My daughters all like Nicki Minaj.  I don’t necessarily like the fact that they like her, but I figure that an appreciation of Nicki Minaj is not as bad as other habits they could have developed, like smoking crack or voting Republican.  Nicki might be a bit strange and might need to learn how to blink consistently, but she’s one hell of a rapper.

I was admittedly intrigued and somewhat confused by the recent decision by BET to ban Minaj’s new video “Stupid Hoe” from their channel.  Obviously, after hearing the title of the song, I was taken aback.  I wondered if being a stupid hoe was worse than being an intelligent hoe.  I also figured that BET had chosen to ban the video because the content was just as bad as the title.

So, like every other hip hop fan who hears that a video has been banned, I rushed online to watch it (getting banned is a great way to get media attention).  I watched the video, nearly went blind from all the odd colors and bright lights, and then sat there at the end, like a fat kid in a restaurant who was given a napkin and then abandoned by the waitress.

I wondered, out loud, what it was in this video that caused it to be banned.  Not to say that the term “stupid hoe” is the kind of thing we want to hear blasted on the airwaves, but it’s not as if BET hasn’t aired worse.  The standards of decency in hip hop have sunk so low that we no longer have the right to use the word “standard.”

For BET to ban Nicki Minaj after allowing for nearly every other sexist image imaginable is like a porn star telling her boyfriend that she doesn’t want to have sex till marriage.  It just doesn’t make any sense.  I sat and watched Wiz Khalifa on the BET show, “106 & Park,” as he told a room full of impressionable teenagers how he was a “Big joint rollin, Bombay sippin, No blunt smoking, Bad b*tch getting” typa n*gga.  He also told them how the gin had gotten him “drunk as f*ck stumbling out the bar,” looking for the keys to his car.

What’s so funny is that I didn’t even get to the good parts of the song, where Khalifa’s “mentor” Too Short talks about getting women high on drugs so he can have sex with them (“Cocaine, mushrooms, ecstasy, GHB, Marijuana.  She can suck it if she wanna”).   And we wonder where the most trifling among us learn creative ways to be even more trifling:  Nothing like positive reinforcement through the airwaves to convince a kid that behavior that might send you to prison is normal.

So, the network that has no problem with an artist going onto national television and doing a teen public service announcement in favor of drinking and driving and excessive drug use suddenly has an issue with a relatively mild Nicki Minaj video.

Give me a damn break.

I’m not here to say that the content of Nicki Minaj’s video is acceptable.  As I look forward to doing a public debate on the state of hip hop this month (Feb 23) at Brown University with Michael Eric Dyson, I admit that about 75% of what we hear in commercialized hip hop has become a wasteland for African American children. But the idea of banning one of a small number of successful female rappers, while allowing the men to hang their testicles to the floor is nothing less than a mind-boggling exhibition of blatant sexism.

So, if we are going to ban the “Stupid Hoe” video from BET, we need to do some serious hip-hop content reparations:  Maybe we can retroactively ban all the other videos that show women’s booties more than the artists’ faces, that glorify getting high whenever possible, that make it cool to go to prison, and that have turned ignorance into a fashion statement.

While some might question Don Cornelius’ decision to kill himself, the truth is that millions of us are committing suicide slowly by allowing ourselves and our children to absorb consistent messages that serve as nothing less than a recipe for self-destruction.   If BET wants to do the right thing, their leadership can confront all of the ills of hip-hop and find a way to clean up the toxic waste that has somehow disguised itself as “black culture.”

You can even say that we’re all a bunch of “stupid hoes” for allowing our culture to be degraded like this in the first place. Yep, I said it, so ban me.

Dr. Boyce Watkins is a Professor at Syracuse University and founder of the Your Black World Coalition. To have Dr. Boyce commentary delivered to your email, please click here.

Political activists around the country are still absorbing the news of Geronimo ji Jaga’s death. For those of us who came of age in the 80s and 90s, the struggles of the late 1960s and early 1970s were in many ways a gateway for our examination of the history of Black political resistance in the US. Geronimo ji Jaga (formerly Geronimo Pratt) and his personal struggle, as well as his contributions to the fight for social justice were impossible to ignore. His commitment, humility, clear thinking as well as his sense of both the longevity and continuity of the Black Freedom Movement in the US all stood out to those who knew him.

