02 Jul 2009 05:05 pm
{Dwayne Betts}
Two months into my first real job teaching poetry at a middle school in Southeast D.C. the English teacher whose class I took over once a week got hit in the eye while breaking up a fight. Two weeks later, after the student who'd struck her hadn't been expelled, she decided not to return. This was a seventh grade English class, first quarter of the school year. So early that the kids sneakers were still uncreased, the chalk still at the edges of the blackboard. I hadn't yet learned every child's name. The end of this story? The school never hired another teacher - I watched a rotating cycle of substitutes come in and hand out worksheets to students that ran the gamut from on grade level to barely reading.
If you read this in a major newspaper the headline likely would read: school overrun by violence. Teaching at the school has taught me that it's more complicated than that, but I've also learned that the struggles to maintain a sense of normalcy in the classroom push good teachers away. One of the best young teachers I worked with is off to Kipp, and most of the other good young teachers in public schools across the city are finding reason after reason to go work in charter schools or private schools - even when it means working more hours and longer school years.
This is where James Forman Jr.'s essay "No Ordinary Success" comes in. In "No Ordinary Success" Forman looks at two models of school reform, Geoffrey Canada's Promise Academy based in New York and the Kipp Charter Schools that are in 19 states across the country as he tries to answer his own question: How much can schools improve the life prospects of children growing up in poor neighborhoods? I highly recommend the article, which you can find here.
As a starting point, Forman talks about Richard Rothstein's 2004 book Class and Schools. I mention it for the same reason Forman does. Rothstein concluded that "the challenges facing low-income students meant that they would always do worse, on average, than their higher-income peers." It reminds me of the Boston Review article by Patrick Sharkey in which he asserts that " almost three out of four black families living in today's poorest, most segregated neighborhoods are the same families that lived in the ghettos of the 1970s." His article, The Inherited Ghetto, can be found here.
The point is, of course, that anyone jumping into school reform has a fight on their hands and if what Rothstein says is true, and what Sharkey says is true....
There's no real reason for me to rehash the details of the article, except to say this: Canada's model looks to transform an entire neighborhood. That is to say that he started Harlem's Children Zone (HCZ) a complex network of parenting classes, health centers and tutoring spots to serve about a 100 square foot are of Harlem. Initially, Canada used the HCZ to aid the schools, and he had people in schools to support the public schools. He found the public school's didn't support his efforts, and that his efforts weren't producing the expected results. So he started Promise Academy. Canada makes a point to take all students, no matter their reading levels, no matter how problematic their behavior is, and looks to transform lives. Canada does this, too.
Kipp's model is a little different. David Levin and Michael Feinberg began working in the Houston schools with teach for america and when they weren't getting the support they expected - and after a few disturbing incidents that you can read in the article - they began Kipp. Kipp relies on rigorous standards and teachers who are willing to work longer hours and students who are in school for longer hours over longer periods of time and commit to two hours of homework each night. Kipp has been able to sustain achievement over the 19 states and 66 schools.
But this is the trouble with this manner of school reform - only a limited number of students have access to these kinds of programs. What of the other students? When Forman brings this question of pockets of success to Jay Mathews, author of Work Hard. Be Nice., a book about Kipp's history, contends that a school like Kipp proves the idea that kids from low income neighborhoods can't achieve success is a lie. The assumption behind his statement is that the underlying reason money, resources and time aren't put into public school systems is because the larger society sees them as hopeless. I tend to think a large number of the public, especially the educated public, believe this. It might very well be a false assumption but it seems the American myth of pulling yourself up by your own bootstraps infects many minds, to the point that Mathews would even assert that there is a need to "prove" students from low-income neighborhoods can succeed. But that's the narrative of the underdog - do it to prove you can do it is what people are sold again and again when the evidence says that the solution goes way beyond a lack of work ethic.
In the end, Forman believes that Kipp and the Promise Academy should be seen as viable models, but not the only model. He argues that they work, in part, because of the hyper dedicated people they bring around them. Specifically citing Kipp's HR department's ability to attract talent. Forman doesn't really answer his question directly. He gives us more than enough examples to show that it's possible to improve the life prospects of young kids in poor neighborhoods - but it seems that finding the answer he sought, led him to reveal to us a more troubling problem: How do we create environments where average teachers, even just good teachers, can excel in a school system that provides a quality education - if we aren't going to acknowledge all of the complex needs and issues that are part and parcel with a student's success and independent of homework?
Even tackling that question will keep us from arguing about the need or lack thereof for charter schools that, by their nature, can only provide services for a limited number of kids in any community.
02 Jul 2009 03:50 pm
[Alyssa Rosenberg] Since it's apparently Lincoln Day here on the blog, I thought I'd dive into the Civil War fray, but from a somewhat different perspective. There's no question that racism is the primary social issue at stake in the war and Reconstruction, but the abolitionism also laid the groundwork for the campaign to give women the right to vote, and the war was, like World War II, profoundly disruptive to women's social roles. It's no accident that two of the greatest portraits of women in modern literature come from Civil War novels. Gone With The Wind's Scarlett O'Hara and Little Women's Jo March live on opposite sides of the Mason-Dixon line, come from different backgrounds, and their personalities evolve in different directions. I'm not sure they would have liked each other very much. But I love them both, and re-reading both novels in recent weeks, I've been struck by how much they have in common. At the beginning of the Civil War, Scarlett is a privileged planter's daughter whose main talents for are manipulating men and, in a nice bit of foreshadowing, for mathematics. Jo is the second-oldest of four daughters in a once-comfortable family left poor by their father's poor financial decisions, and without a reliable income when he decides to join the Union Army as a chaplain. Gone With the Wind is much more explicitly a novel of the Civil War than Little Women is, and as such, Scarlett has direct contact with combat and an enemy army, while Jo lives her life far from the front lines in Massachusetts. But in both novels, economic survival comes into direct conflict with both Northern and Southern expectations of femininity, and Jo and Scarlett both forge solutions that make them semi-kindred spirits.
