“Moving Past The Awkwardness With Respect”: Learning To Talk About Harriet Tubman, Slavery And Racism
Slavery and race are awkward and uncomfortable subjects for many Americans. As a result, we often find awkward and uncomfortable ways to talk about them. That was my conclusion earlier this week when, as a means of debuting his new channel All Def Digital, hip-hop entrepreneur Russell Simmons posted a video parody titled, “Harriet Tubman’s Sex Tape.” In the video, the iconic “conductor” of the Underground Railroad is shown secretly recording sexual relations with her “Massa” in an attempt to blackmail him into allowing her to start her now famous freedom train. Almost as soon as it was released the three-minute video prompted a wave of condemnation and a Change.org petition. It wasn’t long before the NAACP asked Simmons to take it down. He offered an apology—”For all those I offended, I am sincerely sorry”—and removed the clip from his website.
Simmons’s satirical approach represents one extreme. (“I’m a very liberal person with thick skin,” he explained.) On the other is the trend of introducing children to slavery with traumatic role-playing exercises. For example, in 2008, a middle school social studies teacher in suburban New York, who is white, bound the hands and feet of two black girls and instructed them to crawl underneath a desk to simulate the conditions of a crowded slave ship. In 2011, an elementary school student in Ohio described himself as having been “humiliated” after he was forced to play the role of a slave at a mock slave auction and his white classmates were urged to degrade him during the exercise. That same year in Virginia, the Washington Post reported that a fourth grade teacher also held a mock slave auction in her class and that the white children took turns buying the black and mixed-race children.
It’s not just in school classrooms that this reality show approach to slavery is taking place. At Connor Prairie Interactive History Park in Indiana, the public is asked to pay $20 to “Come face-to-face with slave hunters, see fear and hope in the eyes of a fellow runaway and… experience life as a fugitive slave during your journey through one of the most compelling periods in Indiana’s history. “ 60% of the visitors to the park are school children. According to a 2009 article from the Organization of American Historians’ Magazine of American History by historian Carl Weinberg, white visitors to the park often say they are getting quite a lot out of the experience of the reenactment, but it is not uncommon for African American visitors to feel uncomfortable about fully immersing themselves in the experience. Is this really a surprise to anyone?
Just for a moment, imagine if the holocaust was taught by either of these methods—a satire of Anne Frank, for example, trading sexual favors, or a fourth grade class of children being separated into jews and gentiles with the latter leading the former off to their death. It is hard to visualize either of those things happening. Slavery is the most profound mistake this country has ever made—”the great and foul stain upon the North America Union,” as John Quincy Adams said. We need to learn how to move past the awkwardness and talk with each other about it respectfully before we can laugh about it or relive the experience.
By: Noliwe M. Rooks, Time Magazine, August 17, 2013
“Just So We’re Clear”: Our Failure to Stop You from Voting Means We Weren’t Trying to Stop You from Voting
North Carolina recently passed what can only be described as an omnibus voter suppression law, including a whole range of provisions from demanding photo IDs to cutting back early voting to restricting registration drives, every single one of which is likely to make it harder for minorities, poor people, and/or young people to register and vote. It’s not just the Tar Heel state—across the South, states that have been freed by the Supreme Court from their prior obligation under the Voting Rights Act to get permission from the Justice Department before changing their voting laws are moving with all deliberate speed to make voting as difficult as possible. Since these are Republican states, these laws are going to pass (some have already), and I think it’s worth addressing what is fast becoming the main argument Republicans use to defend them.
They’ve always said that their only intent was to ensure the “integrity” of elections and protect against voter impersonation, a virtually nonexistent problem. But they recently realized that they’ve got a new, and seemingly compelling, piece of evidence they can muster against charges of voter suppression. Many voter-ID laws were passed over the last few years (the Supreme Court upheld voter ID in 2008), and as Republicans will tell you (see for example here or here), turnout among blacks hasn’t declined, and in some cases has gone up. Blacks even turned out at a slightly higher rate than whites overall in the 2012 election. As Rand Paul recently said, “I don’t think there is objective evidence that we’re precluding African-Americans from voting any longer.”