I interviewed him for The Source magazine in early September 1997 about three months after he was released from prison, having served 27 years of a life sentence for a murder he didn’t commit. Three things stood out from the interview, all of which have been missed by recent commentary celebrating his life and impact.

First that famed attorney Johnnie Cochran was not only his lawyer when ji Jaga gained his freedom, but also represented him in his original trial. They were from the same hometown and, according to ji Jaga, Cochran’s conscious over the years was dogged by the injustice of the US criminal system that resulted in the 1970 sentence. Second, according to ji Jaga, he never formally joined the Black Panther Party. As he remembered it, he worked with several Black activist organizations and was captured by the police while working with the Black Panther Party for Self-Defense. And finally, his analysis of the UCLA 1969 shoot-out between Black Panthers and US Organization members that led to the death of his best friend Bunchy Carter and John Huggins is not a simple tale of Black in-fighting. Now is a good time to revisit all three.

Misinformation is so much part of our current political moment, particularly as the 24-hour news cycle converges with the ascendance of Fox News. In this climate, the conservative analysis of race has been normalized in mainstream discourse. This understanding of racial politics, along with the election of Barack Obama and a first term marked by little for Blacks to celebrate, makes it a particularly challenging time to be politically Black in the United States. Ask Jeremiah Wright, Shirley Sherrod, and Van Jones—all three serious advocates for the rights and humanity of everyday people whose critiques of politics and race made them far too easily demonized as anti-American.

If we have entered the era where the range of Black political thought beyond the mainstream liberal-conservative purview is delegitimized, Geronimo ji Jaga’s life and death is a reminder of our need to resist it.

EXCERPTS FROM THE 1997 INTERVIEW:

How did you get involved with the Black Panther Party?

Technically I never joined the Black Panther Party. After Martin Luther King’s death, an elder of mine who was related to Bunchy Carter’s elder and Johnnie Cochran’s elder requested that those of us in the South that had military training render some sort of discipline to brothers in urban areas who were running amuck getting shot right and left, running down the street shooting guns with bullets half filled which they were buying at the local hardware store. When I arrived at UCLA, Bunchy was just getting out of prison and needed college to help with his parole. We stayed together in the dorm room on campus. But we were mainly working to build the infrastructure of the Party.

You ended up as the Deputy Minister of Defense. How did that come about?

They did not have a Ministry of Defense when I came on the scene. There was one office in Oakland and a half an office in San Francisco. I helped build the San Francisco branch and all of the chapters throughout the South—New Orleans, Dallas, Atlanta, Memphis, Winston-Salem, North Carolina and other places. We did it under the banner of the Panthers because that’s what was feasible at the time. Because of shoot-outs and all that stuff, the work I did with the Panthers, overshadowed the stuff that I did with the Republic of New Afrika, the Mau Mau, the Black Liberation Army, the Brown Berets, the Black Berets, even the Fruit of Islam—but I saw my work with the Panthers as temporary. When Bunchy was killed, the Panthers wanted me to fill his position [as leader of the Southern California chapter]. I didn’t want to do it because I was already overloaded with other stuff. But it was just so hard to find someone who could handle LA given the problems with the police. So I ended up doing it, reluctantly. And this is how I ended up on the central committee of the Black Panther Party. I never took an oath and never joined the Party.

What was your role as Deputy Minister of Defense?

The Ministry of Defense was largely based on infrastructure: cell systems in the cities; creating an underground for situations when you need to get individuals out of the city or country. When you get shot by the police, you can’t be taken to no hospital. You gotta have medical underground as well. That’s where the preachers, bible school teachers and a lot of others behind the scenes got involved. When Huey got out of prison in 1970, this stuff blew his mind.

What were the strengths and weaknesses of the Party?

