Frantz Fanon, The Dangerous Assault on Public Education, Toni Morrison, Mother Country Radicals, and Paul Revere Williams

All Eyes are on Chicago

Who Should Fear What in Chicago?

There is a lot of talk about crime, law and order, public safety, and fear in the debate surrounding Chicago’s mayoral race.  Quite naturally, white people’s concerns and perceived vulnerabilities monopolize these conversations.  Fear is rarely acknowledged as a ubiquitous and constituent aspect of Black life.  

(Read the rest in the Healing section below.)

Culture

Architecture

An award-winning and ground-breaking Black architect, Paul Revere Williams died in 1980, but his elegant work, including homes he designed for iconic entertainment stars, including Frank Sinatra and Lucille Ball, as well as for Black veterans, endures.  Williams’ work can be seen in many Black Southern California communities; and he designed any number of public, municipal, and commercial buildings.  Prolific and fluent in his ability to design in many different architectural styles, Williams also designed campus buildings for both Fisk and Howard universities.  His granddaughter, Karen Hudson, a writer, photographer, and owner of one of his beautiful homes, wrote a 1993 book about her grandfather, Paul R. Williams, Architect, and she published a picture book in 2012, updated in 2021:  Paul R. Williams:  Classic Hollywood Style.  Also, Janna Ireland’s 2020 picture book, Regarding Paul R. Williams: A Photographer’s View, contains 280 photographs that make the scope and beauty of Williams’ work visually accessible.  Williams is the architect who famously taught himself to draw upside down to accommodate White clients who, ridiculously, might not have wanted to sit beside him.  (Ahh, the trauma of racism.)

Entertainment

Are you ready to experience some of Forever First Daughter Malia Obama’s television writing?

A commentary on Angela Bassett’s crestfallen face at the Oscars

Micheal B. Jordan competes with himself

IN CASE YOU MISSED IT:

Speaking of the Obamas, Forever Flotus, Michelle Obama, has launched another podcast as a companion resource to her latest book, The Light We Carry.  She has a couple of episodes out now.  Also, Michelle Obama looked like a teenager in this photo of her and Barack that circulated on social media on Valentine’s Day. 

Hip Hop at 50:  Never heard of Drew Dixon, who was one of the creatives behind Mary J. Bilge and Method Man’s love song, All I Need; have you?

Sports

Looking for college March Madness coverage?

And here is more

Books and Literature

A new book, Time’s Undoing, finds a young reporter from Detroit traveling South to delve into the tragic events that have long haunted and traumatized her family as she investigates the murder of her successful great-grandfather in racist 1920s Birmingham, Alabama.  This book of historical fiction was inspired by a true story, and written by Cheryl A. Head, a successful broadcast executive, television producer, and writer.

History

Here’s a podcast that invokes the memory of the iconic Black Panther, Chairman Fred Hampton. The podcast is about Northwestern University professor, Zyad Dohrn’s mother, retired law professor, Bernadine Dohrn, who replaced Angela Davis as the FBI’s most wanted woman in America.  She and her husband (Zyad’s father) Bill Ayers, were considered “leftist radicals” in the 1960s and 70s.  At one point, after she had gone underground, Dohrn embraced bombings to fight the White power structure, including the police who carry out their wishes.  Zyad’s  podcast, Mother Country Radicals, takes its name from what Fred Hampton called White “radicals” like Dohrn and Ayers.  Chairman Fred said Mother Country Radicals were, “White people in the mother country that are of the same type of things we are for.”  

Although ideologically aligned, in terms of wanting to eradicate white supremacy and its powerfully destructive forces in Black and Brown communities, Fred did not agree with their bombing tactics.  In fact, in a heated verbal exchange, the Chairman exhorted Dohrn to make her group, the Weather Underground, cease and desist with the bombings.  Indeed, the Panthers in Chicago were taking the heat for the bombings the Weather Underground were committing.  Zyad, a playwright as well as a professor, presents a fascinating account of his mom’s activism, and shares interesting interactions she and other leftists had with members of the Black Panthers and other revolutionary groups.

 Zyad, who is named after Black Panther, Zyad Shakur, is “brothers” with Chesa Boudin, the progressive prosecutor who was recalled in San Francisco last year.  Dohrn and Bill Ayers took Chesa in and raised him when his parents, also “leftist radicals,” were imprisoned.  You might remember Bill Ayers’ name because goofy Sarah Palin, when she was running for vice president on the ticket with John McCain, attempted to connect Ayers to then Senator Barack Obama who was running for president. Back then, wacky right wingers even tried to pretend that Bill Ayers wrote Barack‘s book, Dreams From My Father:  A Story of Race and Inheritance.  Finally, Angela Davis is one of several compelling people whose voices can be heard in the podcast.

