NewsOne’s Bakari Kitwana interviews Vijay Prashad about the implications of the recent killing of Al Qaeda leader Osama Bin Ladan. Kitwana and Prashad discuss the American public’s euphoria surrounding this news and what this death means for the war in Afghanistan, and the future of America’s enemies—from Al Qaeda to the Taliban.

They also talk about the meaning of Bin Laden’s demise to the 2012 presidential race. Says Prashad, “Forget Obama. Forget 2012. What are the long-term implications for American power and authority in a world where others are trying to build up international law as a counter to cowboy-ism?”

Prashad also shares insight on the way he sees the death of Bin Laden already playing out in civil rights and human rights circles: “In 1981 Ronald Reagan signed Executive Order 12333, which disallows the US from pursuing targeted assassinations. Likewise, international law forbids this type of action. I’m very disturbed that there is no qualified discussion about the legality of this type of action. People on the liberal to progressive side seem to have lost their bearings and are no longer able to be serious when it comes to the question of utilizing armed force overseas.”

Vijay Prashad is professor and director of International Studies at Trinity College. He is the author eleven books, including his most recent The Darker Nations: A People’s History of the Third World.

Bakari Kitwana is CEO of Rap Sessions, Editor at Large of Newsone.com and author of the forthcoming Hip-Hop Activism in the Obama Era. (Third World Press, 2011)

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Bakari Kitwana’s interviews Mark Anthony Neal about the Nicki Minaj’s recent appearance on Saturday Night Live as “The Bride of Blackenstein,” which interestingly generated very little serious media critique.

Here, they discuss the tame media response to the provocative image of Black women, as well as the predictable knee-jerk response regarding stereotypes. Kitwana asks Neal if the new media environment along with political correctness is smothering complex analyses of gender and race. Says Dr. Neal, “Nicki Minaj forces us to always think about how we come to terms with Black women’s physicality. What’s so smart about the SNL piece is that you see a connection not just to Black women’s physicality but also to how that physicality is a mode of resistance.”

Neal says he believes hip-hop is returning its earlier role as a catalyst for jumpstarting important national discussions: “We now have artists like Diddy and Lupe Fiasco who are pushing back in terms of trying to get President Obama to be much more accountable, particularly to the folks who helped put him in office.”

Mark Anthony Neal is Professor of Black Popular Culture at Duke University, host of the internet TV show Left of Black, and the author five books, including the forthcoming That’s The Joint II: The Hip-Hop Studies Reader.

Bakari Kitwana is CEO of Rap Sessions, Editor at Large of Newsone.com and author of the forthcoming Hip-Hop Activism in the Obama Era. (Third World Press, 2011)

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Rap Sessions: Egypt protests and ancient history

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Bakari Kitwana speaks with Amari Jackson and Anthony Browder about the current political uprising in Egypt. Novelist Amari Jackson talks about the relationship of his new novel, The Savion Sequence, to real life events in the Middle East. And Browder, who has conducted over 40 study tours to Egypt over the last two decades, examines the complex ways that today’s cry for freedom relates to ancient history.

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In this discussion both consider the relationship between ancient Egyptian history and contemporary events, fact and fiction, as well as personal and political freedom. Browder calls the movement in Egypt, “One of the best examples in our lifetime of people trying to achieve their freedom nonviolently.”

Amari Jackson is a journalist and the author of The Savion Sequence. Anthony Browder is a cultural historian and author of Egypt on the Potomac. Bakari Kitwana is CEO of Rap Sessions, Editor at Large of Newsone.com and author of the forthcoming Hip-Hop Activism in the Obama Era. (Third World Press, 2010)

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In this week’s edition of Rap Sessions, NewsOne contributor Bakari Kitwana speaks with Dr. William Patterson about a new hip-hop and civic studies project modeled after the early 1900s Booker T. Washington and George Washington Carver’s Jessup Agricultural Wagon. Whereas Washington and Carver brought Tuskegee University via a horse-drawn wagon to sharecroppers in the South, Patterson’s In Search of Hip-Hop Express brings civic studies from the University of Illinois Urban Champaign to Black youth around the US through a mobile airstream trailer retro-fitted with the latest technology.

Hip-hop Express teaches Black youth civic engagement and community-building while investigating and archiving the Black experience from a hip-hop perspective.  Patterson emphasizes here that his focus is to engage descendents of the sharecroppers: “Booker T Washington believed if sharecroppers were better educated about finance and the science and technology of agriculture then it would improve their quality of life.”

