Marian's Blog

The international conversations Black America's not having: Reading Yvonne Bynoe

Came across an interesting article from nearly a year ago: author Yvonne Bynoe's Black America After Jim Crow: Still Feels Like Segregation, published on AlterNet. (They have good stuff and deserve your consideration of $upport.)

For decades I've been having "frank and candid" conversations, personal and public, with Black folks from around the world outside the USA, as well as with my folks here at home. I agree with much but not all of what Bynoe writes. I remember a surreal moment in the Kenyan government representative's speech at the U.S. 4th of July diplomatic event in Nairobi a few years ago. Johnnie Carson, a Black American, was ambassador. But I'll save this for another time.

"What has not occurred are frank and candid conversations between native Black Americans and immigrants from Africa and the Caribbean that aim to update the public face of "Black America." These dialogues would first need to acknowledge the unique cultures and histories of the various groups, while forging relationships based on our shared interests and challenges in this country as people of African descent." - writer Yvonne Bynoe

"A noose lesson": the only worthwhile news from Grambling State University??

"Grambling had football. Southern had football and academics." These were my words as I described to a lady my view of the legendary, continuing rivalry between two Louisiana schools, both historically Black: Southern University and Grambling University. Each fall Southern and Grambling teams face-off in the annual Bayou Classic football gameMy siblings and I grew up on Southern's campus, in Scotlandville (Baton Rouge), while Grambling is a few short miles from the now-infamous town of Jena. I've never seen anyone address this issue but it's my educated guess that Southern University and A&M College probably is the largest historically Black university in the United States. We'd drive the 70 miles east to visit Southern's New Orleans campus, back when it was new. Today, Southern has even more statewide campuses. Hurricane Katrina shifted the title "Louisiana's largest city" from New Orleans to the state capital, "Big BR" - Baton Rouge. News is out that a few rookie schoolteachers (Black Americans) called themselves giving a group of small children a rather vivid lesson about what happened over in Jena. One newscaster bothered to add that the woman in one photo, holding up a little girl with a noose around her neck, is the girl's own grandma. The implication is that the grandma and the other adults were awkwardly sharing with the kids what Black Americans have been and are subjected to. Clearly their method was idiotic, not to mention weird, especially for small kids. In some parts of the U.S. we call this 'backasswards'. To me the bigger question is, Why is this the only time mainstream media mention anything about Grambling (or any other U.S. Black college)? A chyron (subtitle) image on MSNBC even mispelled Grambling's name as "Gambling State University". I've never before seen CNN interview - or more like put on the spot - Grambling president Dr. Horace Judson. The only other times these two charismatic schools are publicly acknowledged is via the rare, obscure and marginal media mention of inter-collegiate Black college football.

New Orleans, race, White voters: Or why ex-mayor Marc Morial is NOT Louisiana Governor

