Carla is your ATLien Intellectual.

Boy, Oh, Boy by Maureen Dowd

The normally nonchalant Barack Obama looked nonplussed, as Nancy Pelosi glowered behind.

Surrounded by middle-aged white guys — a sepia snapshot of the days when such pols ran Washington like their own men’s club — Joe Wilson yelled “You lie!” at a president who didn’t.

But, fair or not, what I heard was an unspoken word in the air: You lie, boy!

The outburst was unexpected from a milquetoast Republican backbencher from South Carolina who had attracted little media attention. Now it has made him an overnight right-wing hero, inspiring “You lie!” bumper stickers and T-shirts.

The congressman, we learned, belonged to the Sons of Confederate Veterans, led a 2000 campaign to keep the Confederate flag waving above South Carolina’s state Capitol and denounced as a “smear” the true claim of a black woman that she was the daughter of Strom Thurmond, the ’48 segregationist candidate for president. Wilson clearly did not like being lectured and even rebuked by the brainy black president presiding over the majestic chamber.

I’ve been loath to admit that the shrieking lunacy of the summer — the frantic efforts to paint our first black president as the Other, a foreigner, socialist, fascist, Marxist, racist, Commie, Nazi; a cad who would snuff old people; a snake who would indoctrinate kids — had much to do with race.

I tended to agree with some Obama advisers that Democratic presidents typically have provoked a frothing response from paranoids — from Father Coughlin against F.D.R. to Joe McCarthy against Truman to the John Birchers against J.F.K. and the vast right-wing conspiracy against Bill Clinton.

But Wilson’s shocking disrespect for the office of the president — no Democrat ever shouted “liar” at W. when he was hawking a fake case for war in Iraq — convinced me: Some people just can’t believe a black man is president and will never accept it.

“A lot of these outbursts have to do with delegitimizing him as a president,” said Congressman Jim Clyburn, a senior member of the South Carolina delegation. Clyburn, the man who called out Bill Clinton on his racially tinged attacks on Obama in the primary, pushed Pelosi to pursue a formal resolution chastising Wilson.

“In South Carolina politics, I learned that the olive branch works very seldom,” he said. “You have to come at these things from a position of strength. My father used to say, ‘Son, always remember that silence gives consent.’ ”

Barry Obama of the post-’60s Hawaiian ’hood did not live through the major racial struggles in American history. Maybe he had a problem relating to his white basketball coach or catching a cab in New York, but he never got beaten up for being black.

Now he’s at the center of a period of racial turbulence sparked by his ascension. Even if he and the coterie of white male advisers around him don’t choose to openly acknowledge it, this president is the ultimate civil rights figure — a black man whose legitimacy is constantly challenged by a loco fringe.

For two centuries, the South has feared a takeover by blacks or the feds. In Obama, they have both.

The state that fired the first shot of the Civil War has now given us this: Senator Jim DeMint exhorted conservatives to “break” the president by upending his health care plan. Rusty DePass, a G.O.P. activist, said that a gorilla that escaped from a zoo was “just one of Michelle’s ancestors.” Lovelorn Mark Sanford tried to refuse the president’s stimulus money. And now Joe Wilson.

“A good many people in South Carolina really reject the notion that we’re part of the union,” said Don Fowler, the former Democratic Party chief who teaches politics at the University of South Carolina. He observed that when slavery was destroyed by outside forces and segregation was undone by civil rights leaders and Congress, it bred xenophobia.

“We have a lot of people who really think that the world’s against us,” Fowler said, “so when things don’t happen the way we like them to, we blame outsiders.” He said a state legislator not long ago tried to pass a bill to nullify any federal legislation with which South Carolinians didn’t agree. Shades of John C. Calhoun!

It may be President Obama’s very air of elegance and erudition that raises hackles in some. “My father used to say to me, ‘Boy, don’t get above your raising,’ ” Fowler said. “Some people are prejudiced anyway, and then they look at his education and mannerisms and get more angry at him.”