The main strength was the discipline which allowed for a brother or sister to feed children early in the morning, go to school and P.E. classes during the day, go to work and selling papers in the afternoon, and patrol the police at night. The weak points were our naiveté, our youth, and the lack of experience. But even at that I really salute the resistance of the generation! I have a problem saying it was just the Panthers `cause that’s not right. When you do that you x-out so much. There was more collective work going on than the popular written history of the period suggests. And when you talk about SNCC you are talking about a whole broader light than the Panther struggle. So you have to talk about that separate—that’s a bigger thing. They gave rise to the intelligence of a whole bunch of Panthers.

What was Bunchy Carter like?

He was a giant, a shining prince. He had been the head of the Slausons gang. He was transforming the gangbangers in Los Angeles into that revolutionary arm. He was my mentor. Such a warm and lovable, brainy brother. At the same time he was such a fierce brother. He was very dynamic—he was an ex-boxer, and he was even on The Little Rascals probably back in the fifties. His main claim to fame was what he did with the gangs in the city. And that was a monumental thing. All that was before Bunchy became a Panther.

Because of the death of Bunchy Carter as a result of the Panthers’ clash with Maulana Karenga’s US organization, even today rumors persists that Dr. Karenga was an informant. . .

Not true. Definitely not true.

What was the Panther clash with US all about?

We considered Karenga’s US organization to be a cultural-nationalist organization. We were considered revolutionary nationalist. So, we have a common denominator. We both are nationalist. We never had antagonistic contradictions, just ideological contradictions. The pig manipulated those contradictions to the extent that warfare jumped off. Truth is the first casualty in war. It began to be said that Karenga was rat, but that wasn’t true. The death of Bunchy and John Huggins on UCLA campus was caused by an agent creating a disturbance which caused a Panther to pull out a gun and which subsequently caused US members to pull out their guns to defend themselves. In the ensuing gun battle Bunchy Carter and John Huggins lay dead.

What’s your worst memory of the 27 years you spent in prison?

I accepted the fact that when I joined the movement I was gonna be killed. When we were sent off to these urban areas we were actually told, “Look, you’re either gonna get killed, put in prison, or if you’re lucky we can get you out the country before they do that. Those are the three options. To survive is only a dream.” So when I was captured, I began to disconnect. So it’s hard to say good or bad moments because this is a whole different reality that had a life of its own.

Many people would say that during those twenty-seven years that you lost something. How would you describe it?

I considered myself chopped off the game plan when I was arrested. But it was incumbent upon me to free myself and continue to struggle again. You can’t look back twenty-seven years and say it was a lost. I’m still living. I run about five miles every morning, and I can still bench press 300 pounds ten times. I can give you ten reps (laughter). Also I hope I’m a little more intelligent and I’m not crazy. It’s a hell of a gain that I survived.

What music most influenced you during that time?

In 1975 I heard some music on a prison radio. I hadn’t seen a television in six years until about 1976, and it was at the end of the tier. I couldn’t see it unless I stood up sideways against the bars. When I really got to see a television again was in 1977. So, I was basically without music and television for the first eight years when I was in the hole. When I was able to get on the main line and listen to music and see T.V., of course the things I wanted to hear were the things I heard when I was on the street. But by then those songs had to be at least nine years old. So, I would listen to oldies. And the new music it was hard to get into, but I slowly began to get into that. But when hip-hop began to come around, it caught on like wildfire. It reminds me how the Panthers and other groups started to catch on like wildfire. It reminded me of Gil Scott-Heron. He would spit that knowledge so clearly and that was the first thing that came to mind when I heard Grandmaster Flash, KRS-One, Paris, Public Enemy and Sista Soldier—the militancy.

What type of books were you reading?

We maintained study groups throughout when I was on main line. Much of the focus was on Cheik Anta Diop—He was considered by us to be the last Pharaoh. We also read the works compiled by Ivan Van Sertima. Of course, there were others.

In terms of a spiritual center, what helped you to get through?

Well the ancestors guided me back to the oldest religion known to man—Maat. We also studied those meditations that were developed by all of our ancestors—the Natives, the Hispanics, the Irish—not just the ones that were strictly African.

