When Affirmative Action Was White: An Untold History of Racial Inequality in Twentieth-Century Ameri Author: Ira Katznelson ASIN: 0393052133 Binding: Hardcover List price: $25.95 USD Amazon price: $17.13 USD

When Affirmative Action Was White: “An Untold History Of Racial Inequality in Twentieth Century America”
Saturday, October 1, 2005
1:00pm-5:00pm
301 Philosophy Hall
Columbia University Campus

Free & Open to the Public
[Pre-Registration Required]

IRAAS presents a symposium in discussion of Dr. Ira Katznelson’s current book “When Affirmative Action Was White: An Untold History of Racial Inequality in Twentieth Century America” published by W. W. Norton & Company, 2005

UNATFF 2005-United Nations Association Traveling Film Festival-September 24 and 25 - UNATFF 2005
United Nations Association Traveling Film Festival

Faces of Hope and Courage:
Connecting with Humanity
A documentary film festival as well as Q&A with film directors at the Kennedy School of Government's Wiener Auditorium (Taubman Building)and Boston University's Morse Auditorium

For schedules, film descriptions and advance ticket
information, go to:
http://www.bostonfilms.org

New-York Historical Society Unveils Plans for “SLAVERY IN NEW YORK” – – an Unprecedented, Multi-Media Exhibition of Slavery’s Central Role in the History of New York
***
“For almost 300 years, slavery insinuated itself into every nook and cranny of life in New York City.”
Professor Ira Berlin, author of Generations of Captivity: A History of African American Slaves. Co-editor (with Leslie Harris) of the companion book to Slavery in New York.
* * *
“Slavery was not a side-show in American History. It was the main event.”
James Oliver Horton, Benjamin Banneker Professor of American Studies and History at George Washington University. Author (with Lois Horton) of Slavery and the Making of America. Chief Historian, Slavery in New York Historians’ Council

NEW YORK, NY – June 14, 2005 – In October 2005, the New-York Historical Society (N-YHS) will open a landmark exhibition on slavery and its impact on the people, landscape, institutions and economy of New York, and the nation. The extraordinary multi-media exhibit, SLAVERY IN NEW YORK, will reveal history most New Yorkers are unaware of.

Fall 2005 Business Career Fair!

      Friday, September 23, 2005
      11:00am - 4:00pm
      Roone Arledge Auditorium, Alfred Lerner Hall

Bringing a variety of employers with Business positions to students! For the complete list of attendees, visit
www.careereducation.columbia.edu/events and scroll to September 23.

Schedule for the day:

11:00am - 12:00pm Fair open to Columbia students only

America Looking Towards Africa presentation at NYU

Date:    6:00 PM Thursday, September 22.
Space: Lecture Hall 300, Silver Center, 100 Washington Square East
(Northeast corner of Washington Square Park)

What are the choices American photographers and editors make when working in African countries? What are the stories and images they find, and which ones do they tell to America? What stories are Americans willing to hear and believe?   And what do all these choices mean for American "knowledge" of Africa?

Join NYU's Africa House, National Geographic and the Tisch School as photographers and editors from the National Geographic, New York University and elsewhere discuss what they think to be some of the most important images of Africa to be communicated to America.

Diaspora Covenant - As African-Americans in the United States, we have achieved much of what we have due to the grace of God and our own efforts to liberate ourselves. We would still be enslaved if many of our ancestors had not freed themselves and forced our issue of enslavement onto the agenda of Caucasians in the North and South. We would still, in fact, be enslaved if we hadn't forced segregation onto the world's stage at a time when America was trying to present a benevolent face to the world. Nonetheless, our current condition is not purely of our own making – only looking inward at ourselves to explain our condition without looking out to the wider society is short-sighted and a path to self-hatred:

• We believe that we must strive for and maintain unity in the family, community, nation and race.

PAMBAZUKA NEWS: IN AFRICA, FOR AFRICA

Pambazuka News (Pambazuka means arise or awaken in Kiswahili) is a tool for progressive social change in Africa. Pambazuka News offers a comprehensive weekly round-up of news on human rights, conflict, health, environment, social welfare, development, the internet, literature and arts in Africa.

Pambazuka News is produced by Fahamu, an organisation that uses information and communication technologies to serve the needs of organisations and social movements that aspire to progressive social change.

