Marian's Blog

European Journalism Centre gets new director

The Maastricht, Netherlands-based European Journalism Centre - the EJC - will get a new director from March 1st. Previous director Raymonde Griswold will be succeeded by a chap called Wilfried Rütten. Check other interesting info on their site.

Liverpool, Slavery and The Beatles: Modern Black Atlantic History

"As we write the 20th century what is the role of the Beatles - four white guys from Liverpool UK - in modern Black Atlantic history?" I feel a sense of betrayal when I recall that in the 1960s and later American kids made quite wealthy a group of young men from a city called Liverpool. And in recent years scholars of American popular music and culture have discovered the high cost of the "Liverpool music" phenomenon to the careers and livelihoods of U.S. musicians - especially Black American R&B groups of the 1960s. More than that, I freely admit I was one of these 'ahistorical' youth, though in most respects I wasn't really ahistorical. We simply hadn't a clue about Liverpool's earlier role in deporting, shipping, trading and enslaving our ancestors and those of millions more African descendants in the Americas. I loved the Beatles' music. I bought their records. I saw A Hard Day's Night. My friend Angeline and I even took Paul and John (Angeline and myself, respectively) as alter egos. Don't ask why exactly, but we really were into it and in a way our respective choices were on target. I think very few people in America "put two and two together" back then. I would be intensely curious to know whether any historian or social critic in any country ever attempted to put into the broader Black Atlantic context various interpretations of the meaning of the arrival in the Americas of a group of young Liverpudlian men. In America, apparently, we young Black, Native American, White, Latino and Asian American youth had no idea we were part of a longstanding socio-historical process between the US and UK - a system which without doubt was postcolonial contrary to opinions of some current observers [see my note below on Deepika Bahri's exclusion of postcolonial experience in the US]. Point of history: Among other settlements, in 1607 English settlers founded the Jamestown colony (Virginia). Over in the UK did the Beatles or anyone else reflect upon all this? It seems that even in the late 20th century and on both sides of the pond we still were part of the uninterrupted Atlantic relationship that conspired to silence and 'not remembering'. In the US there had to be those who knew this history and yet they said nothing, let alone jog public memory and foster discourse. More than a few Black American youth - including myself - were buying Beatles' records, singing their songs, we watched them on Ed Sullivan and stood in long lines to pay them to get into their concerts. We never asked - nor did we have means to do so - what Ringo, Paul, George or John thought of Black people - Black Americans, Africans, African Caribbeans, African Canadians or Black British - and of our post-slave-trade societies. We never asked what The Beatles thought of our history or of their own or of their intersections. Nor did we ask what they knew or thought of Liverpool's wildly lucrative links to Africa and the slave trade. Fast forward to 2006. Like the October 2005 STAMP project on the docks of Lancaster near the Millenium Bridge, does Liverpool have a public memorial to the way this city constructed and equipped itself from wealth acquired through catching, shipping and selling captive Blacks? Do Paul McCartney, George Harrison or Ringo Starr, or Sean Lennon or Yoko Ono Lennon or the John Lennon estate for that matter even care that these roots formed the cornerstone of Liverpool history? It's been almost a half century since four young musicians from Liverpool arrived on the shores of America and received an unbiased and unprecedented welcome. In turn that welcome afforded them the means, if not the responsibility, to contribute and to help make our common future different and better than our common past.

Who wants to hear American Indians' own stories? National symposium, March 2-3

A national symposium on what I call the "enforced invisibility" of Native Americans in the USA?? Well it's about time. Speaking as a journalist I have to suggest that there's one big elephant in this room which this symposium should address - among many other things. That issue is why most U.S. news items that use a variety of US population statistics always, always leave out American Indians - as if they don't exist. I've actually had people in the United States of America (and sometimes in other countries) - including 'foreigners' and a few "domestics" (US natives) - try to tell me either a) "American Indians no longer exist", or b) "not enough American Indians exist today for them to matter, or to be included or consulted in U.S. public discussions on just about anything". Such dis-information is about as criminally negligent as it is sad and almost needless to say I've shot down such comments without blinking an eye. The whole thing of continually dismissing American Indians in their/our own country makes my blood run cold. And why are all of us as US communities of colour consistently and separately always compared to middle-class and affluent Whites instead of comparing our successes and the "challenges" we face to each other? Usually what's being compared revolves around some problem or something negative and basically it's almost invariably never a positive comparison in favour of Americans of colour. Why is that? Whether it's data on rates of diabetes or obesity or average levels of education or un/employment or home ownership, Latinos are compared to so-called "non-Latino" whites; Black Americans are compared to whites; Asian Americans are compared to whites, while both Native American and Pacific Islander populations (Hawai'i, Samoa, Fiji, Mariana Islands, etc.) usually are pretty well left out. March's upcoming seminar is: Who Wants to Hear Our Story? Communications and Contemporary Native Americans - A Media Symposium. March 2-3, 2006, Washington, DC. "The absence of U.S. media coverage about Native American communities means that Indian Country today is a mystery to most people. While there are rampant stereotypes, realities and cultural strengths remain hidden. ..." There's a $50 fee that pays for "two breakfasts, lunch on Thursday, a reception on Thursday night, and all symposium materials. Participants will need to make their own housing arrangements." The website also quotes Jose - Jose Barreiro: "... In the increasingly organized anti-Indian climate, a focus on media attitudes and content is crucial. We are glad to join FCNL in seeking both clear strategy and substantial engagement of media by Native Nations and a better and deeper education for mainstream journalists on the nature of tribal rights. -- Jose Barreiro, senior advisor, American Indian Policy and Media Initiative." The co-sponsors of the symposium are listed on the site (no, I haven't linked them!):