Continue reading "Scarlett & Jo" »
02 Jul 2009 12:45 pm
I've done two panels since I've been here at Aspen. One was interviewing Andrew, and the other was interviewing Larry Wilmore. I'll get you guys video, as soon as possible. It's funny because I spend so much time arguing here, but I'm actually much more comfortable asking questions. Here's a clip of Andrew discussing his time as a blogger.
02 Jul 2009 12:42 pm
There's a lot to think about in Adam's post below. I think his invocation of Lincoln is especially powerful--Battle Cry Of Freedom caused me to back off of a lot of my rather simplistic impressions of Lincoln. Likewise, I've done my best to give Obama lee-way to be exactly what he is--a politician. The fact is that idealism and the business of politics often don't work well together. That said, for a writer like me, there is as much risk of falling into a trap of petty criticism as there is of simply excusing some of Obama's more erroneous stances as "politics." I will stick with what I know. There's an argument that his invocation of black homophobia, is good for gay rights, and ultimately doesn't hurt black people much. There's an argument that his pose as the Host of Soul Train while wagging the moral finger, and then his pose as president of All America when asked about policy questions is, in fact, good for black America. (Please bear with me on the clumsiness of that sentence. I'm still working out my thinking.) Booker T. Washington would often go before white patrons, invoke the alleged cultural inferiority of blacks, and then proceed to make darkie jokes about the very people he claimed to be trying to help. As Adam says, Lincoln was not above peppering his speech with niggers. But what can we say? Tuskeegee stands proud and strong, to this day. Once they were in the field, Lincoln stood for black soldiers, to the point of sacrificing the lives of Union POWs, in the name of their dignity. His assassination has haunted the country ever since. Obama is a truly, truly gifted politician. Who knows what he may ultimately do? And should the lives of black people be better when he leaves office than when he stepped in (as I suspect they will), should gay Americans enjoy more rights when he leaves office than when he stepped in (as I suspect they will) than what do the critiques of a couple minor-league bloggers really matter?
Continue reading "The Lincoln Connection" »
02 Jul 2009 11:28 am
[Gautham Nagesh] I'm rarely shocked by the news these days, but this story in Politico today did the trick: For $25,000 to $250,000, The Washington Post is offering lobbyists and association executives off-the-record, nonconfrontational access to "those powerful few" -- Obama administration officials, members of Congress, and the paper's own reporters and editors.
The astonishing offer is detailed in a flier circulated Wednesday to a
health care lobbyist, who provided it to a reporter because the
lobbyist said he feels it's a conflict for the paper to charge for
access to, as the flier says, its "health care reporting and editorial
staff."
The offer -- which essentially turns a news organization into a
facilitator for private lobbyist-official encounters -- is a new sign of
the lengths to which news organizations will go to find revenue at a
time when most newspapers are struggling for survival.
Unsurprisingly the WaPo had no comment, though sources told Politico that the marketing flier "may be getting ahead of what the newsroom is prepared to deliver". According to this email sent to the newsroom staff today, that seems accurate: Colleagues,
A flyer was distributed this week offering an "underwriting
opportunity" for a dinner on health-care reform, in which the news
department had been asked to participate. The language in the flyer and the description of the event preclude
our participation.
We will not participate in events where promises are made that in
exchange for money The Post will offer access to newsroom personnel or
will refrain from confrontational questioning. Our independence from
advertisers or sponsors is inviolable.
There is a long tradition of news organizations hosting conferences
and events, and we believe The Post, including the newsroom, can do
these things in ways that are consistent with our values.
Continue reading "WaPo Salons Sell Access to Lobbyists" »
02 Jul 2009 11:00 am
{Dwayne Betts}
There are poems that last because they sound good, and then there are poems that last because they say something that we need to hear. I've always been a fan of Robert Hayden - but this poem in particular reminds me of the importance of fatherhood. Just say the last two lines to yourself again and again, and though it's about fathers - the lines apply fathers, mothers, sons, daughters, lovers. Read it. Then read it again.
Those Winter Sundays
BY ROBERT E. HAYDEN Sundays too my father got up early and put his clothes on in the blueblack cold, then with cracked hands that ached from labor in the weekday weather made banked fires blaze. No one ever thanked him.
I'd wake and hear the cold splintering, breaking. When the rooms were warm, he'd call, and slowly I would rise and dress, fearing the chronic angers of that house,
Speaking indifferently to him, who had driven out the cold and polished my good shoes as well. What did I know, what did I know of love's austere and lonely offices?
02 Jul 2009 07:33 am
[A. Serwer]
Sean Wilentz's lengthy book review of several Lincoln biographies isn't up on The New Republic's website yet, [actually it is, my bad] but his criticism of several books on Lincoln--and his general objection to the "two Lincolns" narrative that rejects the fact that Lincoln was anti-slavery to begin with, may offer some insight into President Obama's perplexing stances on gay rights.
Wilentz objects to an academic trend he sees as priviledging radicals over politicians, which he feels fails to take into account the exigencies of politics and what brilliant politicians are able to accomplish. More specifically, in one part of the review, he takes Skip Gates to task for taking Lincoln's words at face value only when it suits his preconcieved narrative of who Lincoln was:
He takes Lincoln's words at face value when it suits his own arguments--such as his remarks to the Chicago ministers in September 1862 about black military incompetence--but he is unable to see Lincoln for what his finest biographers have shown he was: a shrewd leader who could give misleading and even false impressions when he wanted to do so, and made no public commitments until the moment was ripe.
