Category Archives: Literature, Journalism and Black Writers

Chinua Achebe, African Literary Titan, Dies at 82 : The iroko has fallen.

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Chinua Achebe, African Literary Titan, Dies at 82

 The iroko has fallen.

Craig Ruttle/Associated Press

Chinua Achebe, a Nigerian-born novelist and poet, at home on the campus of Bard College in Annandale-on-Hudson, New York, in 2008.

By JONATHAN KANDELL

From the NYT

Published: March 22, 2013

Chinua Achebe, the Nigerian writer who was one of Africa’s most widely read novelists and one of the continent’s towering men of letters, has died after a brief illness, his publisher and agent said in London on Friday. He was 82.

Few details were immediately available.

Besides novels, Mr. Achebe’s works included powerful essays and poignant short stories and poems rooted in the countryside and cities of his native Nigeria, before and after independence from British colonial rule. His most memorable fictional characters were buffeted and bewildered by the conflicting pulls of traditional African culture and invasive Western values.

For inspiration, Mr. Achebe drew on his own family history as part of the Ibo nation of southeastern Nigeria, a people victimized by the racism of British colonial administrators and then by the brutality of military dictators from other Nigerian ethnic groups.

Mr. Achebe burst onto the world literary scene with the publication in 1958 of his first novel, “Things Fall Apart,” which sold millions of copies and was translated into 45 different languages.

Set in the Ibo countryside in the late 19th century, the novel tells the story of Okonkwo, who rises from poverty to become an affluent farmer and village leader. But with the advent of British colonial rule and cultural values, Okonkwo’s life is thrown into turmoil. In the end, unable to adapt to the new status quo, he explodes in frustration, killing an African in the employ of the British and then committing suicide.

The novel, which is also compelling for its descriptions of traditional Ibo society and rituals, went on to become a classic of world literature and was often listed as required reading in university courses in Europe and the United States.

But when it was first published, “Things Fall Apart” did not receive unanimous acclaim. Some British critics thought it idealized pre-colonial African culture at the expense of the former empire.

“An offended and highly critical English reviewer in a London Sunday paper titled her piece cleverly, I must admit Hurray to Mere Anarchy!” wrote Mr. Achebe in “Home and Exile,” a collection of autobiographical essays that appeared in 2000. A few other novels by Mr. Achebe early in his career were occasionally criticized by reviewers as being stronger on ideology than on narrative interest.

But over the years, Mr. Achebe’s stature grew until he was considered a literary and political beacon.

“In all Achebe’s writing there is an intense moral energy,” observed Kwame Anthony Appiah, professor of Afro-American studies and philosophy at Princeton, in a commentary written in 2000. “He speaks about the task of the writer in language that captures the sense of threat and loss that must have faced many Africans as empire invaded and disrupted their lives.”

In a 1998 New York Times book review, the novelist Nadine Gordimer hailed Mr. Achebe as “a novelist who makes you laugh and then catch your breath in horror — a writer who has no illusions but is not disillusioned.”

Mr. Achebe’s political thinking evolved from blaming colonial rule for Africa’s woes to frank criticism of African rulers and of citizens who tolerated their corruption and violence.

Forced abroad by Nigeria’s bloody civil war in the 1960s and then by military dictatorship in the 1980s and 1990s, Mr. Achebe had lived for many years in the United States, where he was a university professor. But he continued to believe that writers and storytellers ultimately held more power than army strongmen.

“Only the story can continue beyond the war and the warrior,” an old soothsayer observes in Mr. Achebe’s 1988 novel, “Anthills of the Savannah.” “It is the story that saves our progeny from blundering like blind beggars into the spikes of the cactus fence. The story is our escort; without it, we are blind.”

Above from the NYT

MORE INFORMATION ABOUT THIS GREAT AUTHOR AND SCHOLAR

A KING HAS TRANSITIONED…LAST NIGHT IN BOSTON, MASS.

The iroko has fallen.

A Great One has passed over today.

“Things Fall Apart” tells two intertwining stories, both centering on Okonkwo, a “strong man” of an Ibo village in Nigeria. The first, a powerful fable of the immemorial conflict between the individual and society, traces Okonkwo’s fall from grace with the tribal world. The second, as modern as the first is ancient, concerns the clash of cultures and the destruction of Okonkwo’s world with the arrival of aggressive European missionaries. These perfectly harmonized twin dramas are informed by an awareness capable of encompassing at once the life of nature, human history, and the mysterious compulsions of the soul.”

Chinua Achebe (Nov 16, 1930-Mar 22, 2013).

HAVE YOU READ FROM HIS BOOKS! ONE IS “WHEN THINGS FALL APART” Comfort&Courage.

Chinua Achebe Biography

Today in History: We mourn the death of literary great and activist Prof Chinua Achebe, 82. He died in the United States where he was said to have suffered from an undisclosed ailment. He died last night in a hospital in Boston, Massachusetts, United States.
A source close to the family said the professor had been ill for a while and was hospitalized in a hospital in Boston.

Until his death, the renowned author of Things Fall Apart was the David and Marianna Fisher University Professor and Professor of Africana Studies at Brown. The University described him as “known the world over for having played a seminal role in the founding and development of African literature.”

“Achebe’s global significance lies not only in his talent and recognition as a writer, but also as a critical thinker and essayist who has written extensively on questions of the role of culture in Africa and the social and political significance of aesthetics and analysis of the postcolonial state in Africa,” Brown University writes of the literary icon.

Mr. Achebe was the author of Things Fall Apart, published in 1958, and considered the most widely read book in modern African Literature. The book sold over 12 million copies and has been translated to over 50 languages worldwide. Many of his other novels, including Arrow of God, No Longer at Ease, Anthills of the Savannah, and A man of the People, were equally influential as well.

Prof Achebe was born in Ogidi, Anambra State, on November 16, 1930 and attended St Philips’ Central School at the age of six. He moved away from his family to Nekede, four kilometres from Owerri, the capital of Imo State, at the age of 12 and registered at the Central School there. He attended Government College Umuahia for his secondary school education. He was a pioneer student of the University College, now University of Ibadan in 1948. He was first admitted to study medicine but changed to English, history and theology after his first year.
While studying at Ibadan, Mr. Achebe began to become critical of European literature about Africa. He eventually wrote his final papers in the University in 1953 and emerged with a second-class degree.

Prof Achebe taught for a while after graduation before joining the Nigeria Broadcasting Service in 1954 in Lagos. While in Lagos with the Broadcasting Service, Mr. Achebe met Christie Okoli, who later became his wife; they got married in 1961. The couple had four children. He also played a major role during the Nigeria Civil War where he joined the Biafran Government as an ambassador.

Mr. Achebe was a consistent critic of various military dictators that ruled Nigeria and was a loud voice in denouncing the failure of governance in the country. Twice, he rejected offers by the Nigerian government to grant him a national honor, citing the deplorable political situations in the country, particularly in his home state of Anambra, as reason…

This is a great loss to not only the literary world, but to humanity! His legacy will live on in his work. May he ‘ascend’ in peace! 

Here’s he is on CNN’s African Voices

African voices tv program on CNN interviewed Nigerian writer Chinua Achebe

I Bear Witness l Beneath the Spin * Eric L. Wattree

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Beneath the Spin * Eric L. Wattree

I Bear Witness

.

I sit, I watch,
and I grow ever more obsolete
as I bear witness.
.
I bear witness

to a once vibrant people greedily gulping down society’s hemlock. Even as they claim to be “keeping it real,“ they continue to maim, kill, and despise their own in hot pursuit of the prime directive with the passion of a sheetless klan.
.
I bear witness
to Black fists in the air in false solidarity promoted by self-serving poverty pimps as the world looks on and giggle at crooked fingers pointed elsewhere.
.
I bear witness
to the superficial attempt to ban the “N-word” while the new “un-niggas” stand around watching children killing children and fathers drugging sons, as they celebrate, lionize, and enrich those who denigrate the very womb of their culture with impunity.
.
I bear witness
to a generation of lost knowledge, cut off from its roots by Ronnie’s “Just say no” generation of crack, greed, death, and political corruption; A generation where the new N-word is pronounced “Responsibility” and the keepers of the flame completely ignore the destructive power of bitch, slut, whore, and tramp.
.
I bear witness
to the reckless disregard of the words uneducated, irresponsible, and classless. Should we not ban these words as well, or should we ban banning words altogether as we celebrate their meaning?
.
Yes, I do bear witness.
I bear witness to a new world –
a world where gross ignorance comes disguised as enlightenment, and funky sneakers look down with disdain upon the sweet smell of Florsheim; a world where saggin’ pants and gaudy glitter enable country bumpkins to masquerade as elegant, and the exquisite surrender of eloquence is the very essence of what it means to be hip.
.
Where’s Langston? Where’s Baldwin? Where’s Oscar Brown, Jr?
We need you stormin’ this beach, because . . .
.
I now bear witness
to a world where motherhood stands alone, to be “dope” renders a smile, and posterity is forced to embrace the wind for paternal sustenance; A world where the walking dead strut about rapping the wisdom of idiocy, and we praise the illiteracy of vulgar nursery rhymes as profound; a world where the mother of salvation’s final gasp is compared to the pigmentation of brown paper bags.
.
Malcolm, Martin, where are you?
I once stood with a crowd. Now seemingly alone, I’m forced to bear witness –
horrific witness . . .
to the imminent demise of our people,
.