Friends Committee on National Legislation (conference coordinator)
American Indian Policy and Media Initiative
Americans for Indian Opportunity
American Friends Service Committee
Call to Renewal
First Nations Development Institute
Honor Our Neighbors' Origins and Rights (HONOR)
Institute for Tribal Government
The Interfaith Alliance
National American Indian Housing Council
National Congress of American Indians
National Council of Churches
National Indian Child Welfare Association
National Indian Council on Aging
National Indian Health Board
National Native American Families Together
National Urban Indian Family Coalition
Native American Journalists Association
Native American Rights Fund

News that Richard Pryor has died

It may be true that Black American comedian, Richard Pryor, has died, but his energy - his genius - are with us forever. I remember one of his comedy albums of the 1970s. I will never forget his monologue about people from another country whom the US government (and certain private interests) was 'transplanting' to the USA. In this case it was Vietnamese people. "They [the American interests responsible] are teaching them to say [the "n"-word]," Pryor declared. It was frighteningly believable and yet somehow hilarious, after a manner. And I'm sure it was not far from the truth, either then or now. Travel well, Richard Pryor. Thank you for the laughs - and the thoughts. [From Reuters news service via Australia's National Nine News: "Richard Pryor took a brutal look at racial attitudes in the United States and fashioned it into a comedy career. His chaotic personal life also provided material for a stand-up act that was as profound as it was profane. Born Dec. 1, 1940, and raised in his grandmother's brothel in Peoria, Illinois, Pryor served in the U.S. Army before heading to New York to pursue comedy in the early 1960s. The former class clown played it safe at first but later moved on to controversial subjects with a routine that was more like Lenny Bruce than Bill Cosby. His comedy albums, which included "Bicentennial [the "n" word]," "Is It Something I Said," and "That [the "n" word]'s Crazy," won five Grammys. He reportedly decided to quit using the word [the "n" word] after a 1980 trip to Zimbabwe, writing in his autobiography: "There are no [the "n" word]s here. The people here, they still have their self-respect, their pride." ..."]

Yeidy Rivero's "Tuning Out Blackness" - Puerto Rican TV, Race, Racism & National Identity