I should've posted this weeks ago but here goes. If anyone believes there's a "level playing field" in competing for leadership in the US, you need to remove your head from whatever hole in which it's stuck. Just because it's the 21st century and currently 2006 and some of us have high-speed Internet is no reason to deliberately subscribe to delusion. In New Orleans the son of former mayor "Moon" Landrieu (and sister of current Louisiana US senator Mary L.) and member of one of Louisiana's traditional - read 'white' - political family dynasties challenges a Black guy whose father, no disrespect intended, definitely never was elected to any Louisiana statewide office. New Orleans' ex-mayor Marc Morial's late father, Ernest "Dutch" Morial, was the first-ever Black (or Creole) mayor of New Orleans when he succeeded Mitch's dad as New Orleans mayor in April 1978. This was almost yesterday - the late 1970s - not the 1870s. Marc Morial himself, now head of the New York-based National Urban League, was a successful multi-term mayor of his hometown. Yet when it came time for him and his backers to look around for what he could do next they realised he was not going to be elected the next governor of the Bayou State. I guess Marc couldn't even seriously consider lieutenant governor - the post currently held by dynastic N.O. mayoral contender Mitch Landrieu. Landrieu could, and did, get that job. In Louisiana with his name and colour it could be handed to him - and probably was. But not Marc Morial and not Ray Nagin. Before Katrina drove out over half its majority-Black population, New Orleans - and only since the '70s - had become an oasis within a statewide political wilderness, giving at least some (albeit local rather than statewide) chance to a relative handful of Black Louisianians aspiring to exercise political leadership in their own society. Is Black American political leadership in our own country and in our home communities still too ambitious in 21st century USA? This gaping disparity (between defacto exclusion of Blacks from leadership in most of Louisiana versus a chance for Blacks to compete locally and successfully in pre-Katrina New Orleans politics) exists because like all over the USA - including the "non-racist" (?!) American North and West - millions of white Americans still refuse to support and vote for Black candidates. Even if their lives and true democracy depend on it. Another case, another state. Illinois. Barack Obama, with a Kenyan father and white American mother, reportedly depended on Black Americans as the faithful, decisive and visionary voter base that made him Illinois' first Black US senator, though he is not an ethnic Black American. (And ethnic Black Americans aren't Kenyan or White American.) Even being 'half white' did not convince a majority of Illinois' white voters to vote for Obama. That fact is deep but it is not new. If anybody ever asked us we Black Americans always have known about and felt the stab from the "'flakiness' factor" of our white kin/fellow US citizens. (Like white abolitionist John Brown there are exceptions; they deserve the attention they almost never get from the MSM.) In some circles such irrational social-political behaviour would at best be construed as a public mental health problem. Just as importantly, it's blatantly anti-democratic. At the end of the day, whoever is elected in N.O. today, the whole world needs to be aware of Katrina's unintentional yet very real impact in undermining at least four decades of work and achievements and civil and political rights organising and social behaviour change on behalf of everyone eligible to vote - in New Orleans, in Louisiana, in the South and across the USA. When the cards are on the table this playing field remains far from being level and the ceiling is so low Black Americans still can't stand up. You just have to wonder why most US pollsters and public opinion researchers do not ask Americans about this and do not seem to care.

State of the Black Union on CSPAN!

My brother just shared with me that the annual, public, free SOBU conference - the State of the Black Union - sponsored by broadcaster Tavis Smiley, is now being televised on CSPAN. Tavis says there are 5,000 persons attending the conference in Houston, Texas, plus scores more watching nationally and internationally via CSPAN. Thanks bro. Check it.

Einstein's Black Friends: "Einstein on Race and Racism" by Fred Jerome & Rodger Taylor

Einstein on Race and Racism is written by Fred Jerome and Rodger Taylor. This is their Preface to the book. "More than one hundred biographies and monographs of Einstein have been published, yet not one of them mentions the name Paul Robeson, let alone Einstein’s friendship with him, or the name W. E. B. Du Bois, let alone Einstein’s support for him. Nor does one find in any of these works any reference to the Civil Rights Congress whose campaigns Einstein actively supported. Finally, nowhere in all the ocean of published Einsteinia – anthologies, bibliographies, biographies, summaries, articles, videotapes, calendars, posters and postcards – will one find even an islet of information about Einstein’s visits and ties to the people in Princeton’s African American community around the street called Witherspoon. [emphasis added.]

"One explanation for this historical amnesia is that Einstein’s biographers and others who shape our official memories, felt that some of his “controversial” friends, such as Robeson, and activities, such as co-chairing the antilynching campaign, might somehow tarnish Einstein as an American icon. That icon, sanctified by Time magazine when it dubbed Einstein the “Person of the Century,” is a myth, albeit a marvelous myth. In fact, as myths go, Einstein’s is hard to beat. The world’s most brilliant scientist is also a kindly, lovably bumbling, grandfather figure: Professor Genius combined with Dr. Feelgood! Opinion-molders, looking down from their ivory towers, may have concluded that such an appealing icon will help the great unwashed public feel good about science, about history, about America. Why spoil such a beautiful image with stories about racism, or for that matter with any of Einstein’s political activism? Politics, they argue, is ugly, making teeth grind and fists clench, so why splash politics over Einstein’s icon? Why drag a somber rain-cloud across a bright blue sky? Einstein might reply, with a wink, that without rain-clouds life would be very, very short. Or he might simply say that a bright blue sky is a fairy tale in today’s war-weary world.

