Upgrading the HBCU-- Inspired by Don Lemon

I apologize for not seeming to get off of this topic, at the same time, I try to find the value in points I don't 100% subscribe to. I remember when Don Lemon was at NCCU last year: his tone was nothing like this, a rant from the black bourgeoisie. That said he does have some points I think we may need to consider, but we just have to tweak the audience a bit. I would opt to see some of his no talking points put into place at the university level because that's where social intelligences are formed and reinforced. 1) REVISIT DRESS CODES: There have been too many times I have seen students, both male and female not look the part of a college student but that of someone going to the club, or chilling on the block. Like code switching, students must learn how to code switch in their dress. Students (male and female) should be required to have at least two business suits in their wardrobe. The business suit is a uniform of the business world, but unfortunately, students are missing that important message from home. 2) MANDATORY FACE TO FACE INTERVIEWS AS PART OF THE APPLICATION PROCESS: When I worked at the North Carolina School of Science and Math, high school students who were candidates for admission had to go through an interview process. This provided a gauge for both the student and the institution to really assess if the candidate was a good fit. I also think it forces the student to develop much needed oral communication skills which represent a growing part of the college experience and the global political economy. 3) INSTITUTE MANDATORY STUDY ABROAD PROGRAMS: Personally, for me, the first time I went overseas to Europe, I was forced away from the xenophobic mindset that America was the center of the universe. In England and Spain, for me I experienced very little racism as I knew it. In Spain I was forced to learn rudimentary Spanish and I gained an appreciation for international travel. God willing, I will be able to go to Kenya next year. 4) RAISE THE ENTRANCE AGE FOR COLLEGE TO 21/MAYBE 25: I'll be honest, I did not gain an appreciation for college until I was 23. I nearly flunked out twice. But when I had to start paying out of my own pocket for grad school and put the student loans in my name, magically my grades became a priority. Further, as pointed out to me, the mind has yet to be fully developed at 18. During those years, the mind has little focus, and hormones are all over the place. This is that age of experimentation: sex, drugs, alcohol, defiance, (pick one that's not on the list). I didn't listen to too many people when I was 20, 21 or even 22. But again, those are my experiences and I don't want to generalize. 5) YEARLY APPLICATION TO THE UNIVERSITY/DEPARTMENT: In many of the best institutions, students are forced to have to justify why they should be allowed to continue in their programs. Students are required to submit portfolio material demonstrative of their journey towards their career path. In some cases, Ive seen students come back to school with no direction, no ambition other than to go back and hang with their friends. I think friendships are great, but you don't need a university for that. If you want to hang on the block, do it at home for free; don't waste your money or contribute to the astronomical amount of student loan debt. If you are at the university, you have entered a partnership to establish or in some cases change your career. Every year, that program plan should be visited and in some cases modified. That same program plan should be used in tandem with some means of yearly performance evaluation. If the quality of the student's work has not improved within one year, there is a breakdown that needs to be vetted. Maybe the student is not a good fit for the university or program and accommodations can be made to place the student where they need to be. Currently, this is not standard practice. Faculty, administrators, staff all receive yearly evaluations to justify why they should still be on the payroll. Students should have the same obligations. This concludes my version of no talking points w/out Don Lemon :-)

Don Lemon: Truthsayer?

