Dr. Lester K. Spence

This year represents the 40 year anniversary of the Newark and Detroit riots. Next year will be the 40 year anniversary for Baltimore. One of my former students forwarded me a discussion that relates to our discussions about the local and the global. Amy Goodman of Democracy Now interviewed Amiri Baraka, Larry Hamm, and Grace Boggs about Newark and Detroit respectively. They were on two separate interview tracks until near the end, where Baraka and Boggs had a back and forth that was telling.

JUAN GONZALEZ: Amiri, what has changed in these forty years, in terms of consciousness and in terms of what the country has learned from that period?AMIRI BARAKA: Well, actually, in some ways, we’ve gone full cycle but up to another level. I mean, we went from the kind of blatant brutalization, of white supremacy and racism. We then organized ourselves and elected two black mayors. We haven’t — none of my children, for instance, have ever grown under white people ruling in Newark. They don’t even know what that is, you understand? And so, we can be proud of that. But at the same time, after we had our two domestic kind of mayors, who compromised relentlessly with corporate power, you understand, now we’ve come full circle and come to –GRACE LEE BOGGS: Let me ask you a question, Amiri. Do you think that we have challenged and criticized and evaluated Black Power sufficiently?AMIRI BARAKA: Have we? No, no, but I’ve been doing it for — I’m sorry.GRACE LEE BOGGS: When are we going to do it?AMIRI BARAKA: Well, I’ve been doing it for almost thirty-seven years. I mean, having two black mayors there, Sharpe James and Ken Gibson, I was probably their most relentless critic all the time. But now we have somebody who doesn’t compromise with corporate power, but who represents it. So that’s the difference. We’ve moved –GRACE LEE BOGGS: Well, so do you think it’s a question of changing an individual? You know, for changing from Gibson to Booker?AMIRI BARAKA: No, you have to get an individual who’s willing to change the system. You have to get an individual who’s willing to actually struggle with the system to change it. As long as you have people who –GRACE LEE BOGGS: I mean, what do we mean by “struggling with the system”? How — when are we going to be –AMIRI BARAKA: To make substantive changes, to make infrastructure changes.GRACE LEE BOGGS: No, when will we begin to understand that we have to create new infrastructures, new forms, so that you can –AMIRI BARAKA: Yeah, but you can only do that through people, you see?GRACE LEE BOGGS: But you’re not going to do it from people at the top. We’re going to do it from people at the bottom.AMIRI BARAKA: Well, you have to mobilize the whole community. But what I’m saying is that people at the top became accommodated to being in power and not changing.GRACE LEE BOGGS: Yes, but maybe what we’ve done — maybe what we’ve — yes, but you see, we’ve put so much emphasis on taking over the power structure, and we became prisoners of it, because the power structure –

…and at that moment the show ends. The entire transcript can be found here. What strikes you most about the differences between Baraka’s position and Boggs’?

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I’ve already linked to part of Bill Moyers’ interview with Grace Boggs. But the video expands on some of it, and emphasizes a couple of points that bear consistent repetition:1. We have to generate another way of living as we critique our current state of affairs. A cultural revolution is what is required.2. This cultural revolution will start locally as a way of PRACTICAL PROBLEM SOLVING.When I talk about a cultural revolution, I’m not necessarily suggesting we go back to the Ancients. Studying the writings of the Ancients (and here I’m going all the way back) may serve as a bridge…but it isn’t a destination. I’m suggesting that we think about the best practices of black urban life (in the case of those living in rustbelt cities like me…other cities require different models), and then figure out how to use those practices to develop a set of ethical standards, and a community-oriented approach to problem solving that is based first and foremost on work.On a related note, the PBS Program NOW will be dealing with Bob Moses and The Algebra Project. Please watch.

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Please enable Javascript and Flash to view this Flash video.I was just asked to participate in a conference on the Baltimore riots of 68. Being more of a Detroit guy than a Baltimore specialist I was predisposed to pass. But this video deals with the national context and also opens the door for both comparisons and discussions about what is needed now. Thanks to Prometheus6.

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I just received an email yesterday about Randy Parker, who committed suicide at the age of 23. Condolences go out to his mother, father, and extended family. While I maintain that we are and have been a resilient people, able to deal with a lot more (because we’ve had to) than many other populations, African Americans are much more likely to experience some forms of mental illness than their white counterparts, and less likely to get treatment. Probably less likely to get effective treatment on top of that. Of course we know the reasons why–systemic racism increases stress, which in turn increases both the likelihood of suffering from mental illness and the severity of that illness. But knowing is only half the battle. We all know someone who needs help…in many cases that person can be found by looking in the mirror.The Surgeon General’s Report on Mental Health and African Americans.