The youngest of seven children, Ji Jaga was born Elmer Pratt, in Morgan City, a port city in southwestern Louisiana, two hours south of New Orleans, on September 13 1947. 120 years earlier marked the death of Jean Lafitte, the so-called “gentleman’s pirate” of French ancestry who settled in Haiti in the early 1800s until he was run out with most other Europeans during the Haitian revolution. Lafitte’s claim to fame was smuggling enslaved Africans from the Caribbean to Louisiana during the Spanish embargo of the late 17th & early 18th centuries, often taking refuge in the same bayous that were Pratt’s childhood home. Pratt was dubbed Geronimo by Bunchy Carter and assumed the name ji Jaga in 1968. The Jaga were a West African clan of Angolan warriors who Geronimo says he descends from. Many of the Jaga came to Brazil with the Portuguese as free men and women and some were later found among maroon societies in Brazil. How Jaga descendants could have ended up in Louisiana is open to historical interpretation, as most Angolans who ended up in Louisiana and Mississippi and neighboring states entered the US via South Carolina. Some Jaga were possibly among the maroon communities in the Louisiana swamplands as well. According to the Pratt, the Jaga refused to accept slavery—hence his strong identification with the name.

What were some of your earliest early childhood memories?

Well, joyous times mostly. Morgan City was a very rural setting and very nationalistic, self-reliant, and self-determining. It was a very close-knit community. Until I was a ripe old age, I thought that I belonged to a nation that was run by Blacks. And across the street was another nation, a white nation. Segregation across the tracks. We had our own national anthem, “Lift Every Voice and Sing,” our own police, and everything. We didn’t call on the man across the street for nothing and it was very good that I grew up that way. The worst memories were those of when the Klan would ride. During one of those rides, I lost a close friend at an early age named Clayborne Brown who was hit in the head by the Klan and drowned. They found his body three days later in the Chaparral River. And, we all went to the River and saw them pull him in. Clayborne was real dark-skinned and when they pulled him out of the river, his body was like translucent blue. Then a few years later, one Halloween night, the Klan jumped on my brother. So there are bad memories like that.

Does your mother still live there?

She’s gone off into senility, but she’s still living—94 years old this year. [She died in 2003 at 98 years-old] And every time I’ve left home, when I come back the first person I go to see is my mama. So, that’s what I did when I got out of prison. Mama has always stood by me. And, I understood why. She was a very brainy person. Our foreparents, her mother was the first to bring education into that part of the swampland and set up the first school. When I was growing up, Mama used to rock us in her chair on the front porch. We grew up in a shack and we were all born in that house, about what you would call a block from the Chaparral River. She would recite Shakespeare and Longfellow to us. All kind of stuff like that at an early age we were hearing from Mama—this Gumbo Creole woman (laughs). And she was very beautiful. Kept us in church, instilled all kinds of interests in us, morals and respect for the elders, respect for the young.

What about your father?

My father was very hard working. He wouldn’t work for no white man so he was what you could call a junk man. On the way home from school in Daddy’s old pick-up truck we would have to go to the dump and get all the metal that we could find as well as rope, rags, anything. When we got home, we unloaded the truck and separated the brass, copper, the aluminum, so we could sell it separate. That’s how he raised an entire family of seven and he did a damn good job. But he worked himself to death. He died from a stroke in 1956.

With an upbringing so nationalistic, what made you join the US military?

I considered myself a hell of an athlete. We had just started a Black football league. A few years earlier, Grambling came through and checked one of the guys out. So initially my ambition was to go to Grambling or Southern University and play ball. Because of the way the community was organized, the elders called the shots over a lot of the youngsters. They had a network that went all the way back to Marcus Garvey and the days when the United Negro Improvement Association (U.N.I.A.) was organizing throughout the South in the 1920s. My uncle was a member of the legionnaires, the military arm of the U.N.I.A. Of the seventeen people in my graduating class, six of us were selected by the elders to go into the armed forces, the United States Air Force. The older generation was getting older and was concerned about who would protect the community.

Many of the brothers that went to Vietnam have never gotten past it. You seemed to have made a progressive transition. How have you done that?

I’ve never suffered the illusion that I was aligned to anything other than my elders. And my going to Vietnam was out on a sense of duty to them. When I learned how to deal with explosives, I’m listening at that training in terms of defending my community. Most of the brothers that I ran into in the service really bought into being Americans and “pow” when they were hit with the reality of all the racism and disrespect, they just couldn’t handle it.

