Prometheus 6

Man, today there's two hot articles you need to check out at Africana.com.

First on I noticed was the first in an ongoing column called The Black Slate. Lester Spence, who also writes at Vision Circle, describes the approach he'll be taking:

Over the past 20 years, many of the gains of the sixties have been dismantled. I'm referring to the erosion of Affirmative Action in some of our best colleges, as well as the erosion of the Voting Rights Act (see: Florida 2000). But I 'm also talking about the erosion of the safety net played off as "ending welfare as we know it." I'm talking about the erosion of environmental safeguards, and the erosion of public schools. The policies have been replaced steadily and stealthily, with a language that supports individual initiative and bootstrapping. The barbershop language of black pathology and self-hatred, combined with a knee jerk belief that government cannot aid our situation, has neutered our ability to combat those wishing to return to 1896.

I note above that we can win.

I sincerely believe this; however, for us to do so we have to open up democratic spaces within our communities and within our institutions. We have to engage in a number of projects simultaneously.

We have to promote, applaud, and laud local organizing. How have individuals and organizations not only fought against subjugation but promoted a vibrant new vision of what American life should look like in the 21st Century? What type of tactics and strategies did they adopt? How did they (or didn't they) use popular culture in order to mobilize black folk?

We also have to detail the various and sundry ways we're being snowed. On one level, this is relatively straightforward. How is George Bush using images of black people (and you say Condoleezza Rice? I knew that you would...) in order to bolster anti-human policies and practices? How has the Freedom of Information Act been gutted in a way that could prevent progressive men and women of various backgrounds from uncovering government wrongdoing? But we also have to turn the gaze towards our own representatives, both elected and non-elected. How are they using the language of race and community in order to hoard benefits for a select group of black people, leaving the rest of us in the lurch?

Finally, we have to begin to think outside of the box and use tactics of misdirection and passive aggression in order to make further strides. For most of us, for example, the odds of us casting a vote for the Republican Party are about the same as the odds of us being struck by lightning. How could we hack the Republican Party for progressive purposes?

I'm down with his approach, but I knew that. And I will be following the column.

The other excellent article is by another favorite of mine, Mark Anthony Neal, on mysogyny in hip-hop (with a little of the old P6 emphasis added):

Let me be clear ? I'm on the front lines of any effort to get the men in hip hop to rethink their pornographic uses of women's bodies and performance of lyrics that more often than not express, at best, a deep ambivalence about and fear of women (perfectly captured 14 years ago with the Bell Biv Devoe quip "never trust a big butt and a smile") and, at worst, outright hatred. But as we make demands of these artists, it's important that we understand the demands of the peculiar space they occupy within pop culture. Without doubt, the performance of black masculinity continues to be hip hop's dominant creative force. Yet over the last decade or so sales figures have consistently shown that young white men are the primary consumers of the various performances of black masculinity and the pornographic images of black and brown women found in mainstream hip hop.

By asking hip hop to reform, we are essentially demanding hip hop's primary consumer base to consume music that is anti-sexist, anti-misogynistic and possibly feminist. And in what context have young white men (or black men for that matter) ever been interested in consuming large amounts of black feminist thought? Clearly these young whites are consuming hip hop for other reasons. In the case of young white males, hip hop represents a space where they work through the idea of how their masculinity can be lived ? what they literally take from the hypermasculine "black buck" (think about 50 Cent's influence in the killing fields of Iraq) and indeed it is an integral part of the cash and carry exchange.

In a society that remains largely ignorant of the scholarly, political and cultural contributions of women like Anna Julia Cooper, Audre Lorde, Angela Davis ("oh yeah, the chick with the afro, right?"), June Jordan, bell hooks, Michele Wallace, Patricia Hill-Collins, Jewell Gomez, Joy James, Beverley Guy-Sheftall and Masani Alexis De Veaux, how can we expect hip hop to do the heavy-lifting that hasn't been done in the larger culture? Despite popular belief, hip hop is not the most prominent site of sexism and misogyny in American society but a reflection of the misogyny and sexism that more powerfully circulates within American culture.