So what’s wrong with this argument? The voter suppression efforts have been largely unsuccessful because civil rights groups and Democrats have responded to them by redoubling their efforts to get people to the polls. The backlash has essentially brought turnout among African Americans back up to what it would have been without the voter-ID laws, even though in practice, it meant that some people who would have otherwise voted were prevented from doing so, while other people who might have stayed home managed to get to the polls.
So what Republicans are essentially saying is, we’re trying to suppress the votes of black people, but we aren’t succeeding, so how can you criticize us? It’s like me slashing your tires on Saturday, then when you go out and buy four new ones and get them installed in time for Monday morning, I say, “You got to work on time, didn’t you? So that just shows I wasn’t trying to do you any harm.”
The “voter fraud” rationale has been incredibly disingenuous from the beginning, but for me the real tell is the limitations on early voting that often end up being part of these laws. You can argue that everyone should have to prove who they are before casting a ballot. But restricting early voting can have only one purpose, and that’s making it more difficult for people to vote, especially those who happen to take advantage of early voting. And who might that be? You’ll never guess. The Republicans pushing these laws always make sure to eliminate early voting on the Sunday before election day, because that’s when many black churches have historically done “souls to the polls” drives, where people head to the voting locations after church.
So the next time you hear someone say that high turnout among African Americans proves that voter ID isn’t about suppressing votes, remember that they’re trying to use their failure to successfully keep black, poor, and young people from voting to explain away their obvious intent to keep black, poor, and young people from voting. If you put obstacles in my path to screw me, and then I manage with an extraordinary effort to evade them, it doesn’t mean you weren’t trying to screw me in the first place.
By: Paul Waldman, Contributing Editor, The American Prospect, August 15, 2013
“The Issues Are Real”: The Right Wing’s Ridiculous Outrage Of Ebony’s “Avatars Of Protest”
In the early 1930s, there was no black high school in John H. Johnson‘s native Arkansas City, Ark. This wasn’t atypical. The education of black children wasn’t a priority in many U.S. cities. In order to keep the family financially afloat, it would’ve made more sense for the future Johnson Publishing founder’s mother to send him to work full-time after eighth grade than to relocate to Chicago so that he could finish his secondary education. But relocate they did — and 68 years after Johnson first created it in 1945, we still have Ebony magazine.
Were it not for his mother’s foresight and for the fates conspiring in their favor, Johnson’s story could’ve ended in one of the mills and factories that employed so many black men of his era — including his father who was killed in a mill accident when he was a boy. Or he could’ve ended up a casualty of Jim Crow, a footnote filed under a racial profiling-related murder or an unjust imprisonment.
One different choice, one year’s delay, one miscalculated risk, and Ebony wouldn’t be available to us — at least not in the way we’ve come to know and rely on it for news and inspiration for over two-thirds of a century.
Johnson knew, as we do, how important his mission was, in publishing the premier periodical for black Americans. It became a brand whose political, social and economic impact has been paramount and, frankly, unmatched. We’ve turned to it for comprehensive coverage of every civil rights movement milestone, from protest to legislative shift to assassination. It was one of the only news outlets we trusted to share our unabashed joy at the election of a POTUS of color. It is where we turn to grapple with issues of crime, poverty and injustice, in a safe and trusted space. Ebony has been as much a news source as it’s been a family photo album, an artifact of comfort on our grandmothers’ coffee tables.
Though John H. Johnson passed away in 2005, Ebony continues to ensure his legacy, to archive our history, and to document our political unrest. It comes as no surprise that the magazine would not only pay tribute to the death of Trayvon Martin, but also use its considerable influence to make a powerful and unmistakable political statement. In publishing four commemorative “We Are All Trayvon” magazine covers for its September issue, Ebony is simply remaining as consistent a resource as it’s always been for us.
Regardless of our personal opinions about the acquittal of George Zimmerman, the black community has felt an acute sense of responsibility to the boy he killed. That boy is like too many others who have been gunned down prematurely, due to circumstances beyond their control. In Trayvon’s case, the circumstance was racial profiling. The circumstance was his being viewed as suspicious because of his profile in the dark. For prosecutors and a jury to ignore race as a precipitous factor in this case has been almost as unsettling as the fact that the teen was murdered in the first place.