What was it like to be a Black soldier in the US military in 1965?

This was my first experience with integration. But I was never was a victim of any racial attack or anything. During the whole first time I was in Vietnam—throughout 1966—I never heard the “N” word. And all of my officers were white. When I went back in 1968 that’s when you would see more manifestations of racial hatred, especially racial skirmishes between the soldiers. But first off there were so many battles and we were getting ambushed so much. Partners were dying. We were getting over run. I mean it was just madness. If you were shooting in the same direction, cool.

You were very successful in the military. Why did you get out?

On April 4, 1968 Martin Luther King, Jr. was killed. I was due to terminate my service a month later. I wasn’t gonna do it. I was gonna re-up ‘cause I had made Sergeant at a very early age, in two tours of combat, so I could have been sitting pretty for the rest of my life in the military. I was loyal and patriotic to the African nation I grew up in who sent me into the service. And after Martin Luther King was killed, my elders ordered me to come on out of the service. King was the eldest Messiah. Malcolm was our generation’s Messiah. And now that their King was dead, it was like there’s no hope. So they actually unleashed us to do what we did. This is why when Newsweek took their survey in 1969, it was over 92% of the Black people in this country supported the Black Panther Party as their legitimate political arm. It blew the United States’ mind.

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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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Bakari Kitwana speaks with Natalie Moore about the recent political crisis in Libya. Moore, a Chicago Public Radio reporter who last Fall hosted a blog from Libya, talks about the climate in Libya when she was there during Mu’ammar Qaddafi’s 41st anniversary celebration of his ascent to power, and gives an assessment on how radically things have changed over the last few months. Says Moore: “Believe Qaddafi when he says he is going to stay til the last drop of blood. He’s not going to go out like Ben Ali or Mubarak did. It’s going to be a rough and bloody road.”

In this interview Moore also reflects on Qaddafi’s past dealings with Louis Farrakhan and notorious Chicago gang leader Jeff Fort. Moore draws interesting parallels between Fort’s 1987 conviction for conspiring with Libya to commit domestic terrorism and current US War on Terror efforts as they affect young people of color locked out of America’s mainstream.

Natalie Moore is a Chicago Public Radio Reporter and the co-author of the new book (with Lance Williams) The Almighty Black P. Stone Nation: The Rise, Fall and Resurgence of an American Gang. In 2006 she co-authored (with Natalie Hopkinson the bestselling book Deconstructing Tyrone: A New Look at Black Masculinity in the Hip-Hop Generation.

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

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HEAR PART TWO OF THE PODCAST BELOW:

In part two of Bakari Kitwana’s interview with Amari Jackson and Anthony Browder about the current crisis in Egypt, cultural historian Anthony Browder draws parallels between the uprising in Egypt and the long forgotten state of the Nubian population. “It’s not surprising that you don’t hear anything about the Nubians. They are the Negroes of Egypt.”

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Browder also talks in detail about other aspects of current changes in Egypt left out of the American media narrative, such as the obvious parallels to narrowing options for America’s own middle class. Browder and Jackson also take us behind the scene to a Luxor excavation of a Kushite priest that Browder is currently involved in. Drawing on his observations of this excavation while writing the book, Amari Jackson reminds us of the power of fiction to both history and current events: “The Savion Sequence helps us make important connections between Ancient Kemet and the current day.”

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, 2011)

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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 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)

First, Joyce Elliott is running against the Republican candidate Tim Griffin, a State Attorney who was appointed by the Justice Department during the Bush Administration, an appointment that was central in the 2006 dismissal of U.S. Attorneys controversy. Second, if she wins, Elliott will be the first African American and the first woman elected to Congress from the state of Arkansas. Here she talks about both issues. “Of all the old confederate states,” she says, “Arkansas is the only one that has not elected an African American to Congress. If I’m elected, this will be big for the South and for Arkansas.”

Joyce Elliott is the Democratic Party’s candidate for Arkansas’ 2^nd Congressional District. An Arkansas state legislator, she’s served three terms as a State Representative and is currently the majority leader in the State Senate.

