Blacksmythe

Black people have always battled over their art. On the one hand you’ve got those who believe that Kenny G. or even Kirk Whalum shouldn’t hold a candle to Wynton Marsalis. And on the other you’ve got those who would claim with a straight face that Ice Cube is the next Hemingway.

A couple of recent posts deal with this dynamic.

First Mat Johnson.

Then a clip, courtesy of Prometheus 6 and Blackademics:

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More after the break.
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Ok. I don’t think I’ve written about this here, but I’ve been reading comic books for well over thirty years now. The death of Phoenix? Check. The death of Superman? Check. The death of Captain Marvel? Well…I missed that one but you get the picture.

I never saw this coming. (more…)

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So my piece on medieval urbanism got a hit from my friend Jesse Walker at Reason Magazine. And through that hit I got turned on to Bryan Finoki and Subtopia. I should’ve known there’d be a resource like this…

Anyway, hitting a link at random I stumbled on the creative prison project, and reading about it got me to thinking. I know what the hurdles would be to engaging in this type of project in the states–prisons represent a cottage industry for poor rural cities, for their political representatives, and for both political parties (though arguably it benefits Republicans more by increasing their voting power). And Bryan’s on point here:

we can innovate alternative prisons, but shouldn’t we be putting equal if not more emphasis on devising alternatives to prisons altogether? So, yeah, what would a fantasy prison look like, but how about - what would a fanstasy rehabilitative society look like, can we imagine this without stooping to the production of more prison space?

Is it possible to do both simultaneously?

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Bruce Gordon, President of the NAACP resigned today, after only 19 months, citing problems with the board.

I wrote a piece about the NAACP right after Mfume left his post. Here’s an important snippet:

the NAACP is a highly centralized organization, with a bloated executive board. While local branches have some latitude, their responses to local issues involving race and/or racism have to be vetted by someone at National Headquarters. But the speed at which society moves can be dizzying. How quickly did the Indiana-Detroit NBA fracas die down after it was all that occupied the web for about a week? More importantly, how soon did the press drop the ball on the administration plan to cut Pell Grants significantly? Think about the speed at which decisions have to be made at the local, state, and federal level.

Now think about having to sift at least some of those decisions through a 64 member Executive Board. Think about what it would take to get them together (even virtually) to take a vote. Think about what type of event would have to happen to get them all on one accord. Because the NAACP wants to at some level protect the National Headquarters and the other branches from the potential mistakes of local branch leaders it has developed a top-down model. But a strong argument can be made that this top-down model squashes the ability of branches to develop unique solutions to their own problems. It also hampers the ability of local chapters to quickly and efficiently deal with issues as they arise.

More here.

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An article in today’s New York Times notes the increasing use of military style design principles in cities. For them, this is a totally new groove, or at the very least a post 9/11 groove.  While very specific design elements may have become more commonplace after 9/11, many of them had been in place for the last thiry years or so. The first modern urban threat remember was not the Arab terrorist, but the black rioter. Buildings like Detroit’s Renaissance Center were noted not only for their use of curves as opposed to angles, but also for its use of military style bunkers to keep urban (read: black) denizens out. The bunkers have since been removed, but the first thing that I thought of as a young kid looking at it was the Morlocks.  The curves (the building is in effect a series of connected tubes) served to disorient people rather than welcome them–which of course makes sense if the only population the designers want in the building in the first place are people who know where they are going. And the use of surveillance cameras were first popularized in the US in Baltimore, while dealing with a crime spree associated with young black male criminals.

If someone were to study the shifts in these design elements over time in response to what is in effect racialized fear, it’d be hot. And if they could combine a study of building design with car design they’d be really onto something.

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