by your proximity.”
Although ballet fans never lack for darlings, rarely does a dancer become an old-fashioned star, one recognized outside the realm of people with nuanced opinions about the alternative endings to “Swan Lake.” But Misty Copeland, who is thirty-two, has not only performed some of the most coveted and challenging roles in classical ballet; she has also danced atop a grand piano during Prince’s 2010 Welcome 2 America tour and starred in a Diet Dr Pepper commercial, and, a few days before the “Swan Lake” rehearsal, was featured in a commercial for Under Armour that within a week of its release had more than four million views on YouTube. In the ad, a voice-over reads a rejection letter detailing why “the candidate” is not a good fit for ballet—the letter is a fiction, albeit one not unrelated to Copeland’s career—while Copeland, who is wearing a sports bra and underwear, slowly rises onto pointe. In chiaroscuro lighting that is usually reserved for boxers’ bodies, the camera focusses on Copeland’s substantial, sinewy musculature. “I Will What I Want” is the tagline; a billboard in SoHo features a similar muscles-and-determination image. While it is disheartening to be reminded that product endorsement is the strongest measure of mainstream success, it feels good to see a woman who is doing more than being pretty become the kind of idol commonly associated with the stars of ESPN. Most ballerinas don’t have pensions, they rarely dance past the age of forty (injuries often end their careers earlier than that), and a soloist at A.B.T. earns between fifty thousand and a hundred thousand dollars a year. The great Anna Pavlova endorsed Pond’s Vanishing Cream.
American Ballet Theatre is typically considered the best company for classical ballet in the nation. For it, Copeland has played the Firebird, in “Firebird” (think wild jumps); Swanilda, in “Coppélia” (dirndls and dolls); Gamzatti, in “La Bayadère” (fury and theophany); and Lescaut’s mistress, in “Manon” (blond wig and longing). This month, she played the lead in “Swan Lake,” the ballet equivalent of playing Hamlet for the Royal Shakespeare Company; in the course of two hours, the ballerina must become the supremely innocent Odette and the masterfully manipulative Odile, who is pretending to be Odette; of course, she must also be a swan. Copeland has danced with A.B.T. since 2001, and performed as a soloist since 2007, but until recently her important solo roles have largely been in relatively modern pieces; all her major roles in full-length ballets have been performed in the past two years. Following one after the other, her recent roles create the illusion of Copeland’s proceeding along a kind of inevitable music-box destiny, but her path to becoming a star ballerina has been as dramatic, unlikely, and hinged on coincidence as the plots of most ballets—the ones that have plots, anyway, like the classical ones she prefers, which require tremendous endurance and technical expertise to produce spectacles we associate with spun sugar.
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New York Times television critic Alessandra Stanley opened her latest piece with a line that made many readers recoil. New York Times: New York Times Television Critic Defends 'Angry Black Woman' Piece.
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Stanley examined the career of screenwriter and producer Shonda Rhimes, whose hit shows like "Grey's Anatomy" and "Scandal" have featured "a powerful, intimidating black woman."
Stanley, who is white, combined her subject's history with the title of a new ABC drama that Rhimes's company will produce to create a cringe-inducing lede.
"When Shonda Rhimes writes her autobiography, it should be called 'How to Get Away With Being an Angry Black Woman,'" Stanley wrote.
The line drew an extremely negative reaction on Twitter, including from Rhimes.
Not only did Rhimes take umbrage to the title of the faux autobiography, she pointed out that Stanley, a journalist with a long history of factual errors, failed to credit Pete Nowalk as the creator of the new series, "How to Get Away With Murder."
Stanley, however, told TPM in an email that she doesn't think the opening sentence — or the ensuing Twitter criticism — does her profile justice.
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A documentary filmmaker wants HBCUs to extend their historical mission of social justice to the success of their gay and transgender students. The Root: How HBCUs Respond to a Call for Inclusion of LGBT Students.
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or many who choose to attend an HBCU, the decision is about far more than just academics. Since the first HBCUs opened their doors in the years before the Civil War, they have offered black students an opportunity to pursue advanced studies in a space they can be certain will be supportive, welcoming and inclusive. It’s the very least that every student deserves, really—to be able to work, study and learn as part of a community that accepts them as they are.
Historically, the very act of fostering an atmosphere of support for black students has given HBCUs an indispensable role in the fight for civil rights. For many years, the work of providing HBCU students with an opportunity to achieve educational equality with their white peers was itself a political action. The goals of HBCUs have always been bigger than merely rewarding diligence with degrees. Their core missions have included social justice and civil rights, and they have long served as testaments of the right of all Americans to pursue higher learning.
That legacy is now in question. In recent years, as the movement for gay and transgender civil rights has gained traction, HBCUs have shown themselves to be relatively conservative in regard to lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender issues. While many majority-white colleges and universities have embraced the call for LGBT inclusion, HBCUs have been notably slow to extend their historical mission of social justice to the success of their LGBT students. Anecdotally and statistically, the majority of HBCUs have failed to create institutional supports that ensure LGBT-friendly campus environments.