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.

Read more about her at her campaign page

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By Hakim Hasan:

Dr. Ronald Walters, 72, one of the foremost authorities on Black-American politics, died on Friday (September 10) of cancer.  He was born on July 20, 1938 in Witchita, Kansas, a grim period in American life when blacks could not vote and were subjected to blatant racism. This, undoubtedly, shaped his lifelong and evolved worldview as a political scientist and activist.

Although Dr. Walters held many visiting professorships at major universities during his distinguished academic career, he spent the majority of   his career as a professor and chair of the political science department at Howard University from the mid-1970s until 1996. From 1996 until his retirement in 2009, he was a professor of political science and Director of the African-American Leadership Institute at the University of Maryland.

Herb Boyd, “New York Amsterdam News” reporter, soberly recalls: “Most recently I was with him at Howard University where he was summoned to participate in the making of a documentary about the history of the NAACP. His analysis, like his historical insight, was concise, crisp, and to the point. Nothing wasted. No fanfare or one-upmanship.”

One of  the enduring legacies of Dr. Walter’s scholarship and activism was his constant struggle to marry political theory to civic engagement and the grueling practicalities of electoral politics (“the tightrope” that politicians have to walk.) For example, his essay “Leverage Rainbow Politics,” which appeared on the Independent Politics Network website in 2008, can be read as a prophetic understanding of  the right-wing—and even liberal—backlash against President Barack Obama. He writes, “Blacks can be tricked because the attraction of the first black or the first woman to do this or that seemingly fits into the legacy of civil rights, a syndrome that can be disastrous if it turns out wrong.”

Dr. Ron Daniels, former Executive Director of the Center for Constitutional Rights in New York City and  Distinguished  Lecturer at York College  makes the pointed observation: “No one more than Dr. Ronald Walters hammered home the relevance of “leverage politics” as a time tested vehicle for organized interest groups and constituencies to extract benefits from the American political system.  He created a living laboratory for his leverage theory of politics as the Issues Director and principal strategist for Rev. Jesse L. Jackson’s  electrifying campaign for President in 1984.”

Dr. Walters published well over one hundred scholarly papers and many books including Black Presidential Politics, which won the Ralph Bunche Prize and Best Book Prize from the National Conference of Black Political Scientists.

To the general public, however, Dr. Walters is probably best remembered as a constant fixture and engaging political analyst on major television news programs especially when he served as a major advisor to the Reverend Jesse Jackson when he ran for president in 1984.

A public viewing and memorial service for Dr. Walters will be held at Crampton Hall at Howard University in Washington, D.C. on September 19 (3:00-5:00 P.M.). Reverend Jesse Jackson will preside over the funeral services on September 20 held at Shiloh Baptist Church (10:00 A.M. to 12:00 P.M.) in Washington, D.C.

Hakim Hasan writes frequently about social issues and politics. He is the former Director of Public Programs at the Museum of the City of New York.

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Freedom Fighters

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At the MTV VMA’s this past weekend, Will.i.am caused controversy with his appearance in blackface.

Recently, Newsone contributor Bakari Kitwana spoke with Associate Professor of Visual Studies at the State University of Buffalo, John Jennings, about recent visual images of Blacks on the American popular culture scene—from Will.i.am’s Blackface to the signage at the recent 9/12 Tea Party Rally in Washington, DC. Jennings offers a crash course in media literacy, and stereotypes that he says continue to reproduce themselves in American culture.

He likens the Tea Party signs to previous eras where American racists target Jews, Irish, etc and says of blackface: “Because of the deep history of minstrelsy throughout history, I don’t think you can take it out of the history of racialization.” Such stereotypes, he says,  “are like logos.”
Curator, Illustrator, Cartoonist and Graphic Novelist, John Jennings is Associate Professor of Visual Studies at the State University of New York Buffalo and the author of the new book Black Comix: African-American Independent Comics, Art and Culture, which he co-wrote with Damian Duffy. He teaches graphic art and design and his research focuses on challenging African-American stereotypes in the media and popular culture.