This is what the hoodie movement has always been about. It’s a way of railing against the myriad biases and aggression imposed on minorities because of their skin color and other shallow markers of physical appearance. We who have been subject to these biases understand the importance of combating them in as public and high-profile a way as possible. We are Ebony’s audience — and those covers, featuring Trayvon Martin’s parents and brother, Jahvaris; filmmaker Spike Lee and his son, Jackson; NBA star Dwyane Wade and his sons, Zion and Zaire; and actor Boris Kodjoe and his son, Nicolas — are our public and high-profile avatars of protest.
Why anyone would take issue with a magazine responding to the needs and interests of its audience is a mystery — particularly since this has been Ebony’s primary objective since the 1940s.
But enter the right and its continued post-trial taunting and willful denial of racial profiling as a factor in Trayvon Martin’s killing. Conservative blog Twitchy and its commenters are registering their outrage over the covers, implying that Ebony is “pretend[ing] to fight for social justice.” The site is also quick to redirect attention from Trayvon’s murder to black-on-black crime. The lambasting continued on Twitter, as conservative account-holders called the covers “frankly racist.” In response the official Ebony account fired back. And a sardonic hashtag began to trend.
The “controversy” is absurd but the attitudes it reveals call for persistent and serious attention. We are as weary of hearing that Trayvon wasn’t killed because he was black as Tea Partyers are of seeing our hoodies. We wish this were a protest we didn’t have to undertake. But as long as the school-to-prison pipeline exists, as long as a judge can spend five years fraudulently sentencing black children to jail before his misdeeds are uncovered; as long as poverty and bureaucracy continue to ensure that the education of black children is not a priority; and as long as cases involving men opening fire on unarmed black youth occur, this will be a battle worth waging.
For us, Ebony’s “We Are All Trayvon” covers are not about tit-for-tat media coverage, reverse racism claims, or the detached outrage of an out-of-touch political party. This is urgent and personal. One different choice, one year’s delay, one miscalculated risk, and our black children could cease to exist. Someone who doesn’t like the look of them could follow them or instigate a confrontation or deem them unworthy of equitable opportunities or just wordlessly open fire.
These are our stakes. They do not begin or end with George Zimmerman and Trayvon Martin or with hoodies and magazine covers. But if the story of John H. Johnson’s rise from poverty, through Jim Crow, and into our current media consciousness tells us anything, it’s that we can’t afford not to use every avenue available to us to fight for a more just society. We cannot afford to stop believing that, even against the unlikely odds of school disappearances in our communities and racial profiling and rampant gun violence, our voices and our media and our protests are meaningful. Here’s hoping Ebony remains in print and online long enough to report every stride we take toward a greatly improved future.
By: Stacia L. Brown, Salon, August 8, 2013
“The Courage Of Invisible Women”: The Consequences Of Forgetting Sybrina Fulton And Mamie Till
Sybrina Fulton, mother of Trayvon Martin, has been a textbook example of courage in the seventeen months since her youngest son was killed by George Zimmerman. Thrust into the public sphere during a time of great personal tragedy, Fulton has carried her pain with incredible poise. It was no different when she spoke before the National Urban League in Philadelphia this past Friday. She told the audience: “My message to you is please use my story, please use my tragedy, please use my broken heart to say to yourself, ’We cannot let this happen to anybody else’s child.’ ”
In that moment, she made the connection between herself and Mamie Till, mother of Emmett Till, the teen slain in 1955 for allegedly whistling at a woman, even stronger. Speaking on her decision to have an open casket at his funeral after her son’s face had been so badly beaten and disfigured he was unrecognizable, Mamie said: “I wanted the world to see what they did to my baby.” These mothers of black sons publicly asked us to use their pain to seek justice. However, the way we use that pain cannot diminish the reality of the people who live with it. By which I mean, we have a bad habit of acting as if black women exist only as props in the story about black men and it’s time to stop.
Black women’s pain fuels but then becomes obscured in the popular narrative about the consequences of racism and the fight for racial justice, as it becomes framed through the experiences of black men. All of us who do work around these issues are guilty of this oversight, myself included. In our attempts to address the problem of anti-black racism in the US, we neglect to consider the experiences of black women as part of that story.