"Donde esta tu abuela" (where is your Grandmother?), mis Latinos... The following book title and its subject remind me of a time when I studied Spanish with a certain international organisation. The teacher used videos intended to depict "Puerto Rican culture" and a "typical" Puerto Rican family. Problem was, not one member of the 'family' cast was Afro Puerto Rican. This is absolutely counter-intuitive to what some of us know about who Puerto Ricans and Puerto Rican communities truly are. Yeidy Rivero's refreshingly related new book is titled Tuning Out Blackness: Race and Nation in the History of Puerto Rican Television. It's published by Duke University Press (North Carolina USA). Rivero is assistant prof in the Department of Communication and Culture at Indiana University in Bloomington, Indiana (in the quite racist Midwest USA). I will never forget those JOHN BIRCH SOCIETY billboards I used to see in Indiana. And all you italiani who so love Latin culture and music when they come to Italia for a month every summer - while at the same time showing such solidarieta per l'Africa yet only when it's completely disconnected from the African/Black Americas - Italians might learn a few things if they take heed. On the Duke University Press website: "Tuning Out Blackness fills a glaring omission in U.S. and Latin American television studies by looking at the history of Puerto Rican television. In exploring the political and cultural dynamics that have shaped racial representations in Puerto Rico's commercial media from the late 1940s to the 1990s, Yeidy M. Rivero advances critical discussions about race, ethnicity, and the media. She shows that televisual representations of race have belied the racial egalitarianism that allegedly pervades Puerto Rico's national culture. White performers in blackface have often portrayed “blackness” in local television productions, while black actors have been largely excluded. Drawing on interviews, participant observation, archival research, and textual analysis, Rivero considers representations of race in Puerto Rico, taking into account how they are intertwined with the island's status as a U.S. commonwealth, its national culture, and its relationship with Cuba before the Cuban Revolution in 1959, and the massive influx of Cuban migrants after 1960. She focuses on locally produced radio and television shows, particular television events, and characters that became popular media icons—from performer Ramón Rivero's use of blackface and “black” voice in the 1940s and 1950s to the battle between black actors and television industry officials over racism in the 1970s to the creation, in the 1990s, of the first Puerto Rican situation comedy featuring a black family. As the twentieth century drew to a close, multinational corporations had purchased all of Puerto Rico's stations, and they threatened to wipe out locally produced programs. Tuning Out Blackness not only brings to the forefront the marginalization of non-white citizens in Puerto Rico's media culture; it also raises important questions about the significance of local sites of television production. “This book not only provides a cultural history of 'blackness' in Puerto Rican television, it also locates Puerto Rico as a critical blind spot in both Latin American and U.S. television studies, one that can offer new insights into the televisual representation of race, family, and nation.”-Chon Noriega, author of Shot in America: Television, the State, and the Rise of Chicano Cinema; “Tuning Out Blackness offers an astute and very well informed analysis of Puerto Rico's unique 'racial' programming, which in turn provides a valuable look at the deep ambivalence at the heart of the country's sense of national identity in the shadow of U.S. ideological and cultural power.”-Juan Flores, author of From Bomba to Hip-Hop: Puerto Rican Culture and Latin Identity. See more reviews here. The book's contents: Acknowledgments; Introduction: Translating Televisual “Blackness”; 1. Caribbean Negritos: Ramon Rivero, Blackface, and Black Voice in Puerto Rico; 2. Bringing the Soul: Afros, Black Empowerment, and the Resurgent Popularity of Blackface; 3. The CubaRican Space Revisited; 4. Mi familia: A Black Puerto Rican Televisual Family; 5. Translating and Representing Blackness; Notes; Bibliography; Index.

Katrina, the writing on the wall for the "laissez-faire nation"

"No coordinated effort" - John Zarrella, CNN. "An engineering nightmare" - Louisiana governor Kathleen Blanco. -- For more than 30 years, Americans of conscience have been forced to watch as a well-heeled and amazingly connected clique has dismantled virtually all of our national responses to national problems. Everything (except funding) has been "left up to" - read: dumped on - our cities and states. The Gulf Coast disaster of Hurricane Katrina is no exception. This must be "states' rights" at their finest - the right to fend for yourself. Most US governors and mayors (who aren't also part of the "laissez faire nation" mentality) must be taking all this as a very, very sober warning. 

Superstorm catches Bush the bookless jock "by surprise" - Millions Now Pay Price

Americans have been lied to so much in the last six years. We are told George Bush can't be bothered - day after day after day- to speak with the mother of a dead 24 year old, even as "mainstream" US media tout the occasional scenes of Bush riding bicycles, grinning, swaggering, and chopping wood. The nation's attention is diverted by a much-hyped space flight - yet none in the mainstream media has the guts to ask - let alone utter - how many people lost their lives in Iraq this week, or how many more billions have just been spent on "Iraqi freedom" - even though supposedly the war ended over two years ago. Bush does not allow thoughts of either an impending hurricane season or something called global warming to ruin his day. And he doesn't read books anyway. Was Hurricane Katrina intensified by global warming?? And please - spare us the self-serving photo-ops of George Bush off the ranch - the so-called "Western White House" - just long enough to go stand among the ruins. The ruins in Mississippi will be perfect for this. You do realise Bush's pal, former Republican chair Haley Barbour "just happens" to be governor of Mississippi. My mouth just about dropped open when I saw his face yesterday on TV. Millions in Mississippi and Louisiana have been abandoned to fend for themselves, faced with illness, birth, death, thirst, flood, hunger, frightened animals including venomous snakes, darkness, insecurity and crime. And long-term homelessness. The list goes on. A doctor at LSU in Baton Rouge says as people cling to their roofs for dear life they are exposed to the Gulf air thick with mosquitoes, and West Nile fever outbreaks probably will come next. I am ashamed. The American people and the world are watching as the US federal government again abandons its responsibilities, both to its citizens and to humanity. And hurricane season is not over.