“Sharecroppers often worked seven days a week and had little free time—so Washington believed Tuskegee should go to them,” Patterson says, “One of the ways universities can engage urban youth today is to use technology and other educational tools, along with aesthetics of the city and hip-hop to be the engaging point to inspire community transformation. Our new crop that we have to cultivate is actually the young people in our community. If we provide the right science and appropriate media and technology they then become the stewards of the Black experience and contribute to that legacy.”

The creator of In Search of Hip-Hop Express, William Patterson is the founder and co-director of Youth Media Workshop. He teaches educational policy at the University of Illinois-Urbana Champaign.

Bakari Kitwana is CEO of Rap Sessions, Editor at Large of Newsone.com and author of the forthcoming Hip-Hop Activism in the Obama Era. (Third World Press, 2011)

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In this week’s edition of Rap Sessions, NewsOne writer Bakari Kitwana speaks with Haki Madhubuti, Publisher of Third World Press, about the life and impact of Dr. Margaret Burroughs, the pioneering Chicago artist and co-founder of The DuSable Museum of African American History who died last month at the age of 95. Madhubuti, who volunteered at The DuSable Museum back in the early 1960s, talks about Burroughs’ impact on the political and cultural life of Chicago and the nation for over half a century.

About a month before her death, she was honored by the Art Institute of Chicago with its Legends and Legacy Award. At the gathering, Madhubuti publicly read a poem that he wrote for Dr. Burroughs entitled “Master of Colors and Canvas.” Here Madhubuti remembers Dr. Burroughs as a one-of-a-kind educator, artist, institution builder and community leader. “When Margaret Burroughs spoke everyone listened,” Madhubuti recalls. “She was never for the elite. She was always on the frontline trying to do that which is best, good, correct, and just for the great majority of people in this country and the world.”

Haki Madhubuti is the Ida B. Wells-Barnett University Professor at DePaul University and the founder and publisher of Third World Press. He is the author of 28 books including the most recent Liberation Narratives: New and Collected Poems 1966-2009 for which he received the 2010 Hurston/Wright Legacy Award for poetry.

Bakari Kitwana is CEO of Rap Sessions and author of the forthcoming Hip-Hop Activism in the Obama Era.

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Julianne Malveuax Speaks On The State Of Blacks In American Economy [Podcast]

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Bakari Kitwana speaks with economist Julianne Malveaux about key strategies that Blacks must deploy in order to survive in the current economy.

For Malveaux this includes being equipped with the tools to dissect and act upon the recent Labor Department statistics on Black unemployment (15.7%), as well as the Economic Policy Institute’s findings on Black college graduates—over 15 percent of who are also unemployed. While she offers hope, reflecting on her new book, Surviving and Thriving: 365 Facts in Black Economic History, here Dr. Malveaux is unflinching in her criticism of colorblind policy as a solution for economic woes disproportionately impacting the African American community.

“There is no such thing as colorblindness,” Malveaux says. “Colorblindness is blind trip into color-focused oblivion. The challenge with Obama Administration has been in an attempt to govern broadly, there has been a narrow exclusion of people who have already been excluded.”

Julianne Malveaux is an economist, syndicated columnist and president of Bennett College. She is the author of numerous books on Blacks and the economy, including the newly released Surviving and Thriving: 365 Facts About Black Economic History (Last World Productions, 2010).

Bakari Kitwana is CEO of Rap Sessions and author of the forthcoming Hip-Hop Activism in the Obama Era. (Third World Press, 2010)

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Bakari Kitwana speaks with Oakland Activist Dereca Blackmon about last week’s sentencing of ex-transit officer Johannes Mehserle, who earlier this year was found guilty of involuntary manslaughter in the 2009 videotaped shooting death of Oscar Grant. Blackmon was one of the organizers of protests in the days immediately following the shooting of the unarmed 22-year-old Grant on a train platform on New Year’s Day.  Blackmon talks with newsone.com about where do we go from here, and practical responses to incidents like these that persist around the country.

“We have to be more organized if we are going to hold people accountable to our communities, says Blackmon. “And that means we need to put more thought, investment and dollars into answering the question, what does accountable policing looks like?” Equally important, she says, is the average citizen, who “has to continue to be vigilant in expressing their voice and concern about these issues.”

Dereca Blackmon is co-founder of the Coalition Against Police Executions, which formed in the aftermath of the police shooting death of Oscar Grant and the former Executive Director of Leadership Excellence, a leadership and social justice organization for African America youth.