And my heart bleeds.
.
.

Eric L. Wattree
http://wattree.blogspot.com/
Ewattree@Gmail.com
Citizens Against Reckless Middle-Class Abuse (CARMA)

Religious bigotry: It’s not that I hate everyone who doesn’t look, think, and act like me – it’s just that God does

OCG Black History Note: 10 African-American Authors Everyone Should Read

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2/18/2012 @ 11:10AM |

10 African-American Authors Everyone Should Read

Frederick Douglass    Frederick Douglass (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

The majestic Maya Angelou, whom I met years ago at San Francisco’sGlide Memorial Church, once remarked, “There is no greater agony than bearing an untold story inside you.” Sadly, this agony was once common to millions of African-Americans, whose stories often went untold or unheard, let alone published and read by the world.

Nevertheless, many inspiring and irreplaceable voices heroically surfaced over the years. They belong in the canon of great American authors not solely because of their race, but because they deftly address the perennial concerns of all humanity.

It’s Black History Month, in case you forgot. Not Taiwanese-American NBA Basketball Player Appreciation Month (read: Linsanity), as it might appear from news reports. In that spirit, below find ten African-American authors whose works should rest prominently on every educated American’s bookshelf (or Amazon Kindle,Barnes and Noble Nook, or Apple iPad). Moreover, please consider these authors for great books discussion groups, not just in February, but also every month of the year.

To punctuate their support of Black History Month, Questia is offering a reference work about each author below completely free for a month. See the link after each description.

The Ten Most-Read African-American Authors:

1. Langston Hughes was an American poet, novelist and playwright. He is best known for his work during the 1920s Harlem Renaissance. With famous poems such as “The Negro Speaks of Rivers,” and Crotty fave, “Let America Be America Again,” Hughes proudly depicted the lives of poor blacks through the invention of what was called “jazz poetry.” Factoid: my Monk Media client, jazz label Motema Records, was formerly located inside Harlem’s Langston Hughes House. Free reference work: [Arnold Rampersad, ed. The Collected Works of Langston Hughes. Donald B. Gibson, Author.]

2. Richard Wright authored what were considered “controversial” novels in his time, including Crotty fave Native Son. In 1945, Wright penned the best-seller Black Boy, a seminal portrayal of one black man’s search for self-actualization in a racist society. It paved the way for other successful black writers. Free Reference Work: [“Shouting Curses”: the politics of “bad” language in Richard Wright’s ‘Black Boy.’ Jennifer H. Poulos, Author.]

3. Toni Morrison is a Nobel Prize and Pulitzer Prize-winning American novelist. She is celebrated for novels with epic themes and richly detailed characters, such as in The Bluest Eye, Song of Solomon and Beloved. Though, for better or worse, Ms. Morrison is best known for her memorable, though misunderstood, quote, “Bill Clinton is our first black president.” Free Reference Work:  [Toni Morrison’s World of Fiction. Karen Carmean, Author.]

4. Zora Neale Hurston was an American folklorist, anthropologist, and author of four novels and over fifty short stories, plays and essays. Her novel Their Eyes Were Watching God was written during her fieldwork in Haiti with the Guggenheim Foundation, which provides grants to professionals in the creative arts. Free Reference Work: [Zora Neale Hurston and a History of Southern Life. Lori Robison, Author.]

5. Frederick Douglass was a strong public speaker and, after escaping from slavery, prominent leader in the abolitionist movement. Douglass also authored several compelling autobiographies that detailed his experiences in slavery. He served as a striking counter-example to slaveholders’ claims that blacks did not have the intellectual capacity to function as free and independent citizens. Free Reference Work: [Life and Times of Frederick Douglass: His Early Life as a Slave, His Escape from Bondage, and His Complete History. Frederick Douglass, Author.]

6. Alice Walker is an author and activist, best known for the critically acclaimed novel The Color Purple, for which she was awarded a Pulitzer Prize. It was turned into a successful Steven Spielberg film co-starringOprah Winfrey, and later into an excellent Broadway musical. Walker was involved in the Civil Rights movement and participated in the 1963 March on Washington. Free reference work: [Alice Walker: ‘Color Purple’ Author Confronts Her Critics and Talks about Her Provocative New Book. Charles Whitaker, Author.]

7. W.E.B. Du Bois was the first African-American to earn a doctorate from Harvard. He was a member of the early 20th century African-American intellectual elite and helped increase black political representation. He was a co-founder of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) and served as editor for its magazine, The Crisis, to which he contributed many essays. Free reference work: [The Souls of W.E.B. Du Bois: New Essays and Reflections. Lawrence A. Burnley, Author.]

8. Ralph Ellison was a literary critic, scholar and writer. He wrote Shadow and Act, a collection of political, social and critical essays. He served as a professor at Rutgers University and Yale University. In addition, he received a National Book Award in 1953 for his book Invisible Man, which was chosen in 1998 by the Modern Library Association as one of the top 100 Best English-language Novels of the 20th Century. Invisible Man ranked 19th, ahead of Richard Wright’s Native Son at 20th. Free Reference Work: [Heroism and the Black Intellectual- Ralph Ellison, Politics, and Afro-American Intellectual Life. Jeffrey Gaffio Watts, Author.]

9. August Wilson is an American playwright best known for The Pittsburgh Cycle (often referred to as his “Century Cycle”), which consists of ten plays set in different decades highlighting the black experience throughout the 20th century. Free Reference Work: [Raising the Curtain Again. Phil W. Petrie, Author.]

10. James Baldwin was a novelist, poet and essayist. He explored the unspoken intricacies of racial, sexual and class distinctions in Western societies throughout 20th century America. His novel, Go Tell It On the Mountain, ranked 39th on the MLA list. Free Reference Work: [Contemporary African American Novelists: A Bio-Bibliographical Critical Sourcebook. Emmanuel S. Nelson, Editor.]

Let me know what you think in the Comments area below. Moreover, feel free to track me on Twitter, friend me on Facebook, and follow me on Forbes to receive regular dispatches from the front lines of global education. I am also launching email newsletters on Education, Politics, Culture, and Travel. In addition to summaries and article links, Crotty Newsletter subscribers will receive breaking and market-making news before anyone else. My “Crotty on Education” newsletter, in particular, will include links to videos and podcasts by experts in the field, high-level research reports, plus the invaluable Crotty on Education Stock Index. You can subscribe to Crotty Newsletters here: www.jamescrotty.com/newsletter.html

The American Case Against a Black Middle Class l TA-NEHISI COATES l The Atlantic

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The American Case Against a Black Middle Class

 JAN 22 2013 

I went on a Twitter rant yesterday because I’d finished Isabel Wilkerson’s phenomenal The Warmth Of Other Suns. The book is a narrative history of the Great Migration through the eyes of actual migrants. Several points stick out for me.

1) The Great Migration was not an influx of illiterate, bedraggled, lazy have-nots. Wilkerson marshalls a wealth of social science data showing that the migrants were generally better educated than their Northern brethren, more likely to stay married, and more likely to stay employed. In fact, in some cases, black migrants were better educated than their Northern white neighbors.
2) In this sense, the migrants to Northern cities resembled immigrant classes to whom black people in these same cities are often unfavorably compared to. There’s a quote in Wilkerson’s book which I can’t find where a supervisor basically says that blacks are the favored workers because they will work hard at the worst jobs for relatively little money. You would have thought the guy was talking about Hispanic farm-hands today.
3) The black migrants were not immigrants. They were citizens of this country who did not enjoy its full protection. Unlike other immigrant classes, blacks were never able to cash in on their hard work and middle-class values. For all of their work-ethic, education-valuing, and long-term marriages, they received the worst wages in the worst jobs, were limited to the worst housing, and stuffed in the worst schools.
4) What becomes clear by the end of Wilkerson’s book is that America’s response to the Great Migration was to enact a one-sided social contract. America says to its citizens, “Play by the rules, and you will enjoy the right to compete.” The black migrants did play by the rules, but they did not enjoy the right to compete. Black people have been repeatedly been victimized by the half-assed social contract. It goes back, at least, to Reconstruction.
5) The half-assed social contract continues to this very day with policies under the present administration, like the bail-out of banks that left the homeowners whom the banks conned underwater. The results of the housing crisis for black people have been devastating. The response is to hector these people about playing video games and watching too much television. Or to tell them they’ve have “an achievement gap.” It is sickening, dishonest, and morally repugnant.
6) America does not really want a black middle class. Some of the most bracing portions of Wilkerson’s book involve the vicious attacks on black ambition. When a black family in Chicago saves up enough to move out of the crowded slums into Cicero, the neighborhood riots. The father had saved for years for a piano for his kids. The people of Cicero tossed the piano out the window, looted his home, torched his apartment and then torched his building. In the South, when black people attempted to leave to earn better wages, they were often forcibly detained, and thus kept in slavery as late as the 1950s.
On a policy level, there is a persistent strain wherein efforts to aid The People are engineered in such a way wherein they help black people a lot less. It is utterly painful to read about the New Deal being left in the hands of Southern governments which were hostile to black people, and then to today see a significant chunk of health care, again, left in the hands of Southern governments which are hostile to black people.  At this point, such efforts no longer require open bigotry. They are simply built into the system.
7) “That the Negro American has survived at all, is extraordinary.” That is from the Moynihan report, which neo-liberals are fond of touting, while ignoring the report’s lengthy policy recommendations.
8) Get the book. Read it now. Today is too late.