Clyburn had a warning for Obama advisers who want to forgive Wilson, ignore the ignorant outbursts and move on: “They’re going to have to develop ways in this White House to deal with things and not let them fester out there. Otherwise, they’ll see numbers moving in the wrong direction.”

repost from NYTIMES.COM

bryant terry and steel cut oatmeal

Brown Steel (Cut Oats) In The Hour Of Quiescence

Yield: 4 to 6 servings

Soundtrack: “Black Steel in the Hour of Chaos” by Public Enemy from It Takes a Nation of Millions to Hold Us Back and “Black Steel” by Tricky from Maxinquaye

1 teaspoon ground cinnamon

1 cup plus 1 tablespoon water

1 cup steel cut oats

3 cups rice milk or homemade almond milk

Fine sea salt

1/2 teaspoon coconut oil

1/2 cup currants

1 cup pecan halves, toasted and half of them chopped

2 tablespoons pure maple syrup

In a small bowl, combine the cinnamon with 1 tablespoon of water and mix until well combined. In a medium saucepan, combine the cinnamon-water slurry, the remaining water, the oats, the almond milk, and 1/4 teaspoon salt. Swish around, cover, and refrigerate at least 6 hours, or overnight.

Over medium heat bring the oats to a boil. Add the coconut oil and cook, stirring constantly, until they start to thicken, about 2 to 3 minutes. Immediately reduce the heat to low, and simmer, uncovered, for 20 minutes, stirring often to prevent from sticking to the bottom of the pan.

Add the currants and simmer for an additional 5 minutes. Remove from heat, stir in the pecans and maple syrup, let stand for 5 minutes, and serve.

FACEDOWN IN THE MAINSTREAM: CULTURAL PIMPIN’ & HIP HOP

By Edward M. Garnes, Jr.

“Think it is when it ain’t all peaches and cream/That’s why some are found floating face down in the mainstream.” –OutKast (Excerpt from the song, “Mainstream” off the album, ATLiens)

Over a decade ago, Hip-Hop theologians OutKast used their southern-fried flow to send an impassioned plea on their seminal track, “Mainstream:” Don’t let a little bling blind your perspective. The prophetic duo – with assistance from play cousins Goodie Mob – exposed the trappings of fame, government corruption, and AIDS via a cautionary rap verse. They knew then what many are discovering now – Hip-Hop’s mainstream coronation would be a welcomed blessing and unforeseen curse.

Hip-Hop, like many other Black cultural productions post-Middle Passage, has been compromised by cultural pimps (record labels, media conglomerates, corporations, etc.) seeking to censor its revolutionary elements while green-lighting destructive buffoonery and giving credence to long-standing stereotypes of Black life. Consequently, artists of substance like dead prez, Jean Grae, and Little Brother rarely make radio playlists.

Little girls dream of being video vixens instead of spinnin’ soft Black songs like Nikki Giovanni. And while outlets discuss whether Hip-Hop is art or social poison, the larger question we must ask is how white supremacy and market forces have altered the perception of a grass roots movement.

Hip-Hop has sadly become a convenient scapegoat for historical inequalities that deeply alter our quality of life. Art ain’t created in a vacuum, and Hip-Hop was originally birthed as an underground anecdote to the psychological trauma of poverty, racism and a range of human sufferings that flow through them. Trouble in Hip-Hop paradise began when artists abandoned the tenets that once defined Black existence (solidarity, social activism, etc.) and began to mimic the values of a corporate system founded on greed, capitalism and individuality.

This abandonment of social conscious is aided by market forces and label heads who care more about profits than prophets and offer million-dollar deals to studio gangstas and anyone willing to drop nonsense over hot beats. Today’s Hip-Hop artists are a small cog in a well-oiled corporate machine that has always used Black sweat, toil and cultural production (remember slavery) to serve its seedy economic interests. So, panel discussions like the one that took place on The Oprah Show  are great for TV ratings, but miss the mark when accountability is solely placed on vulnerable people without power – power that dictates our economy and distributes wealth. In other words, if we convict the rapper, we must convict parents who dropped the ball, elders who turned their backs on the impoverished, corporate pimps who pray for our demise, so called “Black” spokesmen padding their pockets at our expense, and a system of commerce that never gave a damn about Black folks in the first place.

The plight of Black folks is bound to escape the limited confines of many talk radio and lunch room venting sessions. And Hip-Hop, like Black life in general, is wrought with pain and struggle. Art reflects the people and if we want Hip-Hop to change, we have to love ourselves enough to change. Record deals don’t change people, they only give folks a greater platform to be the fools or social activists they already were.

