For those of you nearby I am presenting at a workshop on spatial inequality tomorrow (Friday) at 10am. The title of the workshop is “Borders, Buildings & Bounding: Cross Cutting Solutions to Displacement & Devaluation of Communities of Color.” I’ll be speaking about spatial inequality and its different forms, focusing on a dynamic called “municipal underbounding.”

In other news this week President Obama rolled out a new Fatherhood Initiative. I talked about it like a dog on NPR.

Well…not really like a dog. I’ve too much respect for dogs.

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The tragedy in Haiti has taken a devastating turn, and the media has followed turning towards looting and making it the central issue. We saw this narrative four plus years ago in Katrina.

I wrote a couple of pieces on these issues for NPR. My Edwards piece can be found here. My Haiti looting piece? Here.

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(9/11 happened back when the Afrofuturist list was still vibrant. After the attacks, one of the list members asked what she could do to feel safe. I responded slightly tongue in cheek “move to somewhere black people live.” A white science fiction author–I believe it was Bruce Sterling but don’t get me to lying–delurked. I didn’t even know he was there.  He went on this long spiel about how Al-Queda didn’t give a damn about black people and would kill black Americans as readily as white ones. I then asked him whether each discrete American building/city/space was equally in danger of being targeted by terrorists, and THEN whether the places that were more likely to be targeted were more likely to be populated largely by whites. I KNEW black people who barely escaped 9/11…but at the same time I knew that cities like East St. Louis, boroughs like the Bronx, weren’t in danger of terrorist attack. He never responded.)

The second friend I lost this past Labor Day weekend. A vice-president of a Detroit Benz dealership (the only one IN the city), he had a heart attack while at work. By the time his co-workers realized what happened it was already too late. His wife was a doctor, and while he was big, with a shot-putter’s build, he had a clean bill of health as far as I know. A member of Kappa Alpha Psi, so many of his fraternity brothers paid their respects they encircled the church three times. I still find it difficult to think too much about it without breaking down. He left behind his wife, and three children. He was two months away from 41.

I wish I had the presence of mind to mention them.

I also wish I had the presence of mind to be clearer about my critique of Bush. (As an aside THE most important political event of the last decade was Bush v. Gore. We’d be living in a VERY different place if Al Gore is President between 2001-2008. The economy would still have tanked, perhaps. But 9/11 wouldn’t have happened–recall that Rice ignored the Clinton administration’s warnings that terrorists planned to fly planes into American targets.) When asked what Americans could do in the post 9/11 moment, Bush said something to the effect of…”shop.”

The moment he missed there? I can’t think of a single statement that was more inappropriate given the moment. Because of our patriotic fervor–fervor that the Bush administration used to invade a country without cause, used to pass an act that gave US officials the right to spy on American citizens without cause–we would’ve supported almost anything at that moment. And what he suggested was that we…shop.

Right.

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I also made it to The Colbert Show. I did a bit on WJZ a couple of weeks ago about the Obama NAACP speech and then promptly forgot about it. But a few days later my folk on facebook are telling me they saw me. Now for a second I thought they were clowning me. Then I thought briefly about Shark–the television show with James Woods (they had a black left-leaning lawyer named “Lester Spence” that was probably named after me). Whatever the case I KNEW that while I was supposedly on Colbert, I was fast asleep.

But then I saw the clip which I unfortunately don’t know how to embed here.

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Yesterday I was on Midday with Dan Rodricks. Last week (while I was on the way to tape for NPR incidentally) Congress passed a resolution apologizing for slavery. We debated its merits on the show. You can listen in here. Dr. Carol Swain was Dan’s other guest. She’s pretty conservative, so I expected her to be against it…and I was right, but wrong. She was against it, but because she felt it was weak, and done under the wrong administration–she suggested Bush do it in 2004. 