Science

Great Apes and altered states

A psychological vaccine against misinformation?

Scholar’s Corner:  

An introduction to Frantz Fanon

Frantz Fanon (1925-1961) was a brilliant, influential intellectual, and a freedom-fighting psychiatrist born under French colonial rule on the Caribbean island of Martinique. (Today, the island is considered a “department” of France).  Fanon participated in the Algerian independence struggle in Africa, as Algerians fought to throw off French imperialism.  It was a brutal fight that saw hundreds of thousands die as the French tortured and massacred colonized Black people in its savage effort to suppress the independence movement.  Fanon set forth a cogent comprehensive framework for understanding how the colonizer sought to exploit and psychologically control the colonized as he violently extracted wealth and labor from the colonized nation as a major part of his desire to enforce his will of domination over the colonized.  A wide ranging thinker, he turned his mind on “fundamental issues,” including “language, affect, sexuality, gender, race and racism, religion, social formation, time and many others.”  

In the 1960s, top scholars and leaders, including Malcolm X, Kwame Ture (Stokely Carmichael) and the Black Panthers studied and adapted Fanon’s theories to apply to Black people’s situation in America (this is called “internal colonialism”). This proved to be an adept way of explaining the Black experience in the United States because the similarities between how the colonizer economically plunders and attempts to mutilate the psychological apparatus of the colonized, and how White supremacists in this country continually attempt to undermine and destroy the economic and psychological condition of Black people here—from slavery to Black Codes, Jim Crow, and the gaslighting taking place today—are stunning.  

The Kerner Commission report warned that the country was fracturing into two separate and unequal societies, one White and one Black.  Black Power theoreticians spoke in more urgent terms about the devastating ghetto conditions that Black people were relegated to by government, business, and group mob design.  They spoke of Black people existing as a nation within a nation, economically subdued and constrained, while being psychologically traumatized, by a White power structure that privileged White people in every single system operating in this country.  In other words, Blacks in America were already existing like colonized people.         ************************************************************************************      Among many other sagacious and fascinating insights, Fanon set forth the four part manner in which the settler colonizer subdues the colonized, economically and psychologically, as he attempts to destroy the colonized’s authentic self and culture.  In so doing, the colonizer is working to “create” the colonized man and woman who believes that the White man’s culture is superior.  To do this, the colonizer engages in intellectual warfare, telling stupendous lies about the colonized to undermine the colonized’s culture, and to make the colonized person feel intensely inferior and inadequate—as he is continually subjected to economic exploitation.  (The colonizer uses his propaganda to make the Black person believe, as they say in the culture, that “the White man’s ice is colder.”)  

The colonizer masterfully and consistently demonizes, slanders, libels, and defames the Black person, insults his intellect, and tries to make him (and every other culture) belief the Black person is inferior.  The colonizer works day and night to miseducate the colonized and to make the colonized believe that the colonizer’s language, knowledge systems, religion, practices, understanding, and customs are superior to everyone else’s.  The colonizer frequently depicts the colonized in animalistic terms (e.g. “apes” “monkeys”), and tries to portray the colonized as a sub-human being with “criminal tendencies” who is not to be trusted, and, in fact, must be aggressively policed.  The colonizer teaches that the colonized is intellectually and morally inferior, therefore, he must be surveilled and supervised—told what he can and cannot do. Then, the colonizer pretends the colonized man and woman are to be feared, and contained, to preserve and sustain “civilization,” because, supposedly, the colonized is uncivilized when compared to White people (the colonizer).  

With just a snippet of information, one can clearly see why Fanon’s sociopolitical and economic writings, as well as his analysis of the “psychology of oppression,” including the brutal tactics of policing, appealed to Black leaders in the United States and to oppressed peoples all over the world.  It is important to note, however,  that despite his insightful framing, serious misogyny appears in Fanon’s work and has been rightly called out by feminist scholars.  To be sure, there are topics one can  disagree with in Fanon’s writings, but his presentation of the colonizer’s relationship with the colonized (or subjugated) is spot on.

Fanon’s books (The Wretched of the Earth, Black Skin, White Masks, etc.), where he lays out his theories, are not easy, so we will study him step by step.  This is an article that gives a short introduction to Dr. Fanon.

