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Thursday, November 26, 2009
A Christian Prayer of Thanksgiving and Remembrance in the Yellow
Interfaith Thanksgiving Prayer in the Yellow
An Interfaith Thanksgiving Prayer
Prayers of Thanksgiving and Remembrance in the Yellow
The Interfaith Worker Justice organization challenges us to remember workers in our prayers and especially as we celebrate holidays--many of which wouldn't be possible without the toil of their hands. The next three posts are prayers or litanies you can use as you reflect on and celebrate God's many blessings in your life.
A Prayer of Gratitude and Remembrance
God, we come together today to oer prayers of gratitude and remembrance.
We thank you for the gift of life, and remember those who are no longer with us.
We thank you for the company of family and friends, and remember those who cannot be with theirs.
We thank you for the wonderful meal before us, and remember those who toiled to make this celebration possible.
God, you have given us so much this year and the years before, and we pray that you bless us with the generosity to share what we have with those who have very little.
Amen
Monday, November 16, 2009
Poetry in the Yellow
Post Racial Hair and Hope in the Yellow
Dr. Maulana Karenga
Let’s not pretend Chris Rock’s recent film, “Good Hair”, revealed any well-concealed secrets about how Black people, especially Black women, conceive and do their hair. The name of the chemicals have changed from “conk” to “creamy crack” and the irons have been transformed into new technological toys. But the urge and aspiration to alter one’s ethnic image and to parallel, if not embody, the Eurocentric paradigm, is as old as enslavement and racism and as deeply rooted and enduring as their evil effect. Indeed, Chris Rock’s daughter’s distress about her misdefined hair tells us not only about many among us with a racially problematized conception of themselves, but also about a pathological and pathogenic societal context that cultivates and sustains this conception.
The movie tends to focus on how we do our hair, but how we do our hair is, in itself, one of the least of our problems. However, the reasons we do our hair the way we do can be and often is a problem of serious significance. Thus, to discuss simply what we do to our hair without a credible engagement with the reasons we do it turns out as another diversion in the sense of both distraction and entertainment, done at considerable cost to a dignity-affirming conception of ourselves.
The “good” and “bad” hair issue is a question of how we see ourselves as a whole and how society reinforces or undermines our sense of self and worthiness in the world. Without this educational and corrective thrust, such a film easily moves from documentary to “mockumentary”, again presenting racial pathology, real or imagined, as a perpetual source of society’s entertainment. Indeed, it becomes just another way to reveal and bemoan another source and sign of pathology among us without any intent or expectation of correction. Under the oppressive gaze, judgment and treatment of a racist society, Frantz Fanon tells us a person and people can go thru at least four stages of psychological disintegration of self: self-doubt, self-denial, self-condemnation and self-mutilation. It begins, then, with self-doubt—doubting the worth of ourselves, hacking ourselves into unworthy pieces and constantly condemning ourselves.
We begin early to suspect a racial deficiency and set about questioning the worth and appropriateness of our physical presence, let alone our mental capacities. We question our skin color, nose, lips, hair and the life-affirming loudness of our laughter. We are, something evil tells us, too Black, our hair too tightly curled or our nose too bold, or our lips too large with loveliness and our laughter too loud and celebratory of life. We must restrain and restrict our Black selves, not speak ebonics, do the second “d” in “didn’t” and not concede the deep-structure tendency to change “th” to “f”, saying “Roof” instead of “Ruth”. And we are to take a knife to our nose, chop off our cheeks and wig, weave and burn away the Blackness of our hair and overall self-presentation. In this context of post-racial fantasies of White hair and the hope for ethnic invisibility, irrationality and self-injury run rampant.
Clearly, there is something seriously sick about a society that would cultivate even in successful, wealthy and otherwise highly-educated people the desire to dismember, disfigure or in any way “racially” correct themselves. This is a spiritual and ethical problem, especially for those among us who believe that humans are made in the image of the Divine and who at the same time believe we were made inherently unequal in Divine physical and mental endowment.
The contradiction is easily understandable, if we realize we are dealing with one of the greatest problems of our times—the progressive Europeanization of human consciousness and culture. This means the systematic invasion and effective transformation of the cultural consciousness and practice of the various peoples of the world by Europeans. This pernicious process is essentially achieved thru educational transformation, media messages and models, and technological dominance and deformation.
This produces three interrelated results. First, there is the progressive loss and replacement of the historical memories of the altered peoples. Secondly, there is the progressive disappreciation of themselves and their culture as a result of a conscious and unconscious assessment of themselves using European standards. And finally, it results in the progressive adoption of a Eurocentric view not only of themselves, but also of each other and the world.
This, in turn, leads to damage, distortion and diminishing of their sense of their own humanity and the increasing degeneration of the cultural diversity and exchange which gives humanity its rich variousness and internal creative challenge. Examples of this are also reflected in Asians and Latinos altering their eyes and noses; yellowing their hair; lengthening their legs and other self-redesigning in the image of Europe. It also means preferring European culture to their own and diminishing interest in their own classics. And it means European things become normal and normative, something toward which compliance rather than questioning is the proper and rewarded response.