What Don Lemon, has initiated, or better yet, vocalized in my honest opinion was an uninformed rant in which he happened to hit some salient points. Was he raving like Bill O'Riley? No, but still he came across as a quarrelsome curmudgeon with an ax to grind. Do I get upset when I see students come to my class with their pants hanging down, of course. Do I disparage them with a barrage of classist elitist expectations. No; I treat them like I would treat a member of my family, "Boy pull your damn pants up in my room." You see I attempt to establish a rapport of care because for many of my students, to see an African American man with a Ph.D. teaching them; its an anomaly. In many cases, because of the crisis of the lack of strong African American male role models beyond athletics, there is a fierce internal negotiation when it comes to race and gender. I think this is due to emasculation of education. I also believe that because of the absence of strong African American men in the home, there is battle not just from male students but also from female students to have to negotiate African American male authority. So in many cases, I have to establish a special type of dominance that says I care about, I love you, and I love you enough to flunk you. Because of the politics of race in this country, we all know what I'm about to say next, we as African Americas must be exponentially better than our white counterparts just be recognized as 3/5ths of a human being. This is where I have the problem with Lemon's logic. With his rhetoric, I feel he says, if Black Folk play the role of "Charlie Good Negro" all the racial problems will be anesthetized. He fails to penetrate a plethora of the systemic social ills that in many cases exceed the controls of many African Americans of 1960s and beyond. I further contend that he fails to explore the concept of life chances vs life choices. White people in America are born into unearned privilege. As a culture, as a nation, we have normalized whiteness, we have awarded whiteness and we have placed race (particularly white supremacy) within every institution of the American way of life. Kimberly Williams Crensaw and other Critical Race Scholars have posited that in the legal system, the probability of of African Americans receiving what we call justice from majority white juries in the country is slim to none. This was evident with Zimmerman and this was evident with Till. So as I say this, Lemon's comments to me were the equivalent Rivera stated when he attempted to problematize Trayvon Martin for being killed. You look like an animal, you will get shot and killed like an animal. Again, I have fault with this logic because it robs African American young men of the inalienable right to be treated as a human being. Am I saying that we are perfect.. no, but at the same time, many folks in the hood were born into the hood, and statically, according to economist Bona-Silvia it is 20 times harder for African Americans to elevate themselves from poverty, 10 times easier for poor whites. This goes back to my point of informed opinion making. Clearly he had no information, no data, no real facts, and for me, and I believe all of you and others whose company I am happy to share, we are critical thinkers. Personally, I like to see evidence before one engages in hyperbolic judgements. I must say when I was in college, I did not take it seriously because, it was something to do, girls to see. Kim can attest to that. But when the real world smacked me in the face with the structures of institutional racism, wow that was a different beast. I'll go to one example I experienced just so you can see the challenges that African American men had to negotiate. I was working at The North Carolina School of Science and Mathematics. I had a master's degree in educational technology, but instead I was relegated to checking out AV equipment. Now I did this for 9 yeas and eventually I changed my job. I had an oppressive white female supervisor who I had titanic battles with over my job. We won't discuss the fact that I was doing the work 3 people by myself constantly. We won't talk about the fact that there was a living breathing document from the office of state personnel that cosigned that African American men suffered disparate treatment in state agencies. But I will talk about the fact that when I made this fact known, no one there listened to me. I will talk about the fact that I had a nervous breakdown and was out of work for three months. And I will talk about the fact that whenI came back, no accommodations were made to remove me from this oppressive supervisor. In fact, and here is the funny part, this woman tried her damnedest to bring out the thug in me. Right after I am back from medical leave, knowing that I had anxiety issues, she attempts to provoke a fight with me. She snatches a piece of paper out of my hand, trying to scold me. In the untrained mind, these were the options, A) I quit my job cry and run away, B) I smack the shit out of her and feel good for five mins and get hauled off to jai. What she failed to realize is that I had a lawyer, and I was taking good medication that allowed me to really think this process through... In doing so, I stated I'm injured, left the office, went to the magistrate's office and took our a warrant for her arrest for assault and battery. The point Im making is that before we bash folk for not having the competencies to battle racism and internal neglect, it is imperative that we think more in the line of DuBois and the 10 going back for the 90 as opposed to the bashing. Im not saying all of his points are valid, Im not saying all of his points are. Im saying, as best as I can you must come from a position of love and you must be willing to get your hands dirty in struggle.

No Vietnamese has ever called me Nigger

In the words of Muhammad Ali
"No Vietnamese has ever called me nigger." 1966
In 2013 I'll add
No Arab has ever called me nigger
No Britt has ever called me nigger
No Asian has ever called me nigger
No Native American has ever called me nigger
No Mexican has ever called me a nigger
No Jew has ever called me nigger
No South American has called me nigger
No Cuban has called me nigger
No Indian has ever called me nigger;
No gay person has ever called me nigger
No lesbian has ever called me nigger
No transgendered person has called me nigger
No bi-sexual person has called me nigger;
Now, some black folk have called me nigger
And yes white America has called me nigger but not exclusively in that word:
When you say, my black friend, you call me nigger
When you say, oh it's just a black guy, you call me nigger
When you clutch your pocketbook next to me, you call me nigger
When you dumb down education, you call me nigger
When you re district voting lines you call me nigger
When you stop and frisk me with no probable cause you call me nigger
When you ask me for urine, when I ask you for government aid, you call me nigger
When you don't teach me about my contributions except in February, you call me nigger
When you show me in cuffs more than you show me professionally, you call me nigger
When you show me illiterate, in rage instead of cognizant and oratorically sophisticated, you call me nigger
When you criminalize me, demonize me, politically problematize me, you call me nigger
When you gun me down with no reason, you call me nigger
When you follow me block after block and call it suspicious, you call me nigger
When you don't give me my justice, and you don't give me peace, you call me nigger
When I have to fight for my humanity from the grave, you call me nigger
When I have to teach my son at the age of six how not to respond when you call him nigger, you call me nigger....
When you put me into the prison industrial complex, you call it, rehabilitation and expect me to believe it, you call me nigger.
Yet, America wants me, to fight wars , pay taxes and give you my son to do the same? No, America cannot and will not have my son, and I am not for sale.
So call me what you want, say what you want to say;
But no way,
No how
Will I be America's nigger...
Excuse me, but I feel the need for Gin.