Lincoln made a number of statements, that, viewed out of context, would cause us to question his commitment to ending slavery, most notably his statement, responding to liberal Republican editor Horace Greeley that he was determined to save the Union whether it meant freeing all of the slaves or freeing none of them. Wilentz points out that this statement was meant to shore up Lincoln's right flank during the election, but did not actually contradict his anti-slavery views or goals--Lincoln had already secretly begun drafting the Emancipation Proclaimation.
Continue reading "Obama, Lincoln, and Gay Rights" »
01 Jul 2009 09:15 pm
[Neil Drumming]
(I've been delinquent with this particular post. Fortunately, I don't think time is of the essence in this case.)
So, last week, my wife and I were watching "So You Think You Can Dance" (shut up) and the first couple of the evening performed a dance routine to the current Jadakiss hit, "By Your Side" (not to be confused with "By My Side," a way more enjoyable Jadakiss song off of a previous album.) The couple, Karla and Jonathan, were dressed in costumes reminiscent of those in Michael Jackson's "Smooth Criminal" video. And, not surprisingly, their routine was categorized by the choreographer as "smooth hip-hop." The number was admittedly pretty forgettable, but I found myself simultaneously amused and dismayed by the judging panel's critiques.
This, from the program's patriarch, Nigel Lythgoe, a soft, cuddly version of Simon Cowell if ever there was one:
"It feels like it's been
sort of ironed-out, that there's no excitement in the routine. And the one
great thing for me with hip-hop is fear. There's this great thing that I'm on
the edge of my seat whenever you talk about gangsta, or hip-hop, or b-boying,
there's a fear there. 'What are they going to do?' It's gonna be really
exciting. 'What's going to happen?'... If you drop her you drop her, but that's
the danger. There was no danger in it."
I'm not looking to rant here, but I always feel a little queasy when I hear these odd parameters that arise around anything hip-hop. It would seem to me that any of the styles danced on this show -- whether it be salsa, jive, disco, contemporary, or my fave, the Viennese Waltz -- that include lifts, flips, somersaults, and other gravity-defying acts would include the same element of fear and danger. I mean, what the hell does Nigel want to be afraid of whenever somebody dances to hip-hop? That a fight will spontaneously erupt on stage like this is the Source Awards? That his overly-loud co-host Maggie Murphy might succumb to a hail of bullets like Biggie and crumple in the seat next to him, thereby ending her eardrum shattering shrieks of praise forever? Who knows.
But if you think Nigel's kooky... well, he is. But so was the following expert evaluation from the guest judge, Toni Basil. Now, Basil is apparently some sort of renown choreographer. Like me, you probably know her better as the grown woman dressed as a cheerleader who made that "Oh Mickey" song a long time ago. At the top of the evening, she mentioned that she would soon be receiving something called the "Living Legend of Hip-Hop Award." I didn't know such a thing was being given out, but I sincerely hope, seeing as how Basil is up next, that KRS-One, Rakim, De La Soul, Snoop, Ralph McDaniels, Big Lez, Scoob and Scrap Lova, Bobbito the Barber, DJ Yella, and Chi Ali, have already gotten theirs.
Here's what Toni Basil had to say about Karla and Jonathan's "smooth hip-hop" routine:
"Hip-hop is a series of steps that the choreographer draws
from many millenniums of dance styles - but mostly street. And street has to
have a groove and a funk. And if you're gangsters, and you don't have a ghetto
groove, it's just gonna feel store-bought."
I don't actually know what that means. Am I not hip-hop?
01 Jul 2009 05:26 pm
[Alyssa Rosenberg] So, I went to see Public Enemies last night, and ended up being far more deeply touched by it than I expected. It's certainly the best movie about banks, or bank-related malfeasance I've seen since the financial crisis started (for more details, see this piece just up on The Atlantic's homepage about Hollywood and the financial crisis. Some spoilers if you don't know much about John Dillinger, I guess). But there was one scene in particular that got me thinking in a way I hadn't anticipated. In that scene, a loutish young F.B.I. agent is beating Billie Frechette (played by Marion Cotillard) to try to get her to give up information about where the Bureau can find Dillinger. Her lip is split, her face is bruised, and the agent won't let her leave to go to the bathroom, and hits her again when she wets herself. It's a horribly uncomfortable scene, relieved only when Melvin Purvis (Christian Bale), the man in charge of the Chicago F.B.I. office returns, other agents stop the young man from hitting Billie, and when she can't stand to walk out of the office, Purvis picks her up and carries her, urine-soaked skirt and all. It's meant to be gentlemanly, except that earlier, Purvis and his agents were beating a man injured in a shootout at a bank, who had a bullet lodged above his eye and was screaming for painkillers, to find out where Dillinger and Machine Gun Kelly were staying. Clearly, Purvis has different standards about torture when it comes to ladies, even if they do have big eyes and questionable tastes in boyfriends. In pop culture, depictions of torture often seem to focus on the victim's (who are usually men) fortitude, rather than the torturer's depravity. Take Star Trek. When Eric Bana and his henchmen shove a slug down Bruce Greenwood's throat that will manipulate his brain, we already knew Bana's character was a monster, so the takeaway from the scene was Greenwood's bravery. In " War Stories," the episode of Joss Whedon's sci-fi Western in which two of the show's main characters are tortured by a sadistic crime lord, the villian isn't much of a presence: the focus is on how the two men keep each other alive. Waterboarding someone 183 times in a single month is--and ought to be--horrific no matter their gender. But I do wonder whether the public debate in America over torture would be different if there were prominent female victims who had been identified and were part of the conversation. I'm not sure I think that would be a good thing; relying on women's perceived delicacy to say that torture is wrong, or saying that it's worse for a woman than for a man to be pushed into a wall repeatedly, at minimum relies on faulty logic, and at maximum reinforces dangerous gender stereotypes that could be used to say it's all right to torture men, because they can take it. But I do think that moving the debate over torture away from the fortitude or lack thereof of a person who suffers it, and towards the morality of the person who commits it, is an important shift to make--and more difficult to make permanent than we might think.