Bakari Kitwana is CEO of Rap Sessions and author of the forthcoming Hip-Hop Activism in the Obama Era. (Third World Press, 2010)

Dereca Blackmon is Executive Director of Leadership Excellence which operates under the leadership of a ten-member Board of Directors, a fifteen member youth advisory board, and a dedicated staff of eight. We are a community-based, non-profit organization committed to Black youth wellness. For over 20 years, we have helped children, teens and their families transform their lives and their communities through self-awareness and critical thinking.

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Bakari Kitwana speaks Midterm Elections with Keli Goff

Bakari Kitwana: Will the youth vote trump Tea Party in Midterm Elections

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Bakari Kitwana speaks with political analyst Keli Goff about mid-term elections results around the country. Goff responds to what she sees as surprising and not so surprising in key elections from Delaware and Nevada to West Virginia and Kentucky. Goff also shares insight on the problem that the Tea Party movement now poses from Republican establishment—rather than for President Obama.

She makes a strong case that we will see establishment Republican Party insiders attempting to tone down the hateful rhetoric that targeted immigrants, Muslims and African Americans leading up to Nov 2.

Kitwana asks Goff, “What’s the take-away message for the Black community from last night’s results?” She responds: “It was a mistake for Democrats to assume that a vote for Barack Obama was a long-term vote of loyalty for the Democratic Party.

Not only can you not take the Black vote for granted, but also you have to work for their vote beyond the election year. It has to be a long-term ongoing process.” Goff adds, “Because of what happened last night, starting today the Democrats will begin laying the ground work for turning out the Black vote for the 2012 Election.”

Keli Goff is a writer and political analyst whose comments regularly on youth and minority voters. A contributor to the Loop21.com, she’s the author of Party Crashing: How the Hip-Hop Generation Declared Political Independence.

Bakari Kitwana is CEO of Rap Sessions, Editor at Large of Newsone.com and author of the forthcoming Hip-Hop Activism in the Obama Era. (Third World Press, 2010)

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RAP SESSIONS WITH BAKARI KITWANA

Bakari Kitwana speaks with political strategist, writer and organizer Alexis McGill Johnson about key mid-term election races that she’s watching today. They also discuss what is at stake for the Black community overall in today’s mid-term elections. McGill Johnson tells newsone.com why Senate and House races, key races in California and Nevada, and the youth vote are all crucial. She says that a progressive agenda is important for all communities, particularly the Black community.

“Right now we are looking at a potential reversal of healthcare reform and an inability to address the foreclosure crisis,” says McGill Johnson.  “And those two things should be enough, more than anything else, to motivate people to go to the polls today.”

Alexis McGill Johnson is the Executive Director of the American Values Institute, which studies racial anxiety and unconscious bias in electoral politics. She’s the former Political Director of The Hip-Hop Summit Action Network and the former Executive Director of Citizen Change, where, in 2004, she launched P. Diddy’s Vote or Die campaign.

Bakari Kitwana is CEO of Rap Sessions, Editor at Large of Newsone.com and author of the forthcoming Hip-Hop Activism in the Obama Era. (Third World Press, 2010)

Recently, Bakari Kitwana, who is one of our exclusive bloggers and CEO of Rapsessions.org , landed an exclusive interview with Minnijean Brown-Trickey, who is a member of the Little Rock Nine, the group of African-American students who, against fierce racist opposition, desegregated their Arkansas high school. He spoke to her about the recent death of Jefferson Thomas and how it’s affected her. The interview also speaks on the personal relationship she had with Thomas whose funeral is occurring today.

Click here for a bio of Jefferson Thomas and more information on the Little Rock Nine.

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Bakari Kitwana speaks with Reverend Conrad Tillard about the Democratic Primary battle ramping up this election year between longtime Congressman Charles Rangel and Assemblyman Adam Clayton Powell IV for New York’s 15^th Congressional District, the Congressional seat once held by the great Adam Clayton Powell, Jr. New York’s first Black Congressman.

Conrad Tillard is Senior Pastor of Nazarene Congregational United Church of Christ in Brooklyn, NY. Licensed and ordained at Abyssinian Baptist Church, the church founded in Harlem by the father of Adam Clayton Powell, Jr., Tillard is also the former minister of Nation of Islam Mosque #7 in Harlem.

Bakari Kitwana is CEO of Rap Sessions, Editor at Large of NewsOne.com and author of the forthcoming Hip-Hop Activism in the Obama Era. (Third World Press, 2010)

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