 – Ta-Nehisi Coates is a senior editor at The Atlantic, where he writes about culture, politics, and social issues for TheAtlantic.com and the magazine. He is the author of the memoir The Beautiful Struggle. More


A Rock, A River, A Tree l Maya Angelou

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cropped-sunset

A Rock, A River, A Tree

Inaugural Poem

Maya Angelou
20 January 1993

A Rock, A River, A Tree
Hosts to species long since departed,
Marked the mastodon.The dinosaur, who left dry tokens
Of their sojourn here
On our planet floor,
Any broad alarm of their hastening doom
Is lost in the gloom of dust and ages.

But today, the Rock cries out to us, clearly, forcefully,
Come, you may stand upon my
Back and face your distant destiny,
But seek no haven in my shadow.

I will give you no more hiding place down here.

You, created only a little lower than
The angels, have crouched too long in
The bruising darkness,
Have lain too long
Face down in ignorance.

Your mouths spilling words
Armed for slaughter.

The Rock cries out today, you may stand on me,
But do not hide your face.

Across the wall of the world,
A River sings a beautiful song,
Come rest here by my side.

Each of you a bordered country,
Delicate and strangely made proud,
Yet thrusting perpetually under siege.

Your armed struggles for profit
Have left collars of waste upon
My shore, currents of debris upon my breast.

Yet, today I call you to my riverside,
If you will study war no more. Come,

Clad in peace and I will sing the songs
The Creator gave to me when I and the
Tree and the stone were one.

Before cynicism was a bloody sear across your
Brow and when you yet knew you still
Knew nothing.

The River sings and sings on.

There is a true yearning to respond to
The singing River and the wise Rock.

So say the Asian, the Hispanic, the Jew
The African and Native American, the Sioux,
The Catholic, the Muslim, the French, the Greek
The Irish, the Rabbi, the Priest, the Sheikh,
The Gay, the Straight, the Preacher,
The privileged, the homeless, the Teacher.
They hear. They all hear
The speaking of the Tree.

Today, the first and last of every Tree
Speaks to humankind. Come to me, here beside the River.

Plant yourself beside me, here beside the River.

Each of you, descendant of some passed
On traveller, has been paid for.

You, who gave me my first name, you
Pawnee, Apache and Seneca, you
Cherokee Nation, who rested with me, then
Forced on bloody feet, left me to the employment of
Other seekers–desperate for gain,
Starving for gold.

You, the Turk, the Swede, the German, the Scot …
You the Ashanti, the Yoruba, the Kru, bought
Sold, stolen, arriving on a nightmare
Praying for a dream.

Here, root yourselves beside me.

I am the Tree planted by the River,
Which will not be moved.

I, the Rock, I the River, I the Tree
I am yours–your Passages have been paid.

Lift up your faces, you have a piercing need
For this bright morning dawning for you.

History, despite its wrenching pain,
Cannot be unlived, and if faced
With courage, need not be lived again.

Lift up your eyes upon
The day breaking for you.

Give birth again
To the dream.

Women, children, men,
Take it into the palms of your hands.

Mold it into the shape of your most
Private need. Sculpt it into
The image of your most public self.
Lift up your hearts
Each new hour holds new chances
For new beginnings.

Do not be wedded forever
To fear, yoked eternally
To brutishness.

The horizon leans forward,
Offering you space to place new steps of change.
Here, on the pulse of this fine day
You may have the courage
To look up and out upon me, the
Rock, the River, the Tree, your country.

No less to Midas than the mendicant.

No less to you now than the mastodon then.

Here on the pulse of this new day
You may have the grace to look up and out
And into your sister’s eyes, into
Your brother’s face, your country
And say simply
Very simply
With hope
Good morning.

The Universe Bends Towards Justice l A talk by Obery M. Hendricks Jr., the Author

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First Corinthians Baptist Church, Sanctuary Auditorium

A talk by Obery M. Hendricks Jr. on his new book, The Universe Bends Towards Justice. It includes essays on the gap between the spirituality of the church and of Jesus; the ways in which contemporary gospel music sensationalize today’s churches into social and political irrelevance; and how the economic policies espoused by the religious right betray the same biblical tradition they claim to hold dear.

Obery M. Hendricks Jr.  is a Visiting Scholar in Religion and African American Studies at Columbia and author of The Politics of Jesus.

Watch Here

Co-sponsored with Institute for Research in African-American Studies.

Presented by KineticsLive.com

‘Django Unchained’ Action Figure Stokes Debate l Richard Prince

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Richard Prince

‘Django Unchained’ Action Figure Stokes Debate

Among journalists, reactions to the toys were mostly a version of “Oh, no, they didn’t!”

Django Unchained action figures (blackyouthproject.com)

Some Editors Failed to See No-Brainer Story

The controversy over Quentin Tarantino‘s “Django Unchained,” in which slavery is the backdrop for a spaghetti Western, ratcheted up a notch over the weekend when freelance entertainment journalist Karu F. Daniels, writing in the Daily Beast, reported that the movie characters — slaves and slavemaster — are being marketed as action figures.

“Little White kids can play Calvin J. Candie and make Django and Stephen ‘Mandingo fight’ or they act like they’re selling Broomhilda or just call them ‘nigger’ all day long. The possibilities are endless,” Columbus, Ohio, blogger Jeff Winbush wrote on Facebook when he heard the news.

On amazon.com Monday, a customer reviewer identified as E. Tucker wrote:

“I have to say, I never in my wildest dreams would I have imagined that, unlike myself, my kids would someday have the opportunity to re-enact America’s slave trade the way my great-grandfather did!  How exciting for them! Never mind those silly dolls showing racial equality and putting “black americans” (hah! is that the word we want to really use here?) in a positive light — no! With this, my kids can experience first-hand what it might have been like to own their very own slave! . . . ”

By Monday, Hassan Hartley of Chicago had started a petition on change.org asking Tarantino to “Stop the sale and distribution of ‘slave’ action figures.” And in Los Angeles, “A coalition of civil rights and African-American community leaders,” led by Najee Ali of Project Islamic Hope, planned a news conference for Tuesday calling for a national boycott of the action figures, EURWeb.com reported.

As news, the story was a no-brainer, right? Wrong, Daniels told Journal-isms. “This story shouldn’t have been ignored — especially by editors at mainstream outlets,” he said by email. “i was even shocked. I pitched this two weeks ago to prominent ‘news’ outlets. so happy the Daily Beast editor (who’s British) GOT IT.” The British editor was Gabe Doppelt; Daniels wouldn’t identify those who turned it down, saying he still does business with them.

Asked for comment, the Daily Beast provided this statement from Allison Samuels, the senior writer who edited the piece:

“An action figure made of a black man, real or fictitious is not something that happens every day so we felt it was well worth discussing. Given the controversy already swirling around ‘Django’ taking a deeper look at a doll based on a freed slave has certainly been of great interest to our readers on The Daily Beast.”

Here’s how the story made it online, as Daniels explained it in an email:

“I got a press release about the product line/partnership a few months before the movie came out, but seeing the actual images of them later on took it to another level. I didn’t see the movie until after it opened. I’m noSpike Lee, but something about it didn’t sit too right with me,” Daniels said.

“And I like some of Tarantino’s stuff and love the actors’ works. But the idea of dolls — which were put on sale a week before — stirred something inside of me. Granted, there’s an ‘action figure’ of the Brad Pitt character from ‘Inglourious Basterds.’ I saw that was selling for $700. But he wasn’t a slave. Certain types of people can try to rationalize it how they want to, but the fact remains: none of those characters in Tarantino’s other movies were slaves.

“If you want take [a] light and lively approach to the ‘idea of these dolls,’ Django could work (he was free, kicking ass and taking names throughout most of the movie. But Stephen and Broomhilda weren’t. And that’s not funny.)