01 Jul 2009 01:21 pm
[Gautham Nagesh]
Greetings folks, it's an honor to be part of the team for the week. I spend my days covering federal technology for Nextgov and have also written for National Journal. My main interests are sports, government waste, fried foods and anything involving my home state of Michigan.
One note on Neil's post: I actually interviewed for a job with Vibe when I was in college, where I was asked to name my three favorite rap albums of all time. At the time I replied Ready to Die, Aquemini and Midnight Marauders. Apparently that was not the right answer, because the interviewer did a double take and I didn't get the job. My topic for today is the ongoing train wreck that is soon-to-be-former Detroit City Council member Monica Conyers. Conyers announced her resignation from office this week after pleading guilty to conspiracy to commit bribery in a scandal over a city sludge-hauling contract. If that makes her sounds like a character from The Wire, then you've got a pretty good idea of what kind of politician Conyers has proven to be. From the Detroit News:
Continue reading "The Madness of Monica Conyers" »
01 Jul 2009 12:26 pm
[Alyssa Rosenberg] The day job's got me running all over Baltimore today. But I went to a midnight showing "Public Enemies" yesterday, and while I've got a piece on it forthcoming so I won't say much here, it reminded me of how much I love David Wagoner's poem, "The Shooting of John Dillinger Outside the Biograph Theater, July 22, 1934." So if you need a lunch break, and are in a mood for soulful gangsters, read it, here and continued below the jump.
Chicago ran a fever of a hundred and one that groggy Sunday.
A reporter fried an egg on a sidewalk; the air looked shaky.
And a hundred thousand people were in the lake like shirts in
a laundry.
Why was Johnny lonely?
Not because two dozen solid citizens, heat-struck, had keeled
over backward.
Not because those lawful souls had fallen out of their sockets
and melted.
But because the sun went down like a lump in a furnace or a
bull in the Stockyards.
Where was Johnny headed?
Under the Biograph Theater sign that said, "Our Air is
Refrigerated."
Past seventeen FBI men and four policemen who stood in
doorways and sweated.
Johnny sat down in a cold seat to watch Clark Gable get
electrocuted.
Continue reading "A Break for a Bad Man" »
01 Jul 2009 11:04 am
[A. Serwer]
So like Ta-Nehisi, I've been pretty frustrated with the way that many on the left have simply embraced the idea that black people are standing in the way of marriage equality. The coverage in the fallout of proposition 8, which relied almost entirely on a CNN poll which had a sample of black men so small it couldn't be measured, but showed 70% of black folks voting for the measure, basically gave the entire press a pass to blame Prop 8's passage on black people. Nate Silver's analysis showed this interpretation of the results to be factually incorrect. Ironically, it was only a few months earlier that conservatives had latched onto the Community Investment Act to try and blame the financial crisis on black homeowners--an explanation liberals ridiculed--rightfully so--as racist. And yet this is pretty much the same thing.
I decided to cover the fight for marriage equality in DC partially out of sheer frustration with the way black voters had been portrayed as an anonymous, homophobic hive mind in the aftermath of Prop 8. It haven't attempted to sugarcoat homophobia in the black community--rather my intent was to make sure that there were names and histories attached to the people fighting on both sides, so at the very least, when we were talking about this issue, we would be talking about people, about individuals. They say journalism is the first draft of history--this time I wanted to make sure that the people involved in this fight had a history people could look to. I'm not the best reporter in the world, I'm really pretty new at this. I also don't have TNC's reach, but no one can say the information isn't out there.
Frank Rich though, is another story. Let's take a look at that statement again:
Continue reading "Race, Superstition, and Marriage Equality" »
01 Jul 2009 08:17 am
[Dwayne Betts] You can't live in DC and not be impressed, on some level, by Councilman Marion Barry's political staying power. And if you asked about the source of that power, you would probably get ten different answers from ten different people. Earlier today I got a glimpse of how Barry maintains his relevancy. Barry is introducing a bill to have the Human Rights Act of 1977 amended to afford protection to ex-offenders. Let me say that again slower - Barry is introducing a bill to amend the Human Rights Act of 1977 so that it affords protection to ex-offenders.
If passed, the amended bill will in part read:
It is the intent of the Council of the District of Columbia, in enacting this chapter, to secure an end in the
District of Columbia to discrimination for any reason other than that of individual merit, including, but not
limited to, discrimination by reason of race, color, religion, national origin, sex, age, marital status, personal
appearance, sexual orientation, gender identity or expression familial status, family responsibilities,
matriculation, political affiliation, genetic information, disability, source of income, arrest record, or conviction record and, status as a victim of an intrafamily offense, and place of residence or business.
Barry's full bill is here: http://www.dccouncil.us/images/00001/20090210104039.pdf
Politically, this is a good move for Barry. It makes it look like he's ahead of the curve, but really he just hears a train that's already coming. Providing protection for ex-offenders guarantees nothing anyway. The important work of the legislation, if it passes, will be to create an atmosphere where someone who has been to prison can walk into a room without feeling the need to confess to his crimes again and again.
Continue reading "Marion Barry, Ex-offenders and the Human Rights Bill of 1977" »
30 Jun 2009 06:35 pm
You all know it, so I should say it. This..More seriously he invites attacks from people who think his notion that
Palin is "the first indisputably fertile female to dare to dance with
the big dogs" is fairly ridiculous. Indisputable to who? The underlying
argument holds that anyone whom the author doesn't deem attractive, is
somehow disputably fertile.