In the Spotlight:

Women’s History Month

This past February 18, Toni Morrison would have been 92-years-old.  People familiar with Ms. Morrison’s oeuvre know that her ability to illustrate life with words was unparalleled.  To hear her read her own sublime literature on an audiobook is an awe-inspiring experience.  Here is a primer on her work that was written two years ago.  Never an easy read, Ms. Morrison, a Nobel and Pulitzer Prize winner who taught at Princeton for years, insisted that it was the reader’s responsibility to well…,read, to look up references and symbols and to enrich oneself.  For many of us, some of her work might seem difficult, but oooh, once the reader breaks through, the epiphanies in the work are so very edifying and enlightening.  Her ability to break down race, racism, and white supremacist ideology was also illuminating.  She was a perspicacious philosopher, and, in times like these, it is helpful to listen to one of the astute ways she spoke on the problem of whiteness, arguing that White people have a “very, very serious problem.”  President Barack Obama awarded her the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the highest civilian honor in the United States.

Education

Here are some suggested books to add to your children’s library

Sesame Street’s first Black female puppeteer

The Dangerous Assault on Public Education

Someone once asked Aristotle—who was considered a master teacher,  “What is the difference between the educated and the uneducated?”  And he replied, “It is the difference between the living and the dead.”  

Education is life-sustaining.  Throughout the history of our sojourn in the “wilderness of North America,” Black people have understood the divine nexus between knowledge and freedom.  That is why enslaved people undertook calculated risks to their very lives to become educated.  During slavery, of course, a Black person could have an eye gouged out, a hand cut off, or be murdered, simply for wanting what any intelligent person wants, the ability to read and write.  Such is the exquisite power of education; it affords one greater ability to be self-determining.

(Read the rest in the Healing section below.)

IN CASE YOU MISSED IT:

Esteemed educator and university leaders, Dr. Ruth Simmons resigned from the presidency of Prairie View A&M University, leaving earlier than planned after her retirement announcement last year.  She will continue to help with fund-raising and she will remain in her role as a professor.  She will also join Rice University in Houston as the President’s Distinguished Fellow.

Mental Wellness

Men and their emotions

Women, men, and the division of household labor

Your child and stress

What is bibliotherapy?

Racial Trauma

Humor 

That time dude told President Obama not to mess with his girlfriend. 

Do you have manners and know how to behave?

Trevor Noah and Southern racism

 Find Peace

Steps toward finding inner peace

Feed your mind timeless work like this:  Ego Tripping 

Healing

Who Should Fear What in Chicago?

There is a lot of talk about crime, law and order, public safety, and fear in the debate surrounding Chicago’s upcoming mayoral race.  Quite naturally, white people’s concerns and perceived vulnerabilities monopolize these conversations.  Fear is rarely acknowledged as a ubiquitous and constituent aspect of Black life. 

Our fear is rooted in the historical understanding that death, physical and psychological, can suddenly become reality for the most trivial of reasons.  Fear has been spawned by the myriad demonstrated ways white power structures mutilate and disfigure Black life and neighborhoods.  Yet, many Black people understand much of the “fear” white people say they experience to be a corrosive emotion stored in the collective white psyche, to be readily deployed when some abhorrent and inhumane policy or activity irreparably harms Black people and communities. 

Black people fear crime in the community—which is often the result of privation, not pathology, but we also, simultaneously, fear the people who are charged with “serving and protecting” White people and their property. We fear that if we call the police, they will arrive, hands caressing their guns, all trigger happy, and rely on “their training” to do something destructive, if not deadly.  Perhaps they will indiscriminately attack some innocent unarmed Black person, while claiming to “fear for their lives” even as that Black person has done absolutely nothing to warrant such a monstrous response.  

While driving, we fear that some minor incident will morph into a lethal encounter, or an unnecessary, expensive arrest, because some “frightened” cop appeared on the scene determined to make his or her authority over, and disrespect for, Black life vividly understood.  We fear the other longstanding twin negative trademarks of the city—corruption and racism—as well as the virulent socioeconomic and political violence casually waged in our communities with impunity. 

On Sunday evenings, the sure signs of anxiety that churn in our stomachs, are just a reminder that the workplaces we will enter on Monday will demand that we relinquish certain aspects of our being, and dumb ourselves down, just to “fit in” to the adverse work culture we must endure just to make a living.  We fear that no matter how mannerly, respectful, and pleasant we are, some white person, any white person, can invoke a malicious stereotype, coupled with a few buzzwords and coded language, and cause us to lose our jobs.  

