Thursday, February 13, 2014

Molefe Asante--the Afro-centric (Euro-centric) Nigger!

Reinstate Anthony Monteiro – Shun and Denounce the Betrayer, Molefi Asante

Tue, 02/11/2014 - 22:20 — Glen Ford

A Black Agenda Radio commentary by executive editor Glen Ford

Only months after community and student activists saved Temple University’s African American Studies department and Dr. Molefi Asante’s job, chairman Asante has collaborated in the firing of his colleague, Dr. Anthony Monteiro. “Dr. Asante may have earned the gratitude of his masters at Temple University, but his tenure as a person of respect in Black America, is over.” He is beneath contempt.

Reinstate Anthony Monteiro and Muhammad Ahmed – Shun and Denounce the Betrayer, Molefi Asante

Tue, 02/11/2014 - 22:20 — Glen Ford

A Black Agenda Radio commentary by executive editor Glen Ford

Only months after community and student activists saved Temple University’s African American Studies department and Dr. Molefi Asante’s job, chairman Asante has collaborated in the firing of his colleague, Dr. Anthony Monteiro. “Dr. Asante may have earned the gratitude of his masters at Temple University, but his tenure as a person of respect in Black America, is over.” He is beneath contempt.

Reinstate Anthony Monteiro – Shun and Denounce the Betrayer, Molefi Asante

A Black Agenda Radio commentary by executive editor Glen Ford

“Asante is a back-stabber who should never again be allowed into a position of Black trust.”

Temple University needs to be taught a lesson, and so does Dr. Molefi Asante, the professor who chairs the university’s African American Studies department. Both Temple University and Dr. Asante must be made accountable for their crimes of arrogance and disrespect to Black Philadelphia and to African Americans at large.

Temple University, an elite white-run institution, and Molefi Assante, a man who claims to be a disciple of Afrocentricity, have conspired to fire the brilliant public intellectual and activist Dr. Anthony Monteiro, who has been an associate professor in African American Studies for the past ten years. We know why Temple University might resent Dr. Monteiro, who has worked tirelessly to bring the surrounding Black community onto the campus, and to make the university more accountable to its Black neighbors. It is to be expected that an elite white institution might be uncomfortable with a scholar like Dr. Monteiro, who organized on-campus events in defense of Mumia Abu Jamal and other political prisoners. And, it should come as no surprise that Temple’s white overseers might not appreciate Dr. Monteiro’s deep knowledge of, and commitment to, the Black liberation struggle – that he lives what he teaches. In short, there is no mystery to Temple University’s refusal to renew Dr. Monteiro’s contract. It’s called racism in higher education, 101. And we know how to deal with it.

However, Dr. Molefi Asante’s betrayal is much more hurtful. He has put his considerable prestige at the service of racists, while stabbing Dr. Monteiro in the back and spitting in the face of every Black Philadelphian who has had the misfortune to trust Asante. Last year, student and community protests forced the university to back off a plan to take away the African American Studies department’s autonomy, and to name a white woman with no expertise in the subject as chairperson. At least twice, Dr. Asante was threatened with firing. Instead, the community and student forces that Dr. Monteiro had helped summon, won the day. With Dr. Monteiro’s support, Dr. Asante was named department chairman.

“Asante shuffled, like a minstrel in a dashiki.”

Just a few months later, the white female dean of liberal arts refused to renew Anthony Monteiro’s contract, effectively firing him. What was Dr. Asante’s response? Asante confirmed that the dean had consulted him about the firing, and that his position was that Dr. Monteiro “has a year to year contract and it’s up to the dean.” Then Asante shuffled, like a minstrel in a dashiki. He said he couldn’t “worry about… if somebody signs a contract and then gets upset when someone says your year is up.”

Dr. Asante may have earned the gratitude of his masters at Temple University, but his tenure as a person of respect in Black America, is over. Asante is a back-stabber who should never again be allowed into a position of Black trust, a grasping opportunist who apparently believes that “Afrocentricity” means everything revolves around him. The university’s dean would not have fired Dr. Monteiro if she hadn’t been confident that Uncle Asante had her back – that he would provide Black cover for the racist termination of his colleague. Therefore, two things must happen in this fight. One, Dr. Monteiro must be reinstated. Two, Molefi Asante must be shunned and expelled from the company of honest people for his treachery.

For Black Agenda Radio, I’m Glen Ford. On the web, go to BlackAgendaReport.com.

BAR executive editor Glen Ford can be contacted at Glen.Ford@BlackAgendaReport.com.

If you are an educator, we ask that you sign the petition calling for Temple University to reinstate Dr. Anthony Monteiro. Send your name to johanna.fernandez@baruch.cuny.edu and put “Signature Monteiro” in the subject heading.

For more information, go to http://www.emajonline.com/call