...is an erroneous reading of Purdum. I stand by the broader conclusion, but that particular claim, on reflection, doesn't hold up. More likely, Purdum was (as many commenters have pointed out) simply alluding to Trig's recent birth.
30 Jun 2009 04:47 pm
Then you're probably right. Here's Todd Purdum on Sarah Palin: Another aspect of the Palin phenomenon bears examination, even if the
mere act of raising it invites intimations of sexism: she is by far the
best-looking woman ever to rise to such heights in national politics,
the first indisputably fertile female to dare to dance with the big
dogs. This pheromonal reality has been a blessing and a curse. It has
captivated people who would never have given someone with Palin's
record a second glance if Palin had looked like Susan Boyle. And it has
made others reluctant to give her a second chance because she looks
like a beauty queen.
I think some more thinking could have helped this graph. A lot. It is, in my estimation, certainly arguable that Sarah Palin's appearance has played into her reception. My sense is that it's helped. Purdum thinks the mere mention of this notion invites attacks from people who spend their days waiting to accuse people of sexism. He is wrong. They invite attacks from people who wonder why he's speaking as though there have been a parade of women who have scaled the national political heights. In the literal sense, there has only been one other--Geraldine Ferraro. Thus Purdum is basically arguing that Palin is better looking than Ferraro. A more charitable interpretation throws Hillary Clinton into the mix. More seriously he invites attacks from people who think his notion that Palin is "the first indisputably fertile female to dare to dance with the big dogs" is fairly ridiculous. Indisputable to who? The underlying argument holds that anyone whom the author doesn't deem attractive, is somehow disputably fertile. What we are talking about is who is fuckable, and who isn't. Frankly, speaking as a man, I'm always skeptical of the "fuckability" concept. I've seen to many men step to with women carnal intent, and then deny it later. Usually after rejection and dismissal, but sometimes after success.This game of fuckability, or "indisputable fertility," is exactly that. It allows men to assert control over a situation, in which, most frighteningly, they often have very little Hillary Clinton haunts the dreams of no less than half the men who rag on her appearance. And should she ever step to any of them, there'd be very little dispute of any kind. Indeed, it would offend the senses of a polite society were we ever to honestly contemplate exactly how large a portion of womankind men regard as "indisputably fertile." Some of them are scientifically infertile. But brothers don't really care. Let's not act like we do.
30 Jun 2009 04:00 pm
{Dwayne Betts}
I met my wife in a bookstore and read her my poetry before our first conversation was over. So, of course I loved poetry Friday's. Here's Yusef Komunyakaa's "Facing It." This is - nah, I won't explain it. Just enjoy.
Facing ItBY YUSEF KOMUNYAKAA My black face fades, hiding inside the black granite. I said I wouldn't, dammit: No tears. I'm stone. I'm flesh. My clouded reflection eyes me like a bird of prey, the profile of night slanted against morning. I turn this way--the stone lets me go. I turn that way--I'm inside the Vietnam Veterans Memorial again, depending on the light to make a difference. I go down the 58,022 names, half-expecting to find my own in letters like smoke. I touch the name Andrew Johnson; I see the booby trap's white flash. Names shimmer on a woman's blouse but when she walks away the names stay on the wall. Brushstrokes flash, a red bird's wings cutting across my stare. The sky. A plane in the sky. A white vet's image floats closer to me, then his pale eyes look through mine. I'm a window. He's lost his right arm inside the stone. In the black mirror a woman's trying to erase names: No, she's brushing a boy's hair.
Yusef Komunyakaa, "Facing It" from Pleasure Dome: New and Collected Poems.Copyright © 2001 by Yusef Komunyakaa. Reprinted with the permission of Wesleyan University Press.
Source: Pleasure Dome: New and Collected Poems (Wesleyan University Press, 2001)
Continue reading "Poetry's Back: Yusef Komunyakaa Reading "Facing It"" »
30 Jun 2009 03:48 pm
[Alyssa Rosenberg] All respect to everything Ta-Nehisi is saying about Obama and gay rights, and how credit for speaking out should be apportioned. But I have to say, I'd be much more interested to hear what Bill Clinton has to say on the ways his views on equal marriage rights have evolved right now than I am to hear Obama talk about what he's going to do, at some point, in the next three years. Someone who is reflecting, and who can acknowledge his beliefs and how they've changed and why, free of political responsibility, might do a lot more good than a reluctant advocate. Update: Lots of thoughts on this in comments. I said this because I don't believe that Obama, while in office, will
ever a) talk about his honest feelings about and personal experiences
with gay people, or b) endorse full marriage equality. And
I believe that a) knowing gay people personally is the single
experience most likely to change people's minds about equal rights, and b) that, now that Lawrence has
decriminalized sodomy, that marriage is THE issue around which
difficult discussions are going to be had, because it is the policy
that gets at the difference between gay people and straight people. If
Bill Clinton were willing to talk about how his attitudes on equal
marriage rights changed, he'd be addressing both of those issues. I'd love to be
surprised on this. But for now, I'm a cynic.
30 Jun 2009 03:41 pm
Commenter exitr makes a fair point: Hold on a sec - just going by what you've quoted here, Obama is definitely not saying that gays should not have the right
to wed. He's left himself a huge (frustratingly huge, actually) amount
of wiggle room; when he says "my religious beliefs say that marriage is
something sanctified between a man and a woman," that is a far cry from
saying that the law in an at least technically secular society
should not permit same-sex marriage. Especially when he frames it with
"I try not to have my religious beliefs dominate or determine my
political views on this issue." Basically I think his words here can be
interpreted to support almost any position on this issue - and he can
certainly be criticized for that.