“The radio silence about the dolls was quite jarring, to say the least. I’m always encouraged to pitch pieces that are ‘broad’ and ‘timely’ to editors. And you can’t get no more broad and timely than this piece. Hollywood and the entertainment media have had a romantic love affair with this movie. People can form their own opinions why. So it’s pretty obvious why some outlets wouldn’t touch it. And The Weinstein Company spent a lot of dollars in advertising. But the facts are the facts. The dolls were made and marketed in tandem with a controversial movie about slavery.”

In his Daily Beast story, Daniels wrote, “. . . Last fall, the National Entertainment Collectibles Association, Inc. (NECA), in tandem with the Weinstein Company, announced a full line of consumer products based on characters from the movie. . . . After repeated attempts to get someone to go on record about the collection, NECA spokesperson Leonardo Saraceni declined to make anyone available, would not comment and referred all queries to the Weinstein Company. No one at the Weinstein Company was available for comment by deadline and no one responded to questions posed.”

Daniels continued for Journal-isms, “In a sense, I understand why publicists from the movie studio and toy company wouldn’t speak, but getting some of our folks to talk was another ball of wax. I reached out to many talking heads, pundits and self-styled image experts, who I thought would’ve been perfect for the piece. All silent.

“At first I thought it was the holiday weekend. But it’s 2013. People are more accessible than ever before. How do you think I corralled an Academy Award winner (Louis Gossett, Jr.) and a real, legendary image activist (Bethann Hardison). I was told by a black film expert that they couldn’t talk to me for the piece because they didn’t want to infuriate Harvey Weinstein.

“Another told me, ‘oh, it’s just a movie. It’s just toys.’ Contrast always makes a great story and I was really hoping for more of a reaction from some but it’s like what Nick Charles (a former boss) used to say to me, ‘everyone is always waiting for the shoe to drop.’ And once the story finally went live on Sunday, the social networks were ablaze.”

. . . Movie’s Critics Say, “Oh, No, They Didn’t!”

Among journalists, the most common reaction to the news of the “Django Unchained” action figures was a version of “oh, no, they didn’t!”

Journal-isms asked some who had written or otherwise opined about director Quentin Tarantino’s so-called “revenge fantasy” whether the existence of the action figures should change one’s opinion about the movie and/or the phenomenon. They replied by email:

Amy Alexander, media writer

News of the “Django Unchained” ‘action figures’ creates a bad taste, doesn’t it? Even if it is the case that the studio marketing division cooked up this ‘tie in,’ it still ultimately circles back to the creative team behind the film itself, in particular Tarantino. At the very least, it is in poor taste, considering the fact that the bondage of blacks is the main theme of the story. It does make you wonder who officially ‘green-lit’ such a dubious and insulting marketing strategy. And correctly or not, it feeds the escalating criticism of Tarantino as an out of control hipster who thinks he gets ‘the Black Thing’ but doesn’t really.

Amy Alexander website: Three Ways of Considering Tarantino’s “Django Unchained”

Jelani Cobb, associate professor of history and director of the Institute of African American Studies, University of Connecticut

It doesn’t change my opinion of the movie since I thought the film was exploitative of slavery in the first place. I do think this adds a new level of distaste. It should be fairly obvious that making slave action figures is problematic. That the studio didn’t recognize this supports my belief that this director lacked the sensitivity to handle a project like this.

Jelani Cobb, the New Yorker: Tarantino Unchained (Jan. 2)

Jarvis DeBerry, columnist, NOLA.com | the Times-Picayune, New Orleans

In his book “Why Black People Tend to Shout,” Ralph Wiley talks about taking a field trip from school — I think it was to the circus — and being sold a Confederate battle flag that he proudly waved all the way back home. When he walked into the house, his mother took a match and incinerated it.

I wish I had a story as dramatic, but I don’t. I seem to recall a Hot Wheels car in my house — OK, in my room — that had the Confederate flag logo on it. It was the General Lee of “Dukes of Hazard” fame. I bring that up to say that I guess there’s a history of regrettable images fashioned into toys.

I’m going to link to this email a column I wrote a while back not about toys but about play, and how even that can be fraught for black children.

I wouldn’t necessarily mind the figure of Django being sold as an action figure, but if you sell Django, it would seem to me, you’d have to sell his nemeses. And in that, you’re going to run into problems. Who’s going to buy the white action figures? White children? And do we really want them to play the role of little budding slave owners? And if black children buy the white slave owner figures, then we got a whole ‘nother problem on our hands.

I don’t know that this information changes my mind about the movie itself. There’s enough reason already to raise eyebrows at Tarantino. But it does make me shake my head and wish somebody had — to borrow a line from Blazing Saddles — cut this off at the pass.

Jarvis DeBerry, NOLA.com | The Times-Picayune: ‘Django’ expresses an anger not every filmmaker can show(Dec. 31)

Tony Norman, columnist, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

I think I dislike the film even more, now . . . LOL! Action figures? Really? A Stephen doll? I know there’s an unseemly nostalgia in some quarters for Jim Crow and slavery-related collectibles, but this is ridiculous. This is either a very elaborate joke or a sign that we’re on the verge of losing our collective minds. This is what happens when we go out of our way not to talk about race. The conversation we should be having gets sublimated into soul sucking nonsense like this. Who will buy this? Irony-drenched white hipsters? Blacks with non-existent self-esteem? Clueless movie nerds? If nothing else avails itself, I’ll write a parody column for Friday. Tomorrow’s column is already written.

Tony Norman, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette: ‘Django’ tells tale missing real slave history (Dec. 25)

Ishmael Reed, poet, novelist, cultural critic

It’s like a virtual slave auction and shows that Weinstein and Co. will go to any length to make money from this vile film, which, like “Amistad,” “Lincoln” and “Django Unchained” has blacks as onlookers, while whites debate their fate, when, without black direct action, there would have been no Emancipation. My idea for an action figure would be one showing [Jamie] Foxx carrying [Leonardo] Di Caprio and [Christoph] Waltz on his back, because they’re getting all of the nominations, while, so far, Foxx and Kerry Washington are receiving none. This latest racist travesty is not unique in Hollywood, which makes you wonder why there has been no outcry about segregated Hollywood’s receiving over $400 million in tax write-offs, while the latest figures show $10 billion in earnings.

Finally, the spin from Weinstein Co. is that this movie is similar to Tarantino’s other mess, “Inglorious Basterds.” Not so. In “Django Unchained,” the leader of the state, “Hitler,” is murdered. Foxx does not get to murder the prospective confederate president Jefferson Davis. That would have turned off southern audiences, who have had a veto over Hollywood content for decades. [W.E.B.] Du Bois, [Marcus] Garvey and Walter White would turn over in their graves to see this thing nominated for awards by the NAACP.

Ishmael Reed, Wall Street Journal: Black Audiences, White Stars and ‘Django Unchained’ (Dec. 28)

Touré, co-host, “The Cycle,” MSNBC; contributor, Time magazine

I will never understand how Django action figures are somehow over the line for some people.

Touré, blog: Django Unchained is a heroic love story (Dec. 24)

Touré, “The Cycle,” MSNBC: America is ready for ‘Django Unchained’ (video)

Jeff Winbush, blogger, Columbus, Ohio:

I broke down, woke up Saturday morning, grabbed my son and went off to catch a screening of Django Unchained, Quentin Tarantino‘s mash-up of spaghetti westerns, blaxploitation films and revenge fantasies. I came out two hours and 45 minutes later feeling it wasn’t Tarantino’s best and it wasn’t his worst. It was okay. Nothing more. It certainly never rose above pure escapist fare. I have no problem with junk food movies, but let’s not pretend like Tarantino has anything new, fresh or original to say about race or slavery. He just knows how to kill the maximum number of cartoon bigots in the most graphic way possible.

However, the Django action figures go far beyond bad taste. It’s not kitsch. It’s not memorabilia. It’s not a gag. It’s making a buck off the backs of Black people and it’s insensitive as hell at best and borderline racist at worst.

Tarantino’s status as a White Hipster who is down with the brothers and sisters has been reaffirmed by the enthusiastic support of African-American audiences for Django Unchained. Goody-goody gumdrops for him. But he has no ghetto pass to profiteer from America’s original Holocaust and even if it means I won’t be considered one of the cool kids, I refuse to join the stampede to anoint Tarantino as some great thinker on the Original Sin.

He’s not. He’s just another race hustler.

Jeff Winbush blog: “Django” Is Solid Entertainment, But Lousy History (Jan. 6)

Jeff Winbush blog: Quentin Tarantino: Slave Profiteer (Jan. 7)

There’s more:

Charles M. Blow, New York Times: Escaping Slavery

Rembert Browne, Grantland: Django, the N-Word, and How We Talk About Race in 2013

Kenya N. Byrd, BlackAmericaWeb.com: Django: More Than Just Another Slavery Movie

Rebecca Carroll, Good: ‘Django Unchained’: Quentin Tarantino’s Misappropriation of the N-Word (Dec. 18)

Courtney Garcia, the Grio: Hollywood Unchained: Will the success of ‘Django’ spawn more slave epics?