The Center for Contemporary Black History's Malcolm X Project welcomes you to visit our newest web feature: the Malcolm XBiography Project blog.

We will use this cyber-space to exhibit some of the research the Project has uncovered over the past five years.  The blog currently features video excerpts from interviews with the late Ossie Davis, Columbia University historian Robin D.G. Kelley, former OAAU members Herman Ferguson and A. Peter Bailey, and Farah Jasmine Griffin, director of the Institute for Research in African-American Studies at Columbia University.

The Malcolm X Project has been committed to gathering new research material about the life and times of Malcolm X / El Hajj Malik el-Shabazz. Since the inception of the Project we have undertaken two major initiatives. The first is the creation of a web-based Multimedia Study Environment (MSE), which was completed in May 2004.  Developed in conjunction with Columbia's Center for New Media and Technology (CCNMTL), the MSE gives scholars and researchers the unique opportunity to interrogate Alex Haley's The Autobiography of Malcolm X from multiple angles.  The MSE allows users to reexamine and reconstruct Malcolm X's Autobiography by connecting his narrative to critical annotations and a digital archive of multimedia primary source materials.

Townhall gets it all wrong -

Heh--saw this at Townhall by accident:

Amanda at Pandagon (rough language warning) is calling anyone who opposed looting in the wake of Katrina a "racist f---," implying that all of us think Jabbor Gibson should be thrown in jail for driving a school bus out of New Orleans and saving about 100 people.

Au contraire, my foolish friends. If I recall, mere arrest was not considered good enough for looters. I do believe that the cry from the four corners was to shoot them on sight.

Human Development Report 2005
International cooperation at a crossroads:
Aid, trade and security in an unequal world

This year’s Human Development Report takes stock of human development, including progress towards the MDGs. Looking beyond statistics, it highlights the human costs of missed targets and broken promises. Extreme inequality between countries and within countries is identified as one of the main barriers to human development—and as a powerful brake on accelerated progress towards the MDGs.

Available in English, Spanish, French and Russian. Summaries are available in several other languages as well.

Scumbag Alert -

Heads Up:

Sept. 7, 2005 -- The American Red Cross has asked the FBI to investigate at least 15 fake Web sites that are designed to look like legitimate Red Cross appeals for donations to Hurricane Katrina relief efforts.

"It's outrageous what they are doing to American citizens who are giving their hard-earned money to help people who desperately need their help," said Mary Elcano, the general counsel for the American Red Cross. "There's no question in my mind that these are the lowest of the low."

From Wikipedia:

Due to the damage by Hurricane Katrina and subsequent flooding, a number of colleges and universities in the New Orleans metropolitan area will not be able to hold classes for the fall 2005 semester. It is estimated that 75,000 to 100,000 students have been displaced. [1]. In response, institutions across the United States and Canada are offering late registration for displaced students so that their academic progress is not unduly delayed. Some are offering free or reduced admission to displaced students. At some universities, especially state universities, this offer is limited to residents of the area.

Race and Media in the US - Entman & Rojecki research -

Excerpts from Robert M. Entman and Andrew Rojecki's The Black Image in the White Mind: Media and Race in America. xx, 320 p., ... 27 tables. University of Chicago Press 2000, 2001. Studies in Communication, Media, and Public Opinion series (SCMPO). According to the Race and Media website, Entman is Professor of Communication at North Carolina State University. Rojecki is Assistant Prof of Communication at University of Illinois at Chicago. FYI regarding the book's research method - here's the link to the methodological appendix.

The Bildner Center for Western Hemisphere Studies, in collaboration with the New York Brazilian Film Festival, would like to invite you to attend this special panel,
 
Brazilian Cinema:
The Global and Regional Context

Panelists:
Richard Peña
Columbia University and Lincoln Center, Film Programmer
 
Vagner de Almeida
Columbia University and Director, "The Butterflies"

Armando Guareño
Founder & Executive Director, "La CinemaFe"
 
Moderator:
Leandro Caires
Emerson College

Reel Sisters Celebrates Zora Neale Hurston at Festival 2006

"Mama exhorted her children at every opportunity to 'jump at de sun.' We
might not land on the sun, but at least we would get off the ground."  -
Zora Neale Hurston, Dust Tracks on a Road, 1942

Reel Sisters of the Diaspora Film Festival & Lecture Series is seeking films directed or produced by women of color. On March 10 to 12, 2006, Reel Sisters will present "Jump at de Sun: Exploring Zora Neale Hurston's Reel Life," a celebration of Zora's work as an inspiration for women filmmakers. Filmmakers are encouraged to submit films on all subjects including works on family, love, relationships, spirituality and the church, self-determination and identity, and the affects of post-slavery on our communities.