Here is Obama's original quote: I'm a Christian. And so, although I try not to have my religious
beliefs dominate or determine my political views on this issue, I do
believe that tradition, and my religious beliefs say that marriage is
something sanctified between a man and a woman.
My understanding has always been that Obama was opposed to gay marriage--as a legal matter. Perhaps that opposition has nothing to do with opposition to gay marriage as a religious matter. Indeed, I could be wrong about his opposition to gay marriage. In this clip he says he is not someone "who promotes same-sex marriage. But he believes in civil unions." You can make of that what you will. A charitable interpretion argues that he's against it religiously, but doesn't have a problem with civil gay marriage. My interpretation is that he's a politiician and that he believes, perhaps correctly, that this issue could be fatal. Honestly, I don't know. I'm just sick of playing the pathological problem child. I'm sick of black folks being America's sin-eater. It's a maddening--if neccessary thing--to extend good faith to people you deeply suspect are not in the same business.
30 Jun 2009 02:12 pm
[Neil Drumming]
According to Gawker, it looks like Vibe magazine has officially folded. I can't say I'm surprised, considering the state of the publishing industry in general and the fact that the book had long ago lost its clear dominion over the culture so often referred to as "urban."
Having worked for Vibe as an editor for a short time and done some freelance for the magazine in recent years, I wish I could say I was more distraught. But as Ta-Nehisi was fond of telling me back in our earlier days in the magazine business: "Some things aren't meant to last forever."
Somebody tell that to the guys at RollingStone.
30 Jun 2009 01:21 pm
[Alyssa Rosenberg] Enough with the seriousness. I've been meaning for a while to complain about James Parker's piece in the July/August Atlantic about the problem of keeping the Harry Potter movies fresh as filmmakers tackle the later books and deal with their characters' development into sexually mature adults (Caveat: I really like Parker's work in general. The piece about Spongebob is delightful and insane.). And now that early reviews are calling the new movie "sexy," I've got my excuse. Parker's piece, titled "Sex and the Single Wizard," spends about only half its words talking about adolescence and relationships, and fails to mention the actual source of the problem: that J.K. Rowling, for all that she's created a compelling universe, is really awful at writing about adult sexual and romantic relationships. I suppose I should warn that thar be spoilers ahead, if you care, so let's go after the jump:
Continue reading "Sex and Harry Potter" »
30 Jun 2009 12:43 pm
From Barack Obama's speech yesterday: For
if we're honest with ourselves, we'll acknowledge that there are good
and decent people in this country who don't yet fully embrace their gay
brothers and sisters -- not yet.
That's why I've spoken about
these issues not just in front of you, but in front of unlikely
audiences -- in front of African American church members, in front of
other audiences that have traditionally resisted these changes.
I think anyone who regularly reads this blog knows how much I admire Barack Obama as a president and a politician. I am not an unbias party. I also find a lot of the public criticism that he's gotten on race to be baffling and empty. And I have said as much. Moreover, it needs to be said that I believe homophobia is ultimately bad for black people, and wreaks havoc on all of us, regardless of our sexual orientation. More than that, I believe that an informed reading of the history of the Civil Rights movement reveals instructive moral parallels. As my friend Jelani Cobb has said gay marriage is the civil rights issue of our time. With that in mind, it's worth remembering where Barack Obama is on the civil rights issue of our time: I'm a Christian. And so, although I try not to have my religious
beliefs dominate or determine my political views on this issue, I do
believe that tradition, and my religious beliefs say that marriage is
something sanctified between a man and a woman.
It's very interesting to see a man who opposes gays should not have the right to wed, claim credit for talking to "African American church members" about homophobia. It's even more interesting to see a man who lives in a majority black city, poised to go further than he, himself, ever would, claim that credit. I've heard it said, many times, on this board that Obama is actually pro-gay marriage, but that he can't come out all the way. If that's the case, then we must conclude that he is lying about his stance. Moreover, he's invoking his relationship with religion, and his God, in that lie. Perhaps worse, he isn't being fully honest with the very audiences he wants credit for addressing-- the very audiences, that by his logic, would most benefit from that honesty.
Continue reading "Dispiriting Cont." »
30 Jun 2009 12:39 pm
[Alyssa Rosenberg] I was reading Dwayne's post on Juvenile Life Without Parole this morning, and the last paragraph really stood out me: "I don't think our justice system has evolved to something more
productive and effective than it was fifty or a hundred years ago. In
most other industrialized nations, life is something conceivable like
30 years or 50 years, and parole is an option. These nations have lower
incarceration rates than the US - they have less crime. Somewhere our
justice system got off track - we replaced medieval guillotines and
rope for jail cells that don't aim to rehabilitate." As I mentioned yesterday, I did some volunteer work in the Massachusetts prison system a while back, and in my day job at Government Executive, I occasionally write stories about staffing and the challenges prison guards face in the federal prison system. So I'm interested in the question of how we can create strong, sustainable rehabilitative programs for people who are incarcerated, and how we keep prison guards feeling secure enough to do their jobs and create disincentives for prisoners to use violence against guards and vice versa. Clearly, it's possible to create good rehabilitative programs. The one I worked in required the women involved to go through alcohol and narcotics treatment, and intensive job training and parenting classes. The incentives were pretty good: if they completed their classes, they got to see their daughters twice a month, through a program that was handling all the hassles of getting their daughters to the prison and also checking in on how they were doing in school, with foster families, etc. The one mother who got out of prison while I was involved with the program did find work when she was released. But as sections of Adrian Nicole LeBlanc's Random Family (and of course many other sources) point out, who gets into those programs can be haphazard, and they're not necessarily widely available, given the stark cuts in funding for educational programs in prisons. I think it's good to have volunteer-run programs, but unless they operate on a very wide scale, volunteer programs can erode fairly easily, and if they rely on bringing people in from the outside, risk getting snarled in swiftly-shifting bureaucracies.