This ESSAY originally appears on From Afros to Shelltoes and it also appears on AllHipHop.com.

Fahamu Pecou: blakPresidential

The blakPresidential Review:

Recently I haven’t been able to keep Fahamu Pecou’s series blakPresidential out of my mind. His paintings remind me of pieces of a complex cultural/political puzzle that I should put together.

It’s similar to how I view black America. Within a painting, he’s made a statement that I have been trying to figure out for some time. Many people chose to view black America as separate entity and I’ll say it: those people are wrong. Instead of viewing American culture as just black and white, maybe we should think about the entire construct of what it means to be American. When we take a look at what is deemed mainstream, we are still littered with negative imagery of African Americans. Some black girls appear to be whitewashed versions of real black girls and black boys look like they are in constant subliminal training to be a part of the federal judicial system.

Pecou on the other hand, has taken a look at our historical November 2008 election and created a body of work surrounding the image of an African American male at the center of the political universe. Something and someone that has never reached this far into our socio-political culture.

One thing that makes me a fan of his work is the fact that he has put his face as focal point of his paintings. The repetition of his portrait is a repetition of his FAHAMU PECOU IS THE SH*T! character. I then notice the scattered pieces of text and how they are little notes into his psyche. Lastly, I take a gander at the brushstrokes of the paintings represent how the identity development of the African-American is continually a work in progress. By using magazine covers as his theatrical stage I realize how little mainstream media puts an African-American male on the cover that isn’t involved in sports and entertainment solely. The influences behind his work stretch from Willem deKooning’s drippy and bold brushstrokes to Jean Michel Basquiat’s graffiti scribble notes to contemporary pop culture’s love affair with image and design, as seen in BlakMaybe. Stark, minimal design is Pecou’s platform for keeping black faces as the center element with his text surrounding his figures as accents to his conceptual idea. Like I always say, you can’t get past the mental constrictions of racism is you ain’t used to seeing a nigga’s face daily. Just his face. Now that we have a new hurdle to jump over, an African-American male making powerful decisions for the world’s most liberal country. How is our mainstream public going to handle that?

“Thinking through the process of media propaganda brought me to my current work with magazine covers. Playing on the public’s psychological reaction to magazines, and preconceived ideas about who should be in them, I began projecting my image and ideas on the covers of magazines.” – Fahamu Pecou, statement from his website.

Once upon a time in America before celebrity was a disease that affected us all, the image of black was something of struggling minorities fighting to find where they fit in a country that has used and abused them for centuries. Many were interested in figuring out how to better their lives by finding decent work to provide for the family. However, due to the liberal politics and color issues of the mid-1960s, another African-American stereotype was created and has flourished even stronger. If we were to become celebrated pimps and hustlers since the 1970s then eventually an equal had to arise. Enter blakPresidential. He has blakPresidential friends that look like him and his blakPresidential wife is featured by his side. He has comments on the Recession and is interested in fine art community. Elements that are similar to a normal American, right? The smaller details begin to uncover the celebration of a blakPresident such “Right On” in TheCode and the nationality questions that constantly bombard our current president in UnAmerican Idol. And of course blakPresidential and his negro cronies are great examples of people visually un-American because he is not the typical white, Christian all-American war-fighting male in his 40s.

No. BlakPresidential is a representation of America. He built America according to DuBois and where would America be without her Negro peoples?

Looking deeper into his works, one needs to be aware of the constant images that are slamblasted at black people daily. Yes, they are ones of sports and entertainment. Who’s doing a great job of play basketball or football? Who is selling the most rap records as ringtones? Look at the exotic, light-skinned girl over there! Keep away from the angry dark-skinned black girl! Blah blah blah. Back and forth we hear of this group of black people but never the ones that don’t lead those lives or are interested in living those lives. In Pecou’s work, he is trying his best to create a new image of the African-American, specifically male. His understanding of roots are of his that were created here in America. He is, after all, an American born artist. He may be used to positive stories of struggle and success. His idea of a black male could be one that is strong, intelligent and self-sufficient. To finally have the greatest success story in black history to happen has sparked a new definition of American to him. It creates a new aesthetic universe for Pecou to conquer and take for his own. I wish for him to stay on the same track of offering a powerful discussion on something that I believe we should strongly consider: redefining the image of the African-American. By political association, we as black people seem to be no longer on the books as a second class citizen. But if we constantly have imagery of us presented in a format that when observed are actions of second class citizens (obsessed with only money-making, highest consumers of materialistic goods such as shoes and jewelry and constant law offenders) then how can we move forward? How can we continue to grow without forgetting our roots? We look to our artists for solutions to our proverbial questions.