The Constant Gardener: Kenya, Africa, Ourselves

This week I will see the new film version of The Constant Gardener. I'm fascinated by both the film's website and its soundtrack. "Big pharmaceuticals ... are right up there with the arms dealers," a voice declares on the website. "FMF" (who is not English, British, Kenyan or American) loaned me her copy of John Le Carre's The Constant Gardener (TCG) about three years ago when C and I were still living in Nairobi. Back then the book was banned in Kenya. I'm still not sure it's been officially unbanned. I read it in Kenya just before Daniel arap Moi completed his twenty four (24) year run as Kenya's president. He's mentioned several times in Constant Gardener and one can say it's not as a hero. The book was a fascinating read; I couldn't put it down, which I can't say for quite a bit of fiction. I hear they shot on location in Nairobi, including Kibera - Africa's largest slum[, and elsewhere in Kenya - including Lake Turkana?]. I keep thinking that whenever I recommend this book and film to others I must suggest they do 3 things: 1. Read Adam Hochschild's King Leopold's Ghost;(subtitle, "A story of greed, terror and heroism in colonial Africa") 2. Read Edward Hooper's online letter about his suspicions on the origins of HIV and AIDS, and take a look at his entire website investigating the origins of AIDS; and 3. See the related, Emmy-nominated documentary film, The Origins of AIDS, which the Sundance Channel aired in the USA in February 2005. Truth really is stranger than fiction, and in this case a book and film of fiction help lead us to examine certain truths. Despite faults of yet another heavily eurocentric plot set in Africa, in some other ways The Constant Gardener is on the right track. God bless Africa.

Hurricane Katrina - What Part of Mandatory Evacuation Don't Some People Understand?

Why are we watching video of a guy from a TV news crew - reportedly possibly from station WWL - risking his life in waist-high floodwaters to rescue some idiot trapped in his car?? Exactly what part of "curfew" and "mandatory [means required] evacuation" did the older guy refuse to understand? After his rescue, looking into the camera he explains he was on his way "driving to Kenner" (near NO) when he "mistook water for the road." Whoa. What kind of "cretino" is this? Barely 15 hours ago New Orleans' mayor Ray Nagin stated clearly in an official news conference which was broadcast that to disobey a state and city evacuation order would be a violation of law. Yet it does not seem to have crossed this other guy's mind that he deserves to be arrested. Not only for endangering his own life but the life of the young guy brave enough to run out and save him. One is a hero, the other an idiot.

X-Raying Robert McNamara's public Conscience - Coming clean in your 80s

My late maternal Grandfather loved to recite the poem Invictus to us, his grandkids. He was Detective Sergeant Reuben R. Nichols, Sr. He became a Black American pioneer in the Metropolitan police department (Homicide Division) of Washington, DC. Born in Leavenworth (Kansas USA) in March 1904, both he and my then-future Grandmother - Maude Gudger (married Nichols) - managed to graduate from 8th grade at Leavenworth's Black school. My Grandfather was very proud of having been class valedictorian, and decades later we were his audience as he recited William Earnest Henley's poem. Invictus. That's right. *(Do not believe every negative thing some others may tell you about Americans. Especially about Black Americans - or things you THINK you know after watching idiotic music videos (many of which I banned from my home years ago. I suggest you do the same for the worst ones.) More than a few Americans should take the same advice. One of my grandfather's favourite pieces of advice was, "To thine own self be true" (Shakespeare, Hamlet). I suppose Robert McNamara finally reached a similar decision. I recall seeing him some years back, in Washington, during the preparatory conference for the world microcredit summit. The summit was in February 1997, so the meeting where I met McNamara must've been November 1996. Even today I feel uncomfortable when I remember and write about that encounter. In recent years I've felt a bit sorry for Mr McNamara. To be literally despised by so many people. And - perhaps - forgiven by some. But in the years since that meeting and since the end of the US assault on Viet Nam, Mr McNamara seems to have been searching his soul. Rather publicly. Of course that doesn't bring back one dead child or adult among any of the most affected populations - starting with Vietnamese civilians, as well as young, mostly male, Americans whose lives were ahead of them. Then today on the US television channel called "C-SPAN 3", I happened to see McNamara on a March 3rd, 2004 panel at Kennedy School of Government at Harvard. The panel was "The Fog of War: Eleven Lessons From the Life of Robert S. McNamara." Apparently it's also the title of a documentary film by a fellow called Errol Morris. McNamara said several crucial things at Harvard. He also mentioned under his breath that he'd broken a rule in offering some personal opinions on the current US government's actions in Iraq. But perhaps the most telling thing he said was that Americans (in general) do not engage in enough discussion or debate about things we should be aware of and about which we should be discussing, debating and asking pointed questions. I forget McNamara's exact phrase, but this is what he said. There's another part I'll quote later.