Sherry Howard blog: The error of asking “Django” to save black people

Eugene Kane, Milwaukee Journal Sentinel: Slavery as fantasy in ‘Django’

Daniella Gibbs Léger, Essence: ‘Django’: What If a Black Director Had Pitched It?

Newsweek: Tavis Smiley on Quentin Tarantino’s Django Unchained

Rashod Ollison, Virginian-Pilot, Norfolk, Va.: All the n-word outrage over ‘Django’ misses the point (Jan. 8)

Allison Samuels, Daily Beast: Spike Lee’s Dissing of ‘Django Unchained’ Earns Both Ire and Indifference

Adam Serwer, Mother Jones: In Defense of Django

Freed Slaves Died by Thousands From Diseases

The commemoration of the 150th anniversary of the Emancipation Proclamation got underway around the nation on Jan. 1, but the humanitarian crisis created when the slaves were liberated escaped most accounts.

“As former slaves left their places of servitude behind, they entered a world of freedom, but also a war zone devastated by disease, poverty and death,” Jim Downs, an associate professor of history at Connecticut College, wrote Sunday in the Sunday Review section of the New York Times.

“More soldiers, as Ric Burns’s recent documentary, ‘Death and the Civil War,’ reveals, died of disease than from battle. Slaves became exposed to the same outbreaks of dysentery, smallpox and fever that decimated Union and Confederate ranks, and they died by the thousands: an estimated 60,000 former slaves died from a smallpox epidemic from 1863 to 1865.

“There were no protections, no refugee programs or public health services, in place to help freed slaves ward off the disease that plagued the Confederate South. As one 19th-century reformer observed, ‘You may see a child well and hearty this morning, and in the evening you will hear of its death.’ . . . ”

Downs is author of “Sick from Freedom: African-American Illness and Suffering during the Civil War and Reconstruction.”

Ta-Nehisi Coates, the Atlantic blog: The Myth of Harriet Tubman

Tony Norman, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette: Slavery is key part of riveting U.S. history

Darryl E. Owens, Orlando Sentinel: 150 years after emancipation, blacks are bound by their own chains

RTDNA’s Foundation to Honor Twitter as News Source

The Radio Television Digital News Foundation plans to honor the online micro-blogging service Twitter with its First Amendment Award at the 23rd Annual First Amendment Awards Dinner on March 14 in Washington, the foundation announced on Monday.

“The award honors an individual or organization that has played a significant role in dissemination of news and information. Notable examples of Twitter’s growing role include natural disasters such as Hurricane Sandy, tragedies like the Connecticut and Colorado mass killings, as well as coverage of major world events like the Arab Spring revolts. Social media has added a new and important dimension to information dissemination and Twitter has been in the forefront of those efforts,” the announcement said.

Mike Cavender, RTDNF executive director, said in the announcement, “It’s difficult to quantify the impact that Twitter has on news dissemination not only here, but all around the world. Millions of people turn to Twitter as an instant source of information, especially in times of crisis. We’re proud to honor this organization for its support and defense of our First Amendment freedoms.”

Twitter has a special appeal to African Americans. The Pew Research Center’s Internet & American Life Project reported last year, “More than one quarter of online African-Americans (28%) use Twitter, with 13% doing so on a typical day.”

However, a survey released Monday by Technorati Media found that only 15 percent of the consumers it polled ranked Twitter among its “most trusted information sources.”

The rankings were:

Online news sites (New York Times, CNN), 51%

Facebook, 32%

Retail sites (Amazon, Walmart), 31%

YouTube, 29%

Blogs, 29%

Google+, 26%

Groups/Forums, 24%

Online magazines (People, Motor Trend), 22%

Brand websites (Honda, Nike), 21%

Twitter, 15%

Fox Nation, Fox News Latino Play to Different Bases

“Fox Nation and Fox News Latino are once again selling different versions of the same story to pander to conservative audiences while simultaneously attempting to court Latino readers,” Hilary Tone reported Thursday for Media Matters for America.

“As reported by the Los Angeles Times, the Obama administration announced Wednesday that it would create an easier process for undocumented immigrants who are relatives of American citizens to apply for permanent residency in the United States. . . .”

Fox News Latino: Obama Plans to Push Immigration Reform By End of January

Ruben Navarrette Jr., Washington Post News Media Services:  Scholarships for illegal immigrants (Dec. 30)

Ruben Navarrette Jr., CNN.com: If I offended demanding DREAMers, I’m not sorry (Dec. 28)

N.Y. Times Public Editor Takes Up “Objectivity”

Within a few days of becoming Jerusalem bureau chief of the New York Times, Jodi Rudoren “. . . sent some Twitter messages that brought criticism, and had people evaluating her politics before she had dug into the reporting work before her,” Margaret Sullivan, New York Times public editor, wrote on Nov. 28.

“Jeffrey Goldberg, writing in The Atlantic, summarized them: ‘She shmoozed-up Ali Abunimah, a Palestinian activist who argues for Israel’s destruction; she also praised Peter Beinart’s upcoming book (‘The Crisis of Zionism’) as, ‘terrific: provocative, readable, full of reporting and reflection.’ She also linked without comment to an article in a pro-Hezbollah Lebanese newspaper.” The headline on Mr. Goldberg’s article was, ‘Twitterverse to New NYT Jerusalem Bureau Chief: Stop Tweeting!’ ”

“. . . Now The Times is taking steps to make sure that Ms. Rudoren’s further social media efforts go more smoothly. The foreign editor, Joseph Kahn, is assigning an editor on the foreign desk in New York to work closely with Ms. Rudoren on her social media posts.”

The issue of how neutral to appear is one that has long separated the black and alternative presses, which stress advocacy journalism, from the mainstream media. But it is an issue for the mainstream media as well, andSullivan returned to the subject in her Sunday column.

“Jay Rosen, a New York University journalism professor, believes that traditional notions about impartial reporting are fundamentally flawed,” Sullivan wrote. “For starters, he thinks journalists should just come out and tell readers more about their beliefs.

” ‘The grounds for trust are slowly shifting,’ he told me recently. ‘The View from Nowhere is slowly getting harder to trust, and “Here’s where I’m coming from” is more likely to be trusted.’

“Pushing back are editors like Philip B. Corbett, The Times’s associate managing editor for standards. ‘I flatly reject the notion that there is no such thing as impartial, objective journalism — that it’s some kind of pretense or charade, and we should just give it up, come clean and lay out our biases,’ he said. ‘We expect professionals in all sorts of fields to put their personal opinions aside, or keep them to themselves, when they do their work — judges, police officers, scientists, teachers. Why would we expect less of journalists?’

“Neither of these thoughtful journalists, though, is black-and-white on the subject. . . . ”

Short Takes

“The Sports Journalism Institute is set to welcome its 20th anniversary class this summer in Columbia, Mo.,” the institute annnounced on Monday. “A group of six men and six women (four African-Americans, four Latinos, three white females and one Asian-American) make up the Class of 2013, which will be in residence at the University of Missouri School of Journalism from May 31-June 8, after which students will move on to internships around the country. . . . ”

Hundreds of people gathered outside the headquarters of a newspaper company in southern China on Monday, intensifying a battle over media censorship that poses a test of the willingness of China’s new leadership to tolerate calls for change,” Edward Wong reported for the New York Times. “The demonstration was an outpouring of support for journalists at the relatively liberal Southern Weekend newspaper, who erupted in fury late last week over what they called overbearing interference by local propaganda officials.”

“A paparazzo who took photographs of the daughters of President Barack Obama walking along a Hawaiian beach last week made a big mistake — at least, in the eyes of the Oval Office,” Celebuzz reported on Monday. “Because as soon as the images of Sasha and Malia were sent out to news outlets around the world, the photographer received an official letter from the White House telling him to immediately stop their release, Celebuzz has exclusively learned.”

As Inauguration Day approaches, the editors of Essence magazine have produced a commemorative book, “A Salute to Michelle Obama” (Time Home Entertainment, Inc.), the magazine announced on Monday. The soft-cover version is on newsstands; the hardcover is to be available Tuesday. The book, edited by Patrik Henry Bass, editorial projects director, features an introduction by Editor-in-Chief Constance C.R. White and tributes from author Dr. Maya Angelou, life coach Iyanla Vanzant and “First Grandmother” Marian Robinson.

“The Pittsburgh Police Department on Sunday put out a press release that included two Post-Gazette reporters’ email to the department with several questions for a story they were working on,” Jim Romenesko reported Monday on his media blog. “Diane Richard, the department’s public information officer, tipped other news organizations off to the P-G’s investigation when she sent the release to about 200 journalists.”