We fear that no matter how much we know and how many degrees we have, we will, nevertheless, out of nowhere, find ourselves in conflict with some unhappy, but ambitious, white person, intent on slandering us to get what we have worked hard for on the job.  We fear that the loss of one paycheck, or God forbid a major life setback, will cause the fragile walls of our economic existence, born out of wealth inequality, to come tumbling down. So, we must regularly put up with inhumanity.  Indeed, life can become so uncertain, so easily, for Black people that many of us are looked upon with askance, in our own communities, when we courageously try to lean into our “purpose.”  This is because, often, we are counseled to default to any loosely defined “good” job, even with the full understanding that there is no certainty or stability in that “good” job.  The space for actuating dreams is all too often quite narrow.

We fear that when we move our families into homes we have fantasized about in neighborhoods we can finally afford, the people next door will respond negatively to our mere presence, disrupt our peace of mind, and leave us right back where we started—in a neighborhood that will decline, not because of us, but because of the gross disinvestment that will follow when white folks flee.  We also know that, historically, resistance to Black presence  in Chicago’s neighborhoods can turn violent, as angry whites seek to deter us from realizing the “American Dream.”

We fear that the schools where we enroll our super smart children will not accommodate their hopes, dreams, ambitions, and, yes, the once in a while puerile behaviors that all juveniles exhibit.  We fear that too many higher up city bureaucrats have already determined that the intellectual yearnings of our children do not need to be feed by a world class institution of learning. So, Black parents are reduced to fighting for a chance to get their students into a “good” school, because there is no unswerving desire to make all public schools “good.”

And then there is the ultimate fear.  The fear that despite all our personal sacrifice, involvement, and intercession, our children may trip on one of the many societal landmines they must navigate and hopscotch, for we know that the margin of error for them is not the same wide berth accorded to white boys and girls. 

So, it is odd, indeed, that, all this talk about “fear” rarely refers to the anxiety-provoking and depressing fears that many Black men, women, and children process and live with on a daily basis.  Even among ourselves, we are fearful of unpacking and processing the many injuries that have come from living in a society that has been so violently committed to extinguishing our hopes and dreams, suppressing our humanity, and counteracting our desires to be free from white incursion into our lives.  

Many in the Black community fear that unraveling these deep wounds, that are so intricately laced with an almost unbearable sorrow and discontent, could, quite literally, destroy them.  So they earnestly and zealously try to embrace “Black joy,” not realizing that dammed off unaddressed trauma will insidiously seep into their lives and kill them softly, anyway.  To survive, Black people raise their children to “be strong,” and to “roll with the punches” in the face of fear caused by unconscionable societal inequity.  But, all of the “strong” do not survive.

So, the question Black voters should ask mayoral contestants is:  Who will address our fears?

The Dangerous Assault on Public Education

Someone once asked Aristotle—who was considered a master teacher,  “What is the difference between the educated and the uneducated?”  And he replied, “It is the difference between the living and the dead.”  

Education is life-sustaining.  Throughout the history of our sojourn in the “wilderness of North America,” Black people have understood the divine nexus between education and freedom.  That is why enslaved people undertook calculated risks to their very lives to become educated.  During slavery, of course, a Black person could have an eye gouged out, a hand cut off, or be murdered, simply for wanting what any intelligent person wants, the ability to read and write.  Such is the exquisite power of education; it affords one greater ability to be self-determining.

So, it’s important to clearly understand what is at stake when people contend that books by and about Black people, as well as about our history, are not worthy of study.  Black people have been present all over the world, and involved in the most important events in the world.  The history of Black people is the history of the world; and we have been here from the beginning because civilization itself began in Africa.  So, what’s really being discussed in the dominant culture is who gets to participate in the production of knowledge and information; and who gets to access knowledge and truth—as opposed to the traditional diet of white supremacist propaganda.

In times like these, when profound threats to the sanctity, beauty, sacredness, and sanity of Black life abound, we need to clearly hear the voices of people who were able to develop sophisticated analyses about how wealth and power operate; and who understood the manner in which White supremacist ideology has gored, undermined, and assaulted all of us.  When powerful people in this society threaten to take away information that imbues us with the power and self-confidence that knowledge of self provides, in other words, life-sustaining information—it is time to remember the words of people like Henry Highland Garnet who said, “Let your motto be resistance.”

We are literally at war for the minds, education, and success of our people, as we fight the powers that want to keep our children trapped in schools that do not teach and mired in ignorance. That is what is at stake, and that is why we must resist and fight.

SHE (Surviving, Healing, and Evolving)

“Unlocking Healing, Fearlessness, and Freedom”

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