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

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Pics Of The Week: 09.13.10

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Bakari Kitwana discusses Obama’s stimlus

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 Lisa Fager Bediako about the absence of African Americans in mainstream prime time positions as anchors and hosts on cable and network television. Reflecting on the recent provocative CNN Reliable Sources segment, Bediako takes us inside the industry that she’s both worked in and monitored for years. From recent telecommunications legislation and new trends, she describes where things have gone wrong, reflects of what the dearth of representation means for the Black community and suggests ways for moving forward.

Media justice activist Lisa Fager Bediako is the co-founder and president of Industry Ears (industryears.com), a watchdog group that focuses on the impact that the media has on communities of color.

 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)

 See CNN story on the dearth of black television anchors

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Bakari Kitwana speaks with Chandra Bhatnagar about the legal ramifications of racial profiling as it relates to recent legislation targeting illegal immigrants. Bhatnagar reflects on the recent lawsuit filed by the ACLU against Arizona and questions how constitutional and international law experts might respond to recent legislation in Massachusetts that would create a hotline for anonymously reporting on suspected illegal immigrants.

Chandra Bhatnagar is staff attorney with the American Civil Liberty Union’s Human Rights Program. He’s also the principle author of “The Persistence of Racial and Ethnic Profiling in the United States,” a report recently submitted to the United Nations Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination.

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)

READ Chandra Bhatnagar’s CNN blog on Arizona immigration law, SB1070 here.

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Arizona Immigration Law Fallout

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Bakari Kitwana speaks with Minister Quannell X about a recent wave of police brutality incidents in Houston, Texas, targeting young Black males. This issue is especially relevant considering the recent police brutality cases of Aiyana Jones and the troubling case of Chicago cop, Lt. Jon Burge, accused of torturing black men.Recently the alleged beating of 16 year-old Chad Holley by eight police officers heightened tensions in that city. Quannell X talks with newsone.com about a videotape of the incident captured by an area business surveillance camera, which Minister X viewed and turned over to the mayor and police chief.

Quannell X is a Houston area community activist and leader of the New Black Panther Nation. He has been leading protests in that city in response to the beating of Chad Holley and the recent acquittal of police officers responsible for shooting an unarmed Robert Tolan, son of former major league baseball player Bobby Tolan, in his driveway.

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).

LISTEN HERE:

WATCH Chad Holley tell his story here:

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Top 10 Police Brutality Cases

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From Laurel May @ 944.com:

Rap Sessions: Community Dialogues on Hip-Hop has teamed up with Harvard Law-based think tank, The Jamestown Project to present its fifth annual national discussion tour. These townhall-style meetings will bring together a panel of leading hip-hop activists, artists and experts for public dialogue exploring the possible ways hip-hop’s entrepreneurial spirit could dovetail with economic recovery and to inform youth about the various ways the current economic shift affects them personally.

Bakari Kitwana, the CEO of Rap Sessions, is co-founder of the 2004 National Hip-Hop Political Convention. He is the author of The Hip-Hop Generation: Young Blacks and the Crisis in African American Culture, which is used as a coursebook at over 100 colleges and universities.

Throughout 2010, Rap Sessions are scheduled in ten cities across the United States, with panelists including: M-1 (one-half of the hip-hop duo dead prez); Blitz The Ambassador (Ghanaian hip-hop artist); Toni Blackman (Global Hip-Hop Ambassador, US State Department); Hip-Hop educator Martha Diaz (president of The Hip-Hop Association and Global Hip-Hop Film Festival); Columbia University Associate Professor Marc Lamont Hill (Political contributor to the Fox News Channel and author of Beats, Rhymes and Classroom Life); youth organizer Keisha Senter (Director of Clinton Global Initiative University); Ben Herson (founder of the global hip-hop record label Nomadic Wax); and youth entrepreneur expert Darryl Williams (The Kauffman Foundation).

Says Kitwana,“Now more than ever, we need our youth to think more broadly about global economics, democracy, diversity, community activism, innovation and new models of leadership.”

Learn more and view digital stories from the tour at http://www.rapsessions.org/

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Rappers Turned Academics

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RAP SESSIONS WITH BAKARI KITWANA

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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Top 10 Black Politicians

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