Robin Givhan, the Pulitzer Prize-winning fashion writer who learned last month she was being laid off from Newsweek and the Daily Beast, has the lead piece in the Washington Post Style section on Tuesday, a lengthy one on inaugural gowns. While the online version does not identify Givhan as a freelancer, the print-edition version says “special to the Washington Post,’ Post spokeswoman Kris Koratti told Betsy Rothstein of FishbowlDC. [Added Jan. 8]

“. . . Word on the Street is believed to be Baltimore’s first street newspaper,” Yvonne Wenger reported Sunday in the Baltimore Sun. “Attempts have been made in the past to circulate news about homelessness and poverty, but the previous efforts came in the form of newsletters in the 1980s.”

“Comcast executive VP David Cohen will receive the Champion of Digital Equality award at the upcoming Minority Media and Telecommunications Council Broadband and Social Justice Summit on Jan. 16 in Washington,” John Eggerton reported for Broadcasting & Cable. “Cohen, who heads up policy for Comcast, is being cited for ‘visionary leadership in promoting minority entrepreneurship; universal broadband access, adoption and informed use; diversity; and success in America’s most influential and important industries.’ . . . ”

Marianna Kay Siblani, executive editor of the Arab American News for the last 28 years, died on New Year’s Day after a long struggle with breast cancer, Oralandar Brand-Williams reported from Dearborn, Mich., for the Detroit News. “During her time at The Arab American News, she was a powerful voice and an advocate for Arab and Muslim Americans on local and national issues,” the Arab American News added.

” ‘2013 starting off with a bang! Newsweek printed its last issue and with that came layoffs and buyouts. I took a buyout, What’s next? Who knows. But it’s exciting,’ wrote María Elena Fernández on her Facebook page,”Veronica Villafañe reported Monday in her Media Moves column. “Her departure from The Daily Beast comes less than 2 years since she was hired as senior entertainment reporter. Prior to joining the now struggling publication, María Elena spent 12 years as an entertainment reporter at the L.A. Times.”

In Miami, “WPLG reporter Johanna Gomez has switched broadcast mediums,” South Florida TV News reported on Monday. “As of today she’s part of the DJ Laz Morning Show on 106.7FM, which is also heard [throughout] the country. You’ll be able to hear her weekdays from 6am to 10am. In a Facebook and Twitter post late last night Gomez announced her move . . . ”

“The Committee to Protect Journalists calls on authorities in India to refrain from pressing charges against a media group that televised an interview with the companion of the Delhi rape victim who died last week,” the committee said Friday. “The December 16 case has garnered global attention. . . . New Delhi police said they would charge the broadcaster under section 228(A) of the Indian Penal Code, which deals with the disclosure of identity of victims of certain crimes, including rape, according to The New York Times. . . .”

“. . . Mexico is one of the most dangerous places to commit journalism, due to the impunity of drug syndicates,”Judith Matloff reported for Columbia Journalism Review. “More than 80 journalists have been killed and 16 kidnapped over the past dozen years, because they wrote about the activities of warring gangs. Many reporters have gone into hiding, and still more have been silenced by fear. Desperate for help, a loose network called Journalists On Foot (PDP) began to reach out to Colombia colleagues for tips, and over the past couple of years, seasoned experts . . . have flown over to meet with reporters across Mexico. . . .”

“Fox News personality Bill O’Reilly has drawn the ire of at least one member of Hawaii’s congressional delegation,” the Honolulu Star-Advertiser reported Friday. “U.S. Rep. Colleen Hanabusa says the conservative talk show host owes Hawaii and all Asian-Americans an apology for his characterization of the isles’ population. . . . ‘You know what’s shocking?’ O’Reilly said. ‘Thirty-five percent of the Hawaiian population is Asian, and Asian people are not liberal by nature, they’re usually more industrious and hard-working.’ ”

“South Sudan has arrested two state broadcast journalists for failing to ensure coverage of a crucial speech by President Salva Kiir, a government official said on Sunday, prompting an outcry from an international media watchdog,” Reuters reported.

“Every year, the American Dialect Society nominates and then votes on a word of the year, and for 2012 it’s ‘hashtag,’ ” Dieter Bohn reported Saturday for theverge.com. “It beat out other nominated words like ‘YOLO,’ ‘Fiscal cliff,’ and ‘Gangnam style.’ The ADS’ chair of the New Words Committee, Ben Zimmer, said that the word was a ‘ubiquitous phenomenon in online talk’ in 2012. . . .”

Gene Demby, a black journalist who has just joined NPR as a reporter covering ethnicity and race, made his first on-air appearance last week in a “Morning Edition” segment last week on the decline of Kwanzaa. “I think you’re supposed to say the name of the principle of the last day of Kwanzaa,” Demby told host David Greene. “I’m not sure what that Kwanzaa principle is. But I think Happy Kwanzaa is a sufficient response for a salutation.” NPR Ombudsman Edward Schumacher-Matos wrote Monday, “There is nothing wrong with a journalist not knowing something. But in a two-way with a reporter, that unknown is usually about a fact that is not public or is unconfirmed. In this case, however, Demby was presented not just as a reporter, but also as an expert and — crucially here — a personal example.” The lack of knowledge offended some listeners.

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Journal-isms is published on the site of the Maynard Institute for Journalism Education (www.mije.org). Reprinted on The Root by permission.

Of Black Men and White Middle-Class Feminists

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WEEKEND EDITION JANUARY 4-6, 2013


Eve Ensler and Ishmael Reed Go At It

Of Black Men and White Middle-Class Feminists

by ISHMAEL REED

During an interview with Chris Hedges carried at the site Truthdig, I cited Eve Ensler as the type of middle class white feminist who singles out black men as the leading culprits in the practice of cruelty to women, a theme that has earned hundreds of millions of dollars for Hollywood, publishing and outfits like CNN. Since these women have financial ties to the white men, who own these institutions, they have to tread lightly when criticizing them. For example, a number of on air feminists refer to those who are mostly likely to rape Native-American women as “non-indians” instead of white men. Ms.Ensler took exception to my comment about her prompting the following exchange.

Eve Ensler and Ishmael Reed Go At It

Ensler:  I was taken aback by this gross and inaccurate statement attributed to me. I have never said anything of the kind. To imply I am in some kind of financial relationship with white men? What kind of relationship is Ishmael Reed implying? I have spent the last 15 years fighting violence against women everywhere in the world, beginning with my own white middle class father who sexually molested and beat me. I have stood up to DSK and every other man be they white, black, yellow or brown who abuses women. As a matter of fact, my anti-violence work began for me in Bosnia. We have been supporting women in New Orleans and Haiti and Congo who have been violated, but then again we have supported women in the U.S. military and at thousands of organizations of all ethnic groups around the world. Local, grassroots V-Day activists are at work in over 179 countries worldwide.

Reed: On Sept. 01,2010,Ensler appeared on Amy Goodman’s show, “Democracy Now,” and singled out two black countries and the city of New Orleans as where all of the cruelty to women was happening. She said “The work, Eve told me [Amy Goodman] defines what she calls a ‘kind of three-way V between Haiti, the Congo and New Orleans.’ She’s the female Tarantino who forced herself on black women of New Orleans, when she proposed to write a play based upon their p.o.v.s. They rejected her, preferring to tell their own story. Nevertheless, she managed to direct a play about their experiences, “Swimming Upstream,” at the Apollo in Harlem, a place where one of  the great playwrights, Ed Bullins, who is now ailing, never had an opportunity to stage a play, nor have other great contemporary black playwrights, Amiri Baraka or Adrienne Kennedy. Is she denying that she has more clout with the owners of the Apollo theater than our great  black playwrights? Why can’t Thulani Davis or Aishah Rahman get a play done there? Among those who are responsible for the Apollo’s  annual season are:The Coca-Cola Company, JP Morgan Chase & Co., The Parsons Family Foundation, the Ronald O. Perelman Family Foundation, the Upper Manhattan Empowerment Zone, Reginald Van Lee New Works Fund, the Ford Foundation Fund for Global Programs, Bloomberg Philanthropies, Folonari Wines, which explains why the hard-hitting social commentary of Baraka won’t be performed there and one which blames black men for sexual assault is; this is more acceptable to the patriarchal capitalists who run the place.  Amy Goodman was the perfect place for her appeal. Goodman worships “The Color Purple,” about a black man having sex with his daughter. She like Gloria Steinem use black men as surrogates because they are scared to tackle misogyny in their ethnic groups. They’re not the only ones. Ms. Steinem even said that “The Color Purple” told the truth about black men, in her Ms. review, which even outraged Toni Morrison, who blasted both Ms. Walker and Steinem in an interview with Cecil Brown in The Massachusetts Review. The kind of group libel implicit in Ms. Steinem’s generalization is of the sort that’s been aimed at her group from the time of the Romans. Black men can be cruel to women wherever they can be found in the world, but they ain’t the only ones and it’s unfair to unload the burden on them for world mysogyny. Here’s a fact that you’ll never hear from Amy Goodman, Eve Ensler and Terry Gross. Among all American males, Black men are the ones who are most likely to be murdered by women. I cite Natalie J. Sokoloff, and Christina Pratt’s 2005 book, Family & Relationships –where the authors wrote: “Black women are also more likely than their White counterparts to inflict lethal violence against their husbands.” So what do you suppose black men were doing, while, during the Katrina calamity, the women were swimming upstream? In Las Vegas partying with Tiger Woods and Mike Tyson?