The Africana Studies Group Presents
"Any enemy of the Black man is the enemy of me": Departures and Definitions of Afro-Latino Identity in the New Millennium
All Day Conference, Friday, 17 March 2006

The Graduate Center of the City University of New York , 365 Fifth Avenue, New York, New York

In the wake of the 2000 U.S. Census, the media was filled with headlines declaring that Latinos "outnumbered" African Americans, 35.3 and 34.7 million respectively, replacing them as the largest "minority" in the United States. According to these same census figures, "17.6 million Hispanics described themselves as white, 939,471 Hispanics described themselves as black, and 16.7 million checked off neither white nor black but "other." These census figures represent the manner in which some Latinos, when asked to specify their racial identity, privilege their European and indigenous ancestry over their African heritage. As historian George Reid Andrews notes in Afro-Latin America, 1800-2000, "during the period of slavery, ten times as many Africans came to Spanish and Portuguese America (5.7 million) as to the United States (560,000). By the end of the 1900s, Afro-Latin Americans outnumbered Afro-North Americans by three to one (110 million and 35 million, respectively) and formed, on average, almost twice as large a proportion of their respective populations" (22 percent in Latin America, 12 percent in the United States) (1). It is understood here that Spanish and Portuguese America also includes the Hispanophone Caribbean, as Andrews' maps of Afro-Latin America indicate. Implicit in our use of the 2000 census statistics is the awareness that a significant percentage of those 35.3 million Latina/o(s) are the descendants and immigrants of the Afro-Latin American diaspora.

I wonder if they'd be upset if someone's mural was a Dali? -

Quote of note:

Though some consider the graffiti look a legitimate — even hip — form of art, others, including city leaders and police, remain convinced it is a symbol of blight and crime.

Mural or Graffiti? City Draws Line
L.A. is cracking down on wall art, ordering businesses to redo or remove works.
By Daniel Hernandez
Times Staff Writer
August 25, 2005

Los Angeles is often called the mural capital of the world — and no place is this truer than on the streets of Boyle Heights, where hundreds of walls at pharmacies, general stores, guitar shops and even churches have been transformed into urban artwork.

CALL FOR PAPERS

Race, Roots, and Resistance:
Revisiting the Legacies of Black Power
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
March 30-April 1, 2006

The Black Power Movement of the 1960s was one of the most significant developments in the African American experience, perhaps second only to Emancipation in its transformation of U.S. race relations. Black Power exploded across the United States and the world, unleashing a torrent of rage and creativity, innovation and anger. Black Power transformed individual's personal lives, local communities, the nation and global relations. Succeeding the civil rights phrase of the Black Freedom movement, Black Power remapped the nation's understanding of race, challenged liberal conceptions of democracy, and established the groundwork for multiracial coalitions. Black Power's impact on African Americans was even more striking, it fundamentally transformed African Americans' consciousness and identity, culture, and strategic approach to politics, economics, and education. Black Power inspired the most broad-based and significant outpouring of cultural creativity in African American history. Black Power stimulated a renewed interest and involvement in global politics-in Pan-Africanism and black internationalism, and in the global dimensions of racial oppression. Black Power's reverberations continue to shape contemporary African American civil society and ideology.

I'm in the process of adding blogs to the site aggregator, and making some changes under the hood to make it easier to link to interesting articles. You've seen examples of this over the past few days.

More later...

Cause du jour of the blogosphere ends sadly -

When LaToyia Figueroa, the pregnant mother of a four-year-old from Philadelphia, turned up missing a month ago, the blogosphere turned out in an effort to publicize her case and publish her picture everywhere in hopes they would be able to find her. Unfortunately, the search is over as the police found her body in the woods outside of Chester. Her ex-boyfriend has been arrested. When the cops came to get him, he was wearing a bulletproof vest and carrying a weapon.