Fahamu Pecou gave you his in his painting, ArtOfficial, by having his portrait reflect that of American athletes Tommie Smith and John Carlos in the 1968 Olympics. They were good enough to represent America in the track and field competitions. They were great enough to win the gold and silver medal but when they wanted to represent how they had come to understand growing up in America, they were ordered to be suspended from the US team and were threatened with being banned from the Olympic village in Mexico City. At one moment, the whole world had one more example of the racial tension in America. That moment was exemplary in describing being black in America. If Pecou is at all facing any amount of protest or dislike for his work, then I fear only that his audience has missed his message of tolerance and celebration of living during a monumental time of US history.

For that understand, black history is US history. It’s just a shame that it has taken us this long to realize that the two are compliments of another and that they will always be connected to one another.

Fahamu Pecou, American Gothik, 2009

Fahamu Pecou, BlakMaybe, 2009

Fahamu Pecou, TheCode, 2009

Fahamu Pecou, ArtOfficialIntelligence, 2009

NCCU highest public ranked HBCU in US

North Carolina Central University was ranked tenth in the nation and first in the state according to U.S. News and World Report’s survey of historically black colleges and universities on measures of the quality of undergraduate education. It is the top-rated public HBCU in the country.

“We are taking a moment to appreciate this good news but only a moment,” said NCCU’s Chancellor Charlie Nelms. “Our objective is to become even stronger.”

The ranking was based on retention and graduation rates, class size, faculty preparedness and compensation, and the opinions of administrators among the 81 HBCUs surveyed.

Behind NCCU, North Carolina’s Elizabeth City State University placed eleventh, followed by Winston-Salem State University (17), Johnson C. Smith University (19), Bennett College (21), North Carolina A&T State University (25), and Fayetteville State University (29). Livingstone College, Shaw University, and Saint Augustine’s College were unranked.

According to U.S. News and World Report, the top ten HBCUs in the nation are:
Spellman College, Atlanta Ga. (1); Howard University, Washington D.C. (2); Morehouse College, Atlanta Ga. (3); Fisk University, Nashville, Tenn. (4); Xavier University of Louisiana, New Orleans, La. (5); Hampton University, Hampton Va. (6); Tuskegee University, Tuskegee Ala. (7); Claflin University, Orangeburg S.C. (8); Dillard University, New Orleans, La. (8); and North Carolina Central University, Durham N.C. (10).

www.nccu.edu

Short list of new contemporary artists

The gap: Blackness and Contemporary African-American Artists

I think I got it. The clues are in the art works. Flipping through page after page of Google images on various contemporary artists I’ve realized that this new school of black artists are approaching the issues of blackness by showing the integration of what it means to be an African in America 400 years later. Our new school of African American artists have taken it upon themselves to continue commenting on the nature of the Black experience. As I look at their works I find many of them have scored through history looking for the ways to re-assign power back to black folks. Some of them have painted their interpretation of African history, others have appropriated and manipulated entire art and history genres. As I begin to collect more information on black contemporary artists I find that I will be able to decode the mystery of black culture and aid my people into seeing the bigger picture of how powerful we are as a group; Africans, Black folks and African Diaspora cats.

List of artists [ORGANIZED CHRONOLOGICALLY]:

Martin Puryear

Barkley Hendricks

Jean Michel Basquiat

Gary Simmons

Lorna Simpson

Carrie Mae Weems

Laylah Ali

Rodney McMillan

Jeff Sonhouse

Kara Walker

Glenn Ligon

Kehinde Wiley

Rashid Johnson

Wangechi Mutu

William Pope.L

Shinique Smith

Henry Taylor

Mickalene Thomas

Hank Willis Thomas

Dawn Okoro

Michi

Amber Carroll

Fahamu Pecou

Blake Hicks

THE LIST IS GROWING.