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I’ve been reading comics now for thirty years. Two of the first websites I read everyday are Comic Book Resources and Newsarama. Rich Johnston, one of their columnists has been writing a gossip column (“Lying in the Gutters“) of sorts, probably the longest running of its kind. At the bottom of every column he’s got something called a “swipe file.”In comics vocabulary a swipe refers to the intentional or unintentional copying of a panel, cover, page (or photograph) for use in a comic. In order to save time and resources, and in some cases in order to give props where props are due, artists swipe covers, poses, panels, and photographs. Instead of creating an image of Magneto from scratch, you swipe another image and use it as the template. At its best and worst swiping is a bit like sampling.The two images above? Alex Ross was one of the first artists in the modern era to paint rather than draw superheroes, lending them the aura of myth. The picture of The Batman is his. In the text he noted that he got the idea from an old story involving Catwoman…she referred to all of the scars he had on his back.But he didn’t say where he received the artistic inspiration from.The picture to the left should be familiar to students of the enslavement. I believe it is one of the only pictures on record of its kind. Note the posture of the body in both cases. What is it that Ross is trying to convey here that caused him to use the body of a formerly enslaved African? What is missed in the translation? Both are arguably heroes, but whereas the Batman protects and defends the status quo from a position of wealth and privilege, the enslaved African comes to freedom and justice from a very different position.

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Just picked up this story about a minute ago. The “broken windows” strategy that Giuliani used in New York City to successfully harass and intimidate (largely black and Latino) working class New Yorkers had already been persuasively debunked. Even James Q. Wilson, chief proponent of the theory noted that it was only speculation, not backed up by data.What is impressive about the lead-based argument is that to make the claim the researcher tested the relationship in nine different countries over time and found the relationship in every single case he studied. To my mind this is a powerful example of social science that both moves the scholarship forward and lends itself to sound practical application. It also further undermines Giuliani’s case as “America’s mayor”, which I always felt was weak even discounting his habit of alternately ignoring and demonizing non-white New Yorkers.This last bit gets to the crux of the matter:

Nevin’s finding implies a double tragedy for America’s inner cities: Thousands of children in these neighborhoods were poisoned by lead in the first three quarters of the last century. Large numbers of them then became the targets, in the last quarter, of Giuliani-style law enforcement policies.

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Some questions to chew on.When black students at the University of Michigan took over the school in ‘69, ‘77, and ‘87, were they trying to end racism in the United States? Or were they trying to end racism at U of M?When Rosa Parks decided not to give up her seat in Birmingham, was she trying to end Jim Crow throughout the South? Or was she trying to dismantle Jim Crow in Birmingham?When Brown sued the Board of Education was he trying to end the dual education system in the US? Or in Kansas?When Clementine Barfield began Save Our Sons and Daughters was she trying to end gang violence in the United States?  Or in Detroit?As the NAACP begins its national convention in Detroit I thought it appropriate to ask these questions. As the case of Robert Williams shows persuasively, the NAACP has always had a problem with local autonomy. And this is likely the cause of its slow demise even moreso than its bloated executive board.But the NAACP isn’t the only guilty party. How many of us write about how to get black people to organize nationally without even thinking about how we might begin to work on our own neighborhoods?

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….but only for a couple of days. tafari, keith (and others who don’t blog but know me), hit me up. i’ll be taking pictures, visiting family, and hanging out with the ques. am hitting the road now.

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Lani Guinier wrote an article in the Journal of American History on Brown vs. Board. Up until this point the best critique I’d read about the NAACP strategy had been Harold Cruse’s Plural But Equal. But what Guinier’s article brings to light is the way that race and class resentment became intertwined in Brown’s wake. As we move forward it is important we try to figure out a set of strategies that deals with class inequities in a way that gets working class and middle class whites over their racial hurdles. Guinier on Brown vs. Board

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I thought about this story reading today’s New York Times, which railed against the death of streetball. There are all types of street games we played when we were young–tag, frozen tag, hide and go seek, kickball, dodgeball, four square, two square, monkey in the middle, running bases, etc. Cobb’s written about some of the ones he played in Cali.What I was most interested in wasn’t the argument blaming the death of stickball on videogames. There is something to this–videogames privatize playspace and to the extent they generate networks those networks are national rather than local. But the fascinating thing to me is the generation of two responses. The first is the generation of adult stickball/kickball/dodgeball leagues. And the second is the creation of specialized events that adults use as opportunities to teach these games to kids.THere’s a heavy dose of nostalgia here that the NYT journalist recognizes. There’s nothing inherently “magical” or “gameworthy” about getting someone out by hitting them with a ball (as in the case of dodgeball and kickball). What we’re doing in these cases are trying to recapture a moment in time that we thought was golden, while forgetting all of the pain that came with it.But yet and still I think one of the reasons we’re so fearful about letting our kids out of our sight is that the kids don’t have the same local social network that we had. And we generate a feedback loop by scheduling playdates, putting our kids in the Y, and sending them to a variety of summer camps, rather than letting them develop their own mechanisms of dealing with the world around them.

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