Continue reading "Can We Make Prisons Productive Places?" »
30 Jun 2009 11:04 am
[A. Serwer]
Ya'll can't get mad at me, because I haven't done a Michael Jackson post yet. This will be my only one, barring unforseen developments.
On the bus yesterday, I was reading Newsweek and found this article from David Gates on Michael Jackson:
Why did he feel so deeply uncomfortable with himself? The hopeless task of sculpting and bleaching yourself into a simulacrum of a white man suggests a profound loathing of blackness. If Michael Jackson couldn't be denounced as a race traitor, who could? Somehow, though, black America overlooked it, and continued to buy his records, perhaps because some African-Americans, with their hair relaxers and skin-lightening creams, understood why Jackson was remaking him-self, even if they couldn't condone it.
I think this misunderstands what Jackson was going through. I can only speak for myself, but I didn't see Jackson as rebuking or hating black folks by mutilating himself. I didn't see him as someone who was deliberately reinforcing the notion that white is inherently beautiful, I saw him as an example of how a number of factors, like racism and a really fucked up family life, can make a person go so crazy that they'll cut up their own face.
Contrary to conclusions of late-night comedians and even some journalists, I don't think Jackson wanted to be white. It's not like he started signing like Frank Sinatra or dancing like Fred Astaire. You don't get down with Al Sharpton or pick your bodyguards from the Fruit of Islam if you want to be white or you hate black people or "blackness". I think Jackson was after something far more elusive.
Continue reading "Michael Jackson's Mirror." »
30 Jun 2009 10:00 am
It's been an education to watch the insidious efforts to blame this country's trenchant homophobia on roughly 13 percent of its population run up against a wall of facts--and plow right through them:
In conversations with gay activists on both coasts last week, I heard
several theories as to why Obama has seemed alternately clumsy and
foot-dragging in honoring his campaign commitments to dismantle DOMA
and Don't Ask Don't Tell. The most charitable take had it that he was
following a deliberate strategy, given his habit of pursuing his goals
through long-term game plans. After all, he's only five months into his
term and must first juggle two wars, the cratered economy, health care
and Iran. Some speculated that the president is fearful of crossing
preachers, especially black preachers, who are adamantly opposed to
same-sex marriage. Still others said that the president was tone-deaf
on the issue because his inner White House circle lacks any known gay
people.
Frank Rich, I guess, is just reporting what he's heard, not advancing the theory. Furthermore, I can't separate my own emotional reaction to this from my ego. Writers want their work to have impact. The idea that it isn't is troubling. It's a vane impulse of course, and one I hope to check by laying it out there for you. Beyond that, it's just enormously depressing to see writers who you respect, writers who you, in many ways, model yourself after, repeatedly invoke this lie. Maybe it's time to stop modeling. I am, at least in my own limited estimation, a hard-eyed skeptic. I work to not assume bad faith in disagreements. But at some point, as someone in it, you start to conclude that this race shit is real. There are black people all over the net laughing at me right now. I take that. I just want to say that watching, on the one hand, a black city move toward gay marriage, and on the other hand, people blame Obama's inaction on black people is deeply disappointing. On gay rights, Obama hails from one of the most progressive black churches in the country. Moreover, there's been this ongoing narrative that Obama isn't afraid to tell black people hard truths. And yet when he comes up short, somehow it's because he's caving to the horrid blacks. In everything else, Obama is postracial. In the matter of gay rights, he is truly black. With respect due, I am so heartily tired of reading certain white writers talk about what's wrong with us. It's like watching a terminal cancer patient with, a few months to live, talk shit about another patient, with mere weeks.
30 Jun 2009 08:39 am
This post has to me made every few months. I guess now is as a good a time as any. We've gotten quite a few new commenters, in the wake of Michael Jackson's death. We've also got some new people responding to our guest bloggers. I welcome the new contributors, as well as the continued input of older ones. I've enjoyed the spirited debate--especially over Ricci. That said, I'd like to remind people that this is a social space and one that tries to take its cues from the virtual and the real. I've said before that it helps to think of this blog as a dinner party. I'm your host. This week, I have a few cohosts. I'd ask you to speak to your fellow guests with same respect that you'd give to a fellow guest at an actual dinner party. That may seem unusual or weird given the conventions of the internet and most blogs. But that's kind of the point. If you're feeling pissed off about something, if you want to call people names, if you want to revel in snark, than this probably isn't the place for you. And that's fine--the web is awash in spaces tailor-made for blowing off steam. But this minor stop, on the sprawling, infinite internet isn't one of them. It's worth thinking before you hit that publish key. It's worth talking to people like they're people. It's worth avoiding straw-men. It's worth assuming the good faith of your adversaries. It's worth considering what they have to say. Do that and you'll be ahead of most people who argue for a living. Truthfully, I forget those lessons all the time. But I hold them as values. I ask the same of my commenters. Again, I know that sounds weird. But I see my commenters not as mere after-thoughts or appendages, but as a valuable resource. With that in mind, it's kind of hard to ask any less. Thanks in advance for bearing with me.
29 Jun 2009 10:32 pm
[Dwayne Betts] Since the Ricci opinion came out, it seems only right to talk about two cases that will be before the court soon. The issue of JLWOP will come before the Supreme Court soon - law firms all over the country are preparing amicus briefs in the effort to sway the courts one way or the other. The two cases in question are both Florida cases, chosen because they are both instances of JLWOP for crimes that didn't result in murder. In one, Joe Sullivan was sentenced to JLWOP for raping at 72 year old woman. He was 13 at the time and it was 1989. In the other, Terrance Graham got life for committing a home invasion while on probation for robbery. He was 17. I think these cases were taken because they aren't murders. It's hard to argue for any kind of leniency (if you call life with the possibility of parole leniency) when someone has been killed. The backdrop of this case is the Court's decision that the giving a juvenile a death the death penalty violates the 8th amendment.