According to the Campus Pride Index, of the country’s 106 HBCUs, just 21 percent have active LGBT-specific organizations, and just three include gender identity and expression in their nondiscrimination statements. All students struggle with coming-of-age issues around identity, sexuality and psychosocial development. Black LGBT students are often also coping with homophobia, stigmatization and discrimination based on their sexual orientation and/or gender identity, all of which can negatively impact their health and mental wellness.
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Voices and Soul
by Justice Putnam
Black Kos Poetry Editor
Being the son of a professional Historian, having a degree in History myself; I am both, amazed and appalled, by the blatant historical revisions and ignorance that is on display by the TeaBirchers© and their fellow travelers. From outright editing and distribution of Jefferson's Letter to the Danbury Baptists as a whole document, so as to support their dubious claims of the Founders being against the existence of a Wall between Church and State; to Fox News editing Obama's public exchanges so his presidency is diminished and marginalized.
Surely, if one has to lie to support an argument, the argument must not be very sound. What if we "edit" the lie out these discourses? What do we get? How about an honest assessment of where we came from:
What passes for identity in America is a series of myths about one's heroic ancestors. It's astounding to me, for example, that so many people really seem to believe that the country was founded by a band of heroes who wanted to be free. That happens not to be true. What happened was that some people left Europe because they couldn't stay there any longer and had to go someplace else to make it. They were hungry, they were poor, they were convicts.
-- James Baldwin
"A Talk to Teachers," Oct. 16, 1963
It is true that a Dream arose out of the disaffection experienced by those hungry, and poor, and convicted. It is true that tragedies and dangerous compromises occurred to make that Dream of America a possibility. Just let us not lie about where it was we came from and how it is we came to be who we are; let us look honestly to where our present is and where our future could be; let us not lie to make the Dream true. It is said, Knowledge is Power; and that is a sad truism when taking account of the axiom's terrible permutations. Ignorance though, masking itself as Knowledge, is not real Power; but real Ruination.
The only real course to stem this ruination then, is to embrace Knowledge and not Ignorance; to arm our minds and soul and activism against those corporate armies of propaganda, against those mobs of malice and hate; who in either, ignorance or guile, or both, would go to any means necessary than...
Let America Be America Again
Let America be America again.
Let it be the dream it used to be.
Let it be the pioneer on the plain
Seeking a home where he himself is free.
(America never was America to me.)
Let America be the dream the dreamers dreamed--
Let it be that great strong land of love
Where never kings connive nor tyrants scheme
That any man be crushed by one above.
(It never was America to me.)
O, let my land be a land where Liberty
Is crowned with no false patriotic wreath,
But opportunity is real, and life is free,
Equality is in the air we breathe.
(There's never been equality for me,
Nor freedom in this "homeland of the free.")
Say, who are you that mumbles in the dark?
And who are you that draws your veil across the stars?
I am the poor white, fooled and pushed apart,
I am the Negro bearing slavery's scars.
I am the red man driven from the land,
I am the immigrant clutching the hope I seek--
And finding only the same old stupid plan
Of dog eat dog, of mighty crush the weak.
I am the young man, full of strength and hope,
Tangled in that ancient endless chain
Of profit, power, gain, of grab the land!
Of grab the gold! Of grab the ways of satisfying need!
Of work the men! Of take the pay!
Of owning everything for one's own greed!
I am the farmer, bondsman to the soil.
I am the worker sold to the machine.
I am the Negro, servant to you all.
I am the people, humble, hungry, mean--
Hungry yet today despite the dream.
Beaten yet today--O, Pioneers!
I am the man who never got ahead,
The poorest worker bartered through the years.
Yet I'm the one who dreamt our basic dream
In the Old World while still a serf of kings,
Who dreamt a dream so strong, so brave, so true,
That even yet its mighty daring sings
In every brick and stone, in every furrow turned
That's made America the land it has become.
O, I'm the man who sailed those early seas
In search of what I meant to be my home--
For I'm the one who left dark Ireland's shore,
And Poland's plain, and England's grassy lea,
And torn from Black Africa's strand I came
To build a "homeland of the free."
The free?
Who said the free? Not me?
Surely not me? The millions on relief today?
The millions shot down when we strike?
The millions who have nothing for our pay?
For all the dreams we've dreamed
And all the songs we've sung
And all the hopes we've held
And all the flags we've hung,
The millions who have nothing for our pay--
Except the dream that's almost dead today.
O, let America be America again--
The land that never has been yet--
And yet must be--the land where every man is free.
The land that's mine--the poor man's, Indian's, Negro's, ME--
Who made America,
Whose sweat and blood, whose faith and pain,
Whose hand at the foundry, whose plow in the rain,
Must bring back our mighty dream again.
Sure, call me any ugly name you choose--
The steel of freedom does not stain.
From those who live like leeches on the people's lives,
We must take back our land again,
America!
O, yes,
I say it plain,
America never was America to me,
And yet I swear this oath--
America will be!
Out of the rack and ruin of our gangster death,
The rape and rot of graft, and stealth, and lies,
We, the people, must redeem
The land, the mines, the plants, the rivers.
The mountains and the endless plain--
All, all the stretch of these great green states--
And make America again!
-- Langston Hughes
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