Blacksmythe

Yesterday I wrote about a new initiative from Mat Johnson.  While thinking more about the idea of open source culture, I ran across this story.  Like I said yesterday, book publishers are in a bind…no pun intended.  Profit margins are shrinking as consumers are spending their money on other forms of pop culture, or increasingly not spending money at all.  I can get the entire Wheels of Time series on pdf from Bittorrent if I wanted.  And classics like The Art of War have long been available in various electronic formats.  One of the most efficient ways to make more profit from the book publisher’s standpoint, is to reduce risk.  How do you reduce risk?  By publishing known quantities.  This is one of the many reasons for the success of urban fiction–at least at the outset, many of the writers in the genre had already made their names doing the equivalent of selling mixtapes out of the back of the van.

So how does Simon and Schuster reduce risk?  By using the American Idol format, and an existing social network.  Brilliant actually.  Not only do they pretty much ensure that the winner will sell briskly (at least hir first work), but they build brand recognition, and depending can possibly aid the writer as well.  Now the details of the American Idol contract were pretty draconian–giving AI the right to even modify the winner’s LIFE STORY from what I recall.  I wonder what Matt, Tayari, Minister Faust, and Kenji Jasper, think of this one?

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Mat Johnson’s cooking with gas.

I don’t know how I got put down with Niggerati Manor. Probably Tayari. Yes. Tayari.

I see a great deal of promise in the explosion of Urban Fiction. But for writers like Mat and Tayari, this promise is fraught with…I wouldn’t call it danger, but something akin to it. Just as we have a need for the work of Toni Morrison, we also have a need for the stories of someone like K’Wan. the key though is space.

The space to for writers like K’Wan to tell the stories they want to tell, in the way they feel they want to tell them.

The space for writers like Mat to develop their craft and to do the work needed to move black literature out of the ghetto of low expectations and tired themes.

Book publishers are shutting down imprints left and right. Even academic publishers are now expected to make a profit. In this context where music and books can be freely downloaded it is becoming harder for writers to get the breaks they need to make their mark. And harder for writers to write unique work that speaks to the realities of 21st century black life.

Organizing and networking under these circumstances can only help. Networks can sustain writers through dry spells, they can help writers generate new ideas about distributing their work, they can make what is already viewed as a mystical process much more transparent, and they can spread the wealth that has been previously concentrated in the hands of a few agents, writers, and publishers. I consider this a potential example of Open Source organizing, and I am interested in the journey Mat and his crew are about to take. Harold Cruse talked incessantly about the need for black artists to develop their own critical standards in order to improve their art, and in so doing improve the quality of black life. The Niggerati Manor potentially represents a step in this direction.

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Obama plans on running. One of my colleagues sends me an article. Turns out he doesn’t exactly move “civil rights leaders”. Now I put the term in quote because while the article talks about civil rights leaders in the aggregate it only quotes a few.

While this type of article is usually written to fill space rather than impart insight, there is likely something here. Al Sharpton, Jesse Jackson, and others have a vested interest in maintaining their status as black brokers…hence the talk about “taking the black vote for granted”. And to be fair even though I am very excited about the possibility of Obama running, he is light in the ass on policy prescriptions. I’m not just talking about Affirmative Action or racial profiling, I’m talking about the tax code, the environment, etc. etc.

But this position along with the few posts that Temple3 has begun to write on the subject, have me thinking about practical ways that black people can take back their political agency from brokers on the one hand, and white supremacists on the other. And the term “open source black politics” came to mind.

The foundation of democratic politics is transparency, accountability, and agency. The black leadership model as currently posited exhibits none of these traits. No transparency–all the deals are backdoor and privatized. No way of removing a black leader like Sharpton from his post (or even if he was elected, uncovering his deals because of the lack of transparency), so there is no accountability. And even the language of “a black vote” combined with a general unwillingness to compete over offices at any level, translate into a lack of agency.

People should have the power and the ability to aggregate at whatever level they see fit, along any axis that works for them. They should have the ability to not only elect individuals, but to examine their deeds and to hold them accountable. Finally they should have the space to debate, to propose, and to develop consensus.

Black Power in the 21st Century must emanate from open source politics. If it doesn’t start from pre-existing social networks that can be easily activated using present day technology and politics, then we may as well be talking about the Second Coming.

Some tools to consider.

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Here’s an updated syllabus:

Books:

A New Day in Babylon

Soul on Ice

The Spook Who Sat By the Door

Black Power

Movies:

Space is the Place

Sweet Sweetback’s Badass Song 

The Spook Who Sat by the Door

When We Were Kings

Bamboozled

Articles:

“The Gary Declaration”  pp. 138-143 ”

“Questions and Answers about Black Studies”  pp. 160-171

“1968 Report of the Workshop on Education, Third International Conference of Black Power”, pp. 172-174

“From Separatist Economics: A New Social Contract”  pp. 176-181  (all in in Van Deburg, William Modern Black Nationalism)

Rebellion or Revolution pt. 1 (taken from Cobb, William Jelani [ed.] The Essential Harold Cruse)

“Enter the Middle Class” (Chap. 9 Baraka, Amiri Blues People)

“The Black Church and Black Power” pp. 223-239 (Van Deburg, Modern Black Nationalism)

Black Nationalism and the Revolution in Music (Chaps. 5-7)

More readings on cultural production to be added by my co-teacher, Stanford Carpenter.

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