My fear is that in settling the JLWOP issue - there will be other issues around sentencing that don't get resolved. In a state like Virginia, for all substantive purposes there is no difference between sentencing a juvenile to 55 years or life - because there is no parole. In the juvenile death penalty case Judge Kennedy said that even the most heinous crime isn't evidence of a child that cannot be rehabilitated. He said the heinous crimes are not "evidence of irretrievably depraved character." That's why the United States leads all industrial countries in incarceration by a nice margin - and why we are the only industrialized country to sentence juveniles to life without parole.
Continue reading "Juvenile Life Without Parole (JLWOP)" »
29 Jun 2009 08:22 pm
[Dwayne Betts] The Rockets team physician is saying that the injury to Yao's left foot could end his season and possibly his career. It's early now, too early to say definitively what happen. Yao could have the surgery that Cleveland's big Z had - but right now little is known except an injury that was expected to get better is now worse.
What does this mean for the league? We know it means little for the Rockets, they weren't winning anyway - but Yao was to China what the US beating Brazil in soccer the other day would have been. More than that, Yao is the most offensively skilled big man in a decade.
I'll never forget watching Yao throw a one-handed touch bounce pass through the lane his first season. He and Stevie Franchise never did it like I wanted them to - but they had some good runs. Personally, I think Tracy McGrady brought the injury bug to Houston with him.
29 Jun 2009 05:23 pm
[Alyssa Rosenberg] Today, Adam and Ta-Nehisi have things to say about Ricci, and I'm happy to let them talk about the decision. But because we'll get a pile of legal analysis today, I want to step back a little bit and talk about New Haven as a town, and what it meant to me. New Haven is to me what fatherhood is to Ta-Nehisi, I think, and because it's in the news today, even in a tangential way, I'd like to talk about the town a little. Why am I qualified to talk about New Haven? I spent four years going to school there, including the time that Frank Ricci filed his lawsuit. Attending college in New Haven is not, admittedly, a guarantee of deep-seated involvement in the Elm City. But I was lucky enough to get swept into the roiling waters of New Haven politics, an experience that was critical in shaping my understanding of race, politics, and ultimately, myself. And I want to write a little bit about that process today. (Quick disclaimer: I work as a non-partisan reporter now, and as a result, don't participate in party politics, make political contributions, lend my support to candidates, or causes,etc. The events I'm going to describe here happened in the past.) I liked to believe I was not a naive little white girl before I moved to New Haven: I'd helped lead a troop of Girl Scouts whose mothers were in prison in high school and spent a lot of weekends going through security at MCI Framingham for jailhouse visitors' room meetings. But when I got to New Haven, I was naive enough to believe that a town with an overwhelming Democratic majority on its Board of Aldermen would have no problem passing a law creating a local domestic partner registry for gay couples. I was wrong. A coalition of black and Latino pastors and their congregations, plus some Orthodox Jews, convinced the board to vote against the registry by a one-vote margin. But even though that loss was tough, it was the thing that got me into conversations with New Haven's political figures, union leaders, and pastors, and for that, I'll be grateful for it for the rest of my life.
Continue reading "To New Haven and Back Again" »
29 Jun 2009 04:05 pm
[A. Serwer]
I've posted a number of immediate reflections on the Supreme Court's 5-4 ruling in favor of the white firefighters in the Ricci case over at TAPPED, which you can read here, here, and here.
The conservatives on the court decided that the city decided to throw out the test results "All the evidence demonstrates that the City rejected the test results because the higher scoring candidates were white." That's not what happened. There were a number of issues with the test the city failed to address before giving it that were brought to light afterwards, and the racial disparities in results made the city concerned that they would be liable for discrimination, so they threw it out.
Justice Kennedy argues that jurisdictions only have reason to fear liability in cases where there is a "strong basis in evidence" necessitating such concern. As Justice Ginsberg points out, this requirement is somewhat redundant, Title VII already requires the city to show problems with a practice beyond mere disparate impact.
What I find remarkable is that the above assumption of bad faith on the part of the city New Haven violates their own standard--there is nothing in this case, the composition of the test, nothing in the composition of New Haven's fire department ( blacks and Latinos comprise 30 percent and 16 percent of the City's firefighters, respectively, in a city that is 60% black and Latino) or even in the history of race in this country to justify the opinion that the city just doesn't like white people and doesn't think they should be firefighters. But if you believe, as Pat Buchanan does, that white men are the most discriminated against people in America, then the city's intent is clear. There just isn't a "strong basis in evidence" to support that view.
Continue reading "Thoughts on the Ricci Case." »
29 Jun 2009 04:00 pm
Next Monday, July 6, I'll be at the Barnes & Noble on 86th Street, reading from my memoir. Actually, I'll be playing wing-man to my dear friend David Carr. He'll be reading from his New York Times best-selling memoir, The Night Of The Gun. It's fair to say that were it not for Carr, you guys wouldn't be reading this blog. I met him thirteen years ago, when I thought I was on my way to either getting a PhD in history, or an MFA in poetry--2.3 GPA be damned. Carr was then the editor of Washington City Paper, and I had some vague affinity for writing. So I applied for internship there, sending some clips from my college paper and a chapbook full of truly awful poetry. Carr taught me to love the long-form--too much, so. Against his advice, and my parents advice, I dropped out of Howard and went full hog. My calculus was simple if immature--I'd rather get paid to write, than pay someone else to write. Anyway, here we are all these years later. Come out, if you can. You'll get to see how this insane experiment turned out.
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The Beautiful Struggle: A Father, Two Sons, and an Unlikely Road to Manhood 