There is no people without problems or practices which could not be called pathological, arguably insane or irrational and unquestionably self-destructive, even among the self-designated elite, elect, chosen and exalted. Therefore, when I lecture on various issues which self-designated superiors tend to see themselves as exempt from and above, I point out practices particular to them which bear considerable resemblance to ones they ridicule in others. After all, there are some self-designated superiors who strive to tame stringy hair, enlarge and pad insufficient lips, breasts, and butt, and seek color correction for an otherwise vaunted whiteness. Although this is not done because of a sense of racial inferiority emerging from oppression or a collective sense of deficient being, it nevertheless comes from personal perceptions of inadequacy.
This, of course, is said not to humiliate, but to impose a needed racial and religious modesty, shatter illusions of exemption and superiority, and conduct our conversations on the common ground of shared human weaknesses as well as strengths. Likewise, having made this point, I ask members of the so-called problematic and self-doubting groups to retrieve and embrace a more expansive conception of themselves and approach even serious problems in the most dignity-affirming and life-enhancing ways.
In this way, attempts at wigging, weaving and burning away Blackness become archaic and ethically unacceptable. And there is no need for fantasies of post-racial hair and hope of ethnic erasure. Instead, we confidently believe in the beauty of our own bodies; act in ways that define and deepen our sense of dignity; and clear space so that we can speak our own special cultural truth and walk in the world in the wonder and security of our own selves.
Dr. Maulana Karenga, Professor of Africana Studies, California State University-Long Beach, Chair of The Organization Us, Creator of Kwanzaa, and author of Kawaida and Questions of Life and Struggle: African American, Pan-African and Global Issues, [www.MaulanaKarenga.org; www.Us-Organization.org and www.OfficialKwanzaaWebsite.org].
Wednesday, November 11, 2009
Perspectives in the Yellow
Five Things President Obama Can Do For Black Men
(this article from The Milwaukee Community Journal)
by Dr. Boyce Watkins
I was asked this week to appear on a CNN special about Barack Obama and his impact on African American men. When I was asked about my thoughts on Obama, I wasn’t sure what to say. I respect Barack Obama as a Black man, and it is my greatest hope that he is successful.
But at the end of the day, my feelings are mixed, because only time will tell if the true state of the African American male is going to improve as a result of our having a Black man in the White House.
On one hand, the symbolic impact of Barack Obama’s presence is clear: Black men and women around the world are inspired by his rise to power. He deserves tremendous respect for doing the impossible and giving us a Black president 100 years ahead of schedule.
There is another side to the debate, however, one that focuses on the two vitriolic demons that continue to plague the Black man in America:
The educational system and the prison system. If the president truly cares about Black men, he will do whatever is necessary to improve the systems, which impact men who look like him.
According to the National Society of Black School Educators, Black boys are five times more likely to be placed in special education than White kids.
What is inherently obvious is that our inner city schools have become feeder systems for prisons, the same way that the NCAA feeds athletes to the NFL. Our capitalist addiction to free prison labor has led to a reinstallation of slavery into the heart of America.
There are more Black men in prison in America than Joseph Stalin ever had during the height of the gulag era, and for a Black man to be in charge of such a holocaust of incarceration is disturbing. Obama did not cause the problem, but for this Harvard educated attorney and former community organizer to sit by in the midst of such a tragedy is morally wrong and should not be justified.
Here are some things that President Obama can do to favorably impact Black males during his time in the White House:
1) Find a way to fund inner city schools or at least supplement the programs so that children can be educated. Uneducated men don’t get jobs.
Men who don’t have jobs are likely to end up in prison. There should be no drug dealers who could have been pharmacists, and no bank robbers who could have been bankers. If we are not educating our children, we are failing them miserably.
2) Give United States Attorney General Eric Holder the resources to ensure that sentencing disparities are studied and that the public defender system is improved.
There are thousands of men who go to prison every year for crimes they did not commit, only because the over-worked public defender is all too quick to push for a plea bargain. This is worsened by the fact that harsh sentences are imposed on those who choose to fight their charges by utilizing their constitutionally-guaranteed day in court.
3) Stop prison rape at any cost. The spread of HIV can be directly linked to jails and prisons, and this is destroying Black families and killing Black women.
4) Make prisons a place of rehabilitation, not just punishment. Why we’ve decided that it makes sense to keep able-bodied individuals rotting away without giving them the incentive to educate themselves is beyond me.
That time in prison should be used in ways that will help these individuals emerge as productive members of society.
5) Create an avenue for reintegration into society. The idea that a person should be ostracized for life and unable to obtain job opportunities because of mistakes they’ve made in the past only gives them the incentive to make more mistakes.
A person who has been marginalized by our society becomes a threat to all of us and a missed opportunity to obtain productive outcomes.
On the recorded CNN segment, I gave the president a relatively weak “thumbs up” for the job he has done thus far.
His appointments of racially problematic economic advisors Ben Bernanke and Lawrence Summers implies that he may be out of touch with the economic realities of African American males, who experience unemployment rates as high as 50% in some urban areas.
But the truth is that I am hopeful that President Obama will earn his Nobel Prize by being a true leader and not just a president. The jury is still out on Barack Obama, and it is my greatest prayer that the verdict that returns is favorable.