"Yet, despite Einstein’s clear intention to make his politics public – especially his anti-lynching and other antiracist activities – the history-molders have seemed embarrassed to do so. Or nervous. “I had to think about my Board,” a museum curator (who doesn’t want his name used even today) said, explaining why he had omitted some of the scientist’s political statements from the major exhibition celebrating Einstein’s one hundredth birthday in 1979.

Financial aid for HBCU students affected by Hurricane Katrina

This information is from the Southern University New Orleans (SUNO) campus website. Thurgood Marshall Scholarship Fund is offering US$500 emergency scholarships to students affected by Hurricane Katrina who normally attend SUNO, and also to students who are from New Orleans who attend a member school of the Marshall scholarship fund. Click for more info. Also - students from Xavier, Dillard and SUNO are eligible for a $1000 scholarship through the Tom Joyner Foundation. Deadline for this second source is 31 October 2005 - email HBCURelief /at/ blackamericaweb.com - send your full name, the school from which you are transferring, the school you are attending and a phone where you may be reached. Other important financial aid links for students from SUNO's fine website:

Hurricance Katrina Information for Students and Parents

Hurricane Katrina Information for Federal Direct Loan Borrowers

Hurricane Katrina Information for FFEL Borrowers

Black High school Econ teacher leaves $2 mill to Prairie View A&M

In the so-called mainstream media no one but no one documents Black American (or other Black) philanthropy. Perhaps most insulting, many aren't even aware our philanthropy exists not to mention the fact that in the US at least, our assistance does not benefit only Black people. Salatheia Bryant's article about frugal public school teacher Whitlowe Green is from the Houston Chronicle website. "Whitlowe R. Green wore second-hand clothing, purchased out-of-date meats, shopped at auctions and stopped talking to a relative for two years because of a $6.76 debt." He served the community as an economics teacher in the Houston Independent School District (HISD). When he retired in 1983 he earned $28,000 a year. (The same year I left Laredo, Texas.) When Green started teaching in 1937 his yearly pay was $700. Most of his teaching career was spent teaching economics at Houston's Yates High School. As one friend remembered him: "When you go to the counter to pay the bill he'd kind of slow down and let you get ahead. He played poor. He was just a regular guy." Mr. Green was 88 when he died of cancer in 2002. He graduated from Prairie View A&M in 1936. Read the rest of Salatheia Bryant's fascinating and humbling story here.

American poet Langston Hughes: I Dream a World

I don't know in what year Langston Hughes wrote I Dream a World. I know he was born in 1902 in Joplin, Missouri in the US midwest, what some folks call the American heartland. His full name was James Langston Hughes and he attended Lincoln University in Pennsylvania (not Lincoln in Missouri) and lived his life until 1967. Later as a student at Lincoln (in Pa) myself, I first lived in Hughes Hall, named for him. His biographer is Arnold Rampersad, author of The Life of Langston Hughes, 1941-1967: I Dream A World, first published in 1988.

I dream a world where man No other man will scorn, Where love will bless the earth And peace its paths adorn. I dream a world where all Will know sweet freedom's way, Where greed no longer saps the soul Nor avarice blights our day. A world I dream where black or white, Whatever race you be, Will share the bounties of the earth And every man is free, Where wretchedness will hang its head And joy, like a pearl, Attends the needs of all mankind-- Of such I dream, my world! - The Collected Poems of Langston Hughes, edited by Arnold Rampersad (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1994), p. 311.