Ishmael Reed’s latest book is “Going Too Far.” He is the publisher of Konch at http://ishmaelreed.net/. Konch goes monthly in January.

From CounterPunch

More on  Ismael Reed

Revoke My Black Card: I’ve Never Seen “Roots” (Until This Weekend)

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Revoke My Black Card: I’ve Never Seen “Roots” (Until This Weekend)

Roots: The Saga of an American Family

“I’m sorry… what?”

I’m in an editorial meeting at ESSENCE. In my recollection, the room falls silent, and all the editors train their eyes on me. We’d been discussing how we should cover the 30th anniversary of Roots: The Saga of an American Family, a momentous TV event. Each editor had thrown out an idea, except me. My Editor-in-Chief put me on the spot, and I told the truth: I never saw Roots.

I knew the highlights, or I thought I did. Based on Alex Haley’s bestselling book about his ancestry, it’s the tale of an African man sold into slavery and the many horrors that come to him and generations to come.

“Nope, I confirm to my EIC. “I’ve never seen it.”

I had a somewhat valid excuse, I thought: Roots originally aired before I was born. But then there were editors in the room with children younger than me, and they’d sat there brood down for an American history moment.   I am sufficiently shamed.

“Demetria,” a senior editor says sternly, “you must watch Roots.”

Five years later, I’ve finally fulfilled that duty. The Christmas release of Quentin Tarantino’s Django Unchained, a movie about slavery is here and it coincides — no coincidence, I’m sure — with the 35th anniversary of Roots. Over the weekend, BET began airing the entireRoots franchise. I had nothing better to do, so I bunkered down with delivered Thai food and watched.

Um … yeah. I couldn’t turn away from the start, not with Cicely Tyson screaming in agony as she birthed a baby, not thru the coming-of-age story of that baby, a boy, Kunta Kinte, turning into a man in 18th century Gambia. Riveting is an understatement.

But from the moment Kunta Kinte is captured by the white man, the “WTF?” moments never stopped coming. I now totally understand why my mother wouldn’t, or maybe couldn’t, watch it again.

After that ESSENCE meeting, I’d rushed back to my desk to call my mother at work. I had to know why she (and my father) had set me loose into the world without showing me Roots, a seeming African-American rite of passage.

She sighed heavy. “I probably should have, but …” she began. “I just couldn’t.”

Mum explains that, for me to watch as a child, she would have had to as well in order to explain it. And she just couldn’t do that to herself. Or me.

“It’s a hard movie. Like …” She pauses to search for the right words. “I watched it. It was hard to get up and go to work the next morning and deal with … people. But you should probably watch it anyway.”

Her calling it “hard” was an understatement. I’ll spare you the long list of scenes that made me pause the movie and sigh heavy just like my mother had at recalling it. Instead, I’ll give you the top three thoughts that ran through my head:

1. This. Is. F%^#ed. Up.

2. Ohhhh, so that’s where “that” came from.  *light bulb goes off*

3. The entire African-American race has got to suffer from post-traumatic stress disorder (… which turns out not to be a far-fetched thought. I looked it up and I’m late on that. All the people who arrived at that conclusion earlier probably saw Roots.)

As horrifying as Roots is, it’s still slavery-lite. But let’s go with Roots’ depiction. A human is captured by weird-looking people who separate the person from their family and tribe. Forever. This person is caged like an animal, then taken on a months-long journey across the Atlantic, in which the person is chained below deck for most of it. People are dying, and vomiting and pissing and defecating and they are living, literally, in it, for who knows how long. The person is poked and prodded like an animal on the auction block, then sold off to the highest bidder, separated from anyone they might have known from home or connected with on the God forsaken journey over.

Any one of these experiences alone would screw up the average person. But we’re still not done.

This person lands on a plantation, and is introduced to a “home”  of horrors where the threat of violence looms and folk that look like them have adopted the White Man’s version of what Africans are, and are in equal measure friends and enemies. As a means of survival, the Black people the person encounters have adapted to a f@#$ed up reality where submission, fear, silence, and you know, delivering your daughter to be raped by the overseer are par for the course.

This goes on for generations. People who have lived under tyranny, have adapted to bizarre modes, and been taught off-klter perceptions of the world and themselves. Overseers have been paid good money to break them so they “know their place.” Stories about Africa, a far off place where Black folk strut free are a distant memory or sound like a fantasy and ain’t nobody got time for that. Live. Die. Get your reward in the After Life. You cling to that either because you really believe it or it’s the only thing that keeps you from going crazier. Maybe both.

Freedom doesn’t suddenly make everything “Kumbaya.” All the trauma and screwy ways you’ve been taught to see and adapt to the world like putting white folks on pedestals (and walls in Black churches), fearing white folk, seeing yourself and people who look like you as less than, eating the sh!t white folk won’t touch, and placing a premium on light-skinned Negroes or Negroes of any color with white folks’ features, remain along with a whole lot of anger, depression, and bitterness.

In 19th Century America there’s no time (or money) for the masses of Black folk to work out all that with a therapist or have long conversations about feelings and collective Black self-esteem. Emotionally shot and physically damaged folk need to focus on survival for themselves and their brood. A hefty chunk of Black folk’s core dysfunctions that the world blames them for having don’t get treated. So their kids watch and do as they do, not as they say. Someone beat them, and they beat their kids, and then they beat their kids and the cycle doesn’t get broken because everyone it happened to says, “Hey, I turned out okay.” And there’s no end in sight for any of this to stop when 165 years after the abolition of slavery, in general, Black folks fear therapy more than they fear God.

A few weeks ago, I went home to my parents’ house for Thanksgiving and stayed for a week, perhaps the longest I’ve been home consecutively since I moved to New York at 23. I’m sitting at the kitchen table where the wi-fi signal is strongest watching Season 2 of The Walking Dead. My father wanders into the kitchen to forage for leftovers and engages me in conversation.

“What are you watching?” he asks.

“The Walking Dead.”

He opens the fridge.

He’s still tinkering around nearby by the time the show ends and I ask him out of genuine concern,  “Hey, do we have guns in the house?”

There’s a shotgun “probably from the late 1800s, I would guess,”  he says. “Doesn’t work. Why?”

“Just wanted to know if we were covered in case there’s ever a zombie apocalypse,” I say.

He decides to entertain me. “The shotgun was my father’s, father’s. He was born in 1862. You want to see it?”

Wayament. What?

“My great-grandfather was a slave?!” I shout.  I’m just now finding this out that just three-generations ago, my blood, literally mine as Type passes down on the Daddy’s side, was owned.  People talk about slavery like it was so long ago, but when people still living can talk about people they met that were enslaved, it ain’t that far back.

“He’s where we get our eyes from, I think,” my Dad says. “My Dad had them, his dad had them. We have them.”

That’s DNA passed down since slavery for sure, and I wonder how much else.

Demetria L. Lucas is the author of “A Belle in Brooklyn: The Go-to Girl for Advice on Living Your Best Single Life” (Atria) in stores now. Follow her on Twitter @abelleinbk

 

Clutch Magazine

http://www.clutchmagonline.com/2012/12/revoke-my-black-card-ive-never-seen-roots-until-this-weekend/

The 2013 Clutch Reading Challenge

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Gurrrl, You Just Have to Read This! The 2013 Clutch Reading Challenge

reading

This is what happens when bookish black women start talking about good literature on a lazy holiday weekday. I asked folks on Twitter and Facebook to help me craft a list of 10 books by black women that everyone should read. Instead of 10, I got 100.

Not surprising, really. Despite the absence of names like Paule Marshall, Gayl Jones and J. California Cooper on many mainstream lists of “bests,” the well of sistah girl literary talent is deep like the Lakers’ starting lineup, but unlike Kobe ‘n’ ‘em, greatly underappreciated.

I was once earnestly told, in an online discussion about the screensaver on the original Kindle, with its pencil-sketch parade of mostly white, mostly male and mostly dead authors, that writers of color and women writers were excluded from the literary canon, because, “for whatever reason,” none had written anything to approach the brilliance of men like Ernest Hemingway and Edgar Allan Poe. Feasting on privilege, and your high school English class reading list from two decades past, can make a body mighty myopic. One wonders what else this reader thinks people of color and women cannot do as well as white men — “for whatever reason.”