What I tried to drive home was that while this was a failed apology in some aspects–because it was a voice vote we can’t really distinguish who supports it and who doesn’t, to the extent this is about truth and reconciliation there was little “truth” telling, and it wasn’t really “advertised” (how many of my readers even know this occurred?)–it represents a political opportunity. An opportunity to actually press the government to talk about what they are apologizing for, an opportunity to use this moment to begin not only a larger conversation, but to continue mobilizing for resources. Swain and most of the callers didn’t see it. But for me politics is about pushing forward and extending possibilities in the face of compromise. 

On Monday theGrio published a piece I wrote on black fraternity and sorority improprieties. When criticizing black fraternities and sororities we tend to focus on either perceived exclusionary practices–selecting folks based on loot, or on skin color–or on hazing. While I’ve never seen evidence of the first in my twenty years in, I do understand that the second is a problem. However a problem that we don’t spend much time dealing with, because of the secretive practices of the organizations themselves, is their anti-democratic business practices. A member of Alpha Kappa Alpha sued the International President and the International Board because the board awarded the president a stipend of $250,000 without either informing or vetting the decision with the body. Check that piece out here.

Finally I visited the Barbershop last week, to talk about Iran, about Kobe, about the GOP, and about Father’s Day. I’m pretty sure our discussion about Iran got cut short, but i really wish we could have extended it because the discussion we had in the studio was rich. And for what it’s worth though I watched less of this NBA championship than any NBA championship I can recall, I think that what Kobe accomplished puts him in a very very small group. The only other star player to get a ring without another Hall of Fame/Top Fifty type player is Hakeem Olajuwon. Not Isiah. Not Bird. Not Jordan. Not Shaq. 

Maybe Garnett as I think of it, depending on how we think of Ray Allen and Paul Pierce…..

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News and Notes had been cancelled.

I’ve been a fan of NPR now going back over twenty years. To say I believe in public radio is an understatement. When “smooth jazz” took over the airwaves in Detroit, stifling Miles Davis and John Coltrane in favor of Najee and Kenny G., the only place I could hear bebop, cool, and big band was NPR. When I wanted to hear hard-hitting interviews I’d either listen to Diane Rehm or to Terry Gross. And when I entered the ranks of the gainfully employed, my drive home was always accompanied by All Things Considered.

But there was still something missing. An entire series of voices I felt I wasn’t hearing.

Fast forward. Tavis Smiley creates the black equivalent of a media juggernaut (sad commentary on the state of black media when we think of what Smiley accomplished in those terms). And he comes up with the brilliant idea of expanding NPR’s audience. 

News and Notes was born. Because he felt NPR wasn’t willing to give him the support needed to grow NPR as a brand in black urban communities, he left and was replaced by Ed Gordon. 

And this is when they put me on. No. When Farai put me on. I met Farai through her (equally powerful, equally compassionate) sister. And in talking with Farai she told me that she was working on something that she wanted me to be down with. 

I’d gotten wise enough at that point to smile and graciously say “thanks for thinking of me”, while not putting much stock in it. 

Next thing I know I’m getting a phone call from NPR. And then regularly doing bits on News and Notes, and then later, Tell Me More. Not only was I finally hearing the voices I was missing, I was one of the voices. There are more people who have the integrity to actually speak the truth and WORK the truth they speak…but I only know a few. Farai is one of them.  

In writing about the change, NPR execs focused on the dollars and cents. Whereas a couple of years ago they were 2 million in the red, that figure has jumped to 23 million. And given that a significant chunk of their money comes from corporate donors and philanthropists who have their money in the stock market, it should come as no surprise that they’ve got to make very difficult programming decisions in order to stay on the air. (As an aside this is an important reason why public radio should be PUBLIC radio rather than privately funded radio but I digress.) 

But it’s unfortunate (to say the least) that a show like News and Notes became a casualty. Sounds a bit like the “last hired first fired” line that many of us are used to. 

We’ll see Farai, and though they work behind the scenes, her staff again soon. Here’s hoping it will be VERY soon.

Thank you Farai.

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