International relations workshop for 'global South' young scholars (but not global South in Europe & North America)

June 15 is the application deadline for the first Workshop of Young Scholars from the Global South (WYSGS), 9–16 Oct 2005 in Geneva, Switzerland. The programme is for "outstanding young scholars ... specializing in the study of international relations," and is hosted by Graduate Institute of International Studies in Geneva. Unfortunately in the "Global North" there still exists the blatantly neocolonial yet accepted-in-many-influential-quarters practice of others continuing to define the local European and North American communities of colour - the South in the North - so we have no chance of inclusion in a programme like WYSGS. Others are defining "Global South" as "countries belonging to the former ‘third world’." Nonetheless peoples of Southern origin located in the North were and are Third World peoples. The programme encourages women to apply. Only short-listed candidates will be contacted. GIIS says it's looking for candidates close to completing their Ph.d at a "southern university". At this point I have to wonder "aloud" whether GIIS has ever heard of the economic, social and political conditions under which Black America's HBCUs - "historically Black colleges and universities" came into being in the US. That is, if they've even heard of HBCUs, let alone visited an HBCU campus. [See political cartoon below.] Ghana's Kwame Nkrumah graduated from historically Black Lincoln University in Pennsylvania. So did my Great Grandfather, Rev. George Richard Brabham (Presbyterian). Long before most "Global North" universities began accepting them, Black HBCUs in the US welcomed thousands of "Third World" students and staff and faculty from the Caribbean, Africa, Asia and the Pacific. Whites from America and Europe also have been included. And the HBCU welcome has been social as well as academic. Meanwhile regardless of location most predominantly white schools have to admit they're still "working to improve" an often chilly "social climate" toward students of colour. But maybe it's not like that in Switzerland. I digress.<grin> WYSGS's working language will be English. Check all requirements on their website and email a "letter of self-introduction and motivation," a detailed CV, contact info for 2 referees and a 2000-word Ph.d. project summary to "southworkshop at hei.unige.ch." If you don't have email, send application in an envelope marked WYSGS to: Ms Denise Ducroz, Graduate Institute of International Studies, 11A Avenue de la Paix - 1202 Geneva, Switzerland. Be sure to mail so it arrives in their office before 15 June. Good luck, buona fortuna and bonne chance!

I figured I'd insert fabulous political cartoon (which isn't copying worth diddly) from a 1940s Black American newspaper - probably Black press of the day in Saint Louis, Missouri. Better copy of Charles H. Ware's cartoon shows Black American child looking from a distance at then-whites-only Washington University, St. Louis, MO; captioned simply: "I will be ready" - referring to unknown future when and if Black Americans would be allowed to attend Washington U.- and thousands of other US schools. Washington University in St. Louis only admitted Black American students in 1947 or 48; approx. two (2) graduate students. In spite of obvious talent cartoonist Charles H. Ware - like other writers, photographers, cartoonists of colour - could not get published in America's white-run press, a fact little changed in 2005. Will locate St. Louis Black paper that published.

Do You HBCU, Too? America's Historically Black colleges & universities

But first... a Happy Birthday shout-out to "Joey"!! Happy birthday, Joe and many happy returns of the day. Don't forget to make a wish.

Today's BHM term (Black History Month) is HBCU. For the uninitiated that's historically Black colleges & universities. I was born at an HBCU (Howard, where my uncle and later my cousins graduated), grew up at an HBCU (Southern), and attended a third HBCU (Lincoln, in Pa, where my great Grandfather Reverend Brabham graduated in 1894).

Anybody else remember "vespers"? Vespers was the religious service everyone on campus attended every Sunday evening in the campus chapel. It was quiet, beautiful and gracious. Actually I miss it. I attended with my parents, brother and sisters at Southern University (the blue & gold) where my father taught. If you HBCU or want to learn how to, visit HBCU Network and find out what's going on.