Taxonomy of Whiteness: An Application Through Zimmerman and Martin

Too much intellectualizing and not enough common sense. I honestly think the Stand Your Ground Laws and the Castle Doctrines need to be called Kill or Be Killed statutes. Not that I'm a linguist; but the rhetoric of those laws scream patriotism, machismo and patriarchy with impunity. "A man's home is his castle." Only the weak back down, "stand your ground!" But if you call it what it is literally (you are in a situation where you are about to be killed unless you kill) I think it forces self accountability and a cognition of human life, if only for a nano second. Though I will never know what happened, I believe Zimmerman "inserted" himself into a kill or be killed situation with the upper hand (a firearm) which to me was willfully negligent. I wonder had he not had a gun, would he have been so quick to get out of his vehicle. Would love to hear open honest comments. Last point, there are so many layers of race around this tragedy. I'll choose one that hasn't been talked about as much; the fact that it took 43 days and a social media campaign to force an arrest. If Zimmerman were African American and Trayvon was a "pretty white female" I firmly maintain that he would have been charged with every shooting since Lincoln and detained in police custody in under 43 minutes, possibly with a few bumps and lacerations. For me, as an African American man, as one who studies media and the social constructivist nature of it, it is exceedingly painful to have to constantly validate my existence, my humanity, my inalienable rights just to even breathe in a post racial American apartheid. That is what I honestly think dominant society has yet to fully understand; no one wants to be branded a problem; however, this Zimmerman case not only opened old wounds for the souls of Black Folk who have been problematized through every American institution, literally since Black Folk got off the boat, but that decision, albeit legal due process, rubbed salt in those wounds. To me, its not anger, but its pain, its real, and it hurts.

The Exploitation of Trayvon Martin

I saw this thing on Gawker, a story which featured Trayvon Martin dead body uncovered.

Wrote a letter about it, wanna read it here it go,,,

Greetings Mr. Weinstein: 

I trust this communiqué finds you well.  I came across your post from a good friend of mine who too is in the business of communication.  Upon reflection, when I first saw the photo, I was in complete shock.  The reasons for said shock were obvious; to see a dead child, who's death has sparked a national debate, left me speechless.  Examining the upper third, I did notice that it was from MS NBC's Tamron Hall. I want to believe this was not done with intent, but an honest misstep of judgment on the part of the photog in the courtroom and the ENG technician in the live truck.  Things like this happen in our market driven media based culture.  I'm not attempting to cosign on this as best practice; but instead understanding that mistakes do happen.  

This brings me to your conscious decision to re-present this over the web. I don't think you single handedly did this with any type of malicious intent.  This just reinforces the premise that one cannot un-ring a bell nor call a bullet back to the chamber once fired.  As I appreciate your attempt to share what you feel is newsworthy, and I do accept your news judgment, I feel respectfully that the methods, in this case at lease may need to be examined.  Unequivocally, this case is shocking,  bringing about strong emotional arousal.  Academically, my training points me to studies that link emotional arousal to sensationalism.  

In my honest opinion, sensationalism has infected what I like to believe is journalism.  I think it has "gone viral" in our newsrooms, our live trucks, to now our social media platforms.  This case, as I am sure you are aware has all the trappings of being a categorically sensationalized news case, which I hope to teach about in a case of best practices for new journalists.  What gives me reason for pause in this case is your decision to attach this photo.   The first obligation journalists have, according to the Society of Professional Journalist code of ethics is to seek the truth and report it.  The second obligation is to minimize harm.  Specifically it says, "— Be sensitive when seeking or using interviews or photographs of those affected by tragedy or grief."  Additionally it says, "— Recognize that gathering and reporting information may cause harm or discomfort. Pursuit of the news is not a license for arrogance."

I will not begin to entertain the question of your degree of hubris for the simple fact that I don't know you.  I am sure you are well intentioned and acted in a manner you believed was the right and just thing to do.  I want to say that I am beyond outraged regarding this incident.  As I am a father of a son;  I can promise you that if any harm as egregious as this were to come to him, my reactions as a parent would not be as controlled as they are in this message to you or as Trayvon Martin's parents.  I share your passion for social justice as without question, this case has parallels to Emmett Till and countless and nameless others who were recklessly dispatched by our culture of violence.  

At this time, I think what we have to do, what we must commit ourselves to doing is watchful observation.  I have my opinions and I have placed them in social media, but at the end of the day, court cases cannot be tried in the press nor the courts of public opinion.  I think your photo may have done more harm than good.  I was hurt. I was angered. Does this photo help to ease tensions or magnify them?

White Sexual Politics part 1

Ok,
So that I'm clear; in North Carolina, we have a political party comprised of middle aged to elderly white men who are controlling the sexual politics of the vaginas and uteruses of women?
And yes,
I'm a womanist and a feminist.