While the Congressional Black Caucus convened a meeting to discuss the plight of black men and boys, black women and girls who suffer under the same systems of oppression being discussed as problematic for our boys have been left out of the public discourse. We talk often of the criminalization of black boys, and point to the school-to-prison pipeline as an example, but fail to mention the ways it affects black girls, as Monique W. Morris laid out in her report for African American Policy Forum in March of this year. According to Morris: “Black women and girls continue to be over-represented among those who are in contact with the criminal and juvenile justice systems. Black girls continue to experience some of the highest rates of residential detention. Black girls represent the fastest-growing segment of the juvenile justice population, and they have experienced the most dramatic rise in middle school suspension rates in recent years.” Yet, the problem continues to be framed as a nearly exclusive to black men and boys.
The same is true of New York City’s stop-and-frisk policy. While it’s true that the policy disproportionately targets black men, black women are also subjected to these supposedly random searches whose constitutionality has been challenged. Additonally, according to The New York Times, “stops of women by male officers can often involve an additional element of embarrassment and perhaps sexual intimidation.”
At times like this, it’s important to remind ourselves of our history. As Danielle L. McGuire expertly documented in her 2010 book At the Dark End of the Street, one of the major catalysts of the civil rights movement of the 1950s and ’60s was the dehumanization experienced by black women. The bus boycotts began because of the physical threat and sexual terror heaped upon black women’s bodies, in addition to having to ride in the back. And while a young Martin Luther King Jr. grabbed the headlines, it was a great number of black women paying the day-to-day price of movement building, organizing and doing field work, only to have their contributions minimized in favor of a “great man” reading of history.
Writing for The Guardian, Jamila Aisha Brown put it this way: “The victimization of young women is subsumed into a general well of black pain that is largely defined by the struggles of African-American men. As a result, any insight about this important intersection of race and gender is lost under the umbrella of a collective sense of persecution.”
The stories of black men are important, but they are not a stand-in for the stories of all black people. We can’t continue using the pain of black women’s lives to explain our existence if we are then going to pretend that pain isn’t worth examining on its own. We dishonor the courage of the Mamies and Sybrinas of the world when we do.
By: Mychal Denzel Smith, The Nation, August 1, 2013
“You Can’t Gerrymander A Whole State”: The North Carolina GOP’s Extremism May Cost Their Party The U.S. Senate In 2014
Since the GOP took over both North Carolina’s state house and governorship for the first time in more than a century, the state has become a flashpoint, with extremist policies being put into place one after the other, almost as if conservatives were punishing the state for voting for President Obama in 2008.
The right-wing mania seems to have peaked, with abortion laws being injected into any legislation Republicans could get their hands on and the nation’s worst, most blatant voter suppression law.
Republican governor Pat McCrory has said he will sign the new women’s health restrictions — despite a campaign promise not to — and the voting law, though he hasn’t actually read it.
North Carolinians have been gathering every week for Moral Mondays at the state capitol, hoping their protests and the hundreds of resulting arrests will draw attention to the extremism coming out of the quintessential swing state.
But if people aren’t paying attention to North Carolina politics now, they will be, as the battle for the U.S. Senate in 2014 heats up and Democratic senator Kay Hagan defends her seat.
“North Carolina is the closest thing to the tipping point state in the Senate battle,” the New York Times‘ Nate Silver recently wrote.
Silver added, “Although North Carolina is increasingly purple in presidential election years, the coalition of African-Americans and college-aged voters that Democrats depend upon to win races in the state is less likely to turn out for midterm elections.”
And Republicans are well aware of this.
“By all accounts, there is no path to having a Republican majority leader that doesn’t lead through North Carolina,” Thom Tillis, the state House speaker and leading Republican Senate candidate, told the Washington Examiner.
While laws designed to suppress Democratic votes will certainly help Republicans, the controversies invoked by their policies are drawing the attention of the state’s growing unaffiliated voters and the nation.
Some have called North Carolina the “new Wisconsin,” which sounds promising for Republicans who were able to help Governor Scott Walker survive a recall. However, Democrats successfully took back the Senate in those recalls for a brief time, and only lost it again in 2012 due to gerrymandering.
You can’t gerrymander a whole state, and if there is a backlash against the GOP in North Carolina, it could cost Republicans the U.S. Senate.
By: Jason Sattler, The National Memo, July 29, 2013
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