I sought out several of the books below to read about black women’s experiences—some like my own, to learn from other black women and to support black women making art, which is not to say that reading books by black women is some act of largesse on the readers’ parts. The books below and the women who created them are, quite simply, damned good and deserve a space on bookshelves for that reason above all others.

I asked 2,500 people: “What book by a black woman author should everyone read?” Below is the result — a list of 100 books by black women, crowd-sourced mostly by black women. This is not canon. There are plenty of great books by sisters that aren’t here. In fact, to get the list down to 100, I had to make some tough choices about which books by Edwidge Danticat, Toni Morrison, Pearl Cleage and Octavia Butler would be here. Nearly all of their work was mentioned at least once. I haven’t read all of these books (Though maybe we can fix that—more in a bit.) and certainly cannot promise that every one will meet your tastes. But be assured that nearly every book on this list was highly praised by multiple respondents. I did not tinker with these suggestions but to try to confirm titles, author names and genres, and to trim the list slightly to the 100 you see here.

And now, for a challenge: This year, I want to read as many of the books on this list as possible and I hope you will join me in the 2013 Clutch Reading Challenge. In the coming months, we’ll host some special panel discussions right here on Clutch magazine. But, in the meantime, join the 2013 Clutch Reading Challenge Group on Goodreads and let’s keep the literary conversation (and support of black women authors) going.

  1. Krik! Krak! by Edwidge Danticat (Fiction)
  2. Caucasia by Danzy Senna (Fiction)
  3. Sister Citizen by Melissa Harris Perry (Nonfiction)
  4. Praisesong for the Widow by Paule Marshall (Fiction)
  5. The Upper Room by Mary Monroe (Fiction)
  6. One Crazy Summer by Rita Williams-Garcia (Children’s Books)
  7. Ugly Ways by Tina McElroy Ansa (Fiction)
  8. Hair Story: Untangling the Roots of Black Hair in America by Lori Tharps and Ayana Byrd (Nonfiction)
  9. Wench by Dolen Perkins-Valdez (Fiction)
  10. Small Island by Andrea Levy (Fiction)
  11. Half of a Yellow Sun by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie (Fiction)
  12. On Beauty by Zadie Smith (Fiction)
  13. Taste of Power: A Black Woman’s Story by Elaine Brown (Nonfiction)
  14. A Street in Bronzeville by Gwendolyn Brooks (Poetry)
  15. Mama Day by Gloria Naylor (Fiction)
  16. Parable of the Sower by Octavia Butler (Science Fiction)
  17. Breath, Eye, Memory by Edwidge Danticat (Fiction)
  18. Daughters by Paule Marshall (Fiction)
  19. Sula by Toni Morrison (Fiction)
  20. The Color Purple by Alice Walker (Fiction)
  21. Naughts and Crosses trilogy by Malorie Blackman (Fiction)
  22. Coming to England by Floella Benjamin (Autobiography)
  23. But Some of Us Are Brave by Gloria Hull, Patricia Bell Scott and Barbara Smith (Nonfiction)
  24. Annie Allen by Gwendolyn Brooks (Poetry)
  25. Silver Sparrow by Tayari Jones (Fiction)
  26. 32 Candles by Ernessa T. Carter (Fiction)
  27. The Fisher King by Paule Marshall (Fiction)
  28. Before You Suffocate your own Fool Self by Danielle Evans (Fiction)
  29. Our Black Year: One Family’s Quest to Buy Black in a Racially Divided Economy by Maggie Anderson (Nonfiction)
  30. The New Jim Crow by Michelle Alexander (Nonfiction)
  31. Warmth of Other Suns by Isabel Wilkerson (Nonfiction)
  32. Abeng by Michelle Cliff (Fiction)
  33. Brewster Place by Gloria Naylor (Fiction)
  34. The Bluest Eye by Toni Morrison (Fiction)
  35. I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings by Maya Angelou (Autobiography)
  36. Black, White & Jewish: Autobiography of a Shifting Self by Rebecca Walker (Nonfiction)
  37. This Bridge Called My Back: Writings by Radical Women of Color by Various (Nonfiction)
  38. Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston (Fiction)
  39. The Skin I’m In by Sharon G. Flake (Children’s Books)
  40. The Shimmershine Queens by Camille Yarbrough (Children’s Books)
  41. Darkest Child by Dolores Philips (Fiction)
  42. The Black Notebooks: An Interior Journey by Toi Derricotte (Nonfiction)
  43. Gathering of Waters by Bernice McFadden (Fiction)
  44. Corregidora by Gayl Jones (Fiction)
  45. The Cutting Season by Attica Locke (Fiction)
  46. The Other Side of Paradise: A Memoir by Staceyann Chin (Autobiography)
  47. Are Prisons Obsolete by Angela Davis (Nonfiction)
  48. Sister Outsider by Audre Lorde (Nonfiction)
  49. Coffee Will Make You Black by April Sinclair (Fiction)
  50. Zami—A New Spelling of My Name by Audre Lorde (“Biomythography”)
  51. Black Girl in Paris by Shay Youngblood (Fiction)
  52. In Search of Our Mother’s Gardens by Alice Walker (Nonfiction)
  53. To Be Young, Gifted and Black by Lorraine Hansberry (Autobiography)
  54. Her Stories: African American Folktlaes, Fairy Tales and True Tales by Virginia Hamilton (Fiction)
  55. The Dark Thirty: Southern Tales of the Supernatural by Patricia McKissak (Fiction)
  56. Wrapped in Rainbows by Valerie Boyd (Biography)
  57. Roll of Thunder Hear My Cry by Mildred Taylor (Children’s Books)
  58. Betsy Brown by Ntozake Shange (Fiction)
  59. Kindred by Octavia Butler (Science Fiction)
  60. Baby of the Family by Tina McElroy Ansa (Fiction)
  61. Cane River by Lalita Tademy (Nonfiction)
  62. Daughter by asha bandele (Fiction)
  63. Some Things I Never Thought I’d Do by Pearl Cleage (Fiction)
  64. The Joys of Motherhood by Buchi Emecheta (Fiction)
  65. Homegirls and Handgrenades by Sonia Sanchez (Poetry)
  66. Efrain’s Secret by Sofia Quintero (YA)
  67. When Chickenheads Come Home to Roost by Joan Morgan (Nonfiction)
  68. The Collector of Treasures and Other Botswana Village Tales by Bessie Head (Fiction)
  69. The Collected Poetry by Nikki Giovanni (Poetry)
  70. Jubilee by Margaret Walker (Nonfiction)
  71. Home Girls: A Black Feminist Anthology by Barbara Smith (Nonfiction)
  72. The Secret Lives of Baba Segi’s Wives by Lola Shoneyin (Fiction)
  73. For Colored Girls Who’ve Considered Suicide/When the Rainbow is Enuf by Ntozake Shange (Fiction)
  74. Moral Combat: Black Atheists, Gender Politics and Values Wars by Sikivu Hutchinson (Nonfiction)
  75. The Hand I Fan With by Tina McElroy Ansa (Fiction)
  76. Deals with the Devil and other Reasons to Riot by Pearl Cleage (Nonfiction)
  77. Kehinde by Buchi Emecheta (Fiction)
  78. NW by Zadie Smith (Fiction)
  79. The Temple of My Familiar by Alice Walker (Fiction)
  80. Sisters of the Yam: Black Women and Self-Recovery by bell hooks (Nonfiction)
  81. Lucy by Jamaica Kincaid (Fiction)
  82. Ain’t I A Woman by bell hooks (Nonfiction)
  83. The Street by Ann Petry (Fiction)
  84. Daddy Was a Number Runner by Louise Meriweather
  85. Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl by Harriett Jacobs
  86. Women, Race and Class by Angela Davis (Nonfiction)
  87. White Teeth by Zadie Smith
  88. Black Macho and the Myth of the Superwoman by Michelle Wallace(Nonfiction)
  89. Some Love, Some Pain, Sometime by J.California Cooper (Fiction)
  90. Meridian by Alice Walker (Nonfiction)
  91. The Killing Moon by N.K. Jemisin
  92. Who Fears Death by Nnedi Okorafor (Fiction)
  93. Homemade Love by J. California Cooper (Fiction)
  94. Bitch is the New Black: A Memoir by Helena Andrews (Autobiography)
  95. Color Blind: A Memoir by Precious Williams (Autobiography)
  96. On Black Sisters Street by Chika Unigwe (Fiction)
  97. Oh Her Own Ground: The Life and Times of Madam CJ Walker by A’lelia Bundles (Biography)
  98. Yurugu: An African-Centered Critique of European Cultural Thought and Behavior by Dr. Marimba Ani (Nonfiction)
  99. Song of Solomon by Toni Morrison (Fiction)
  100. Parable of the Talents by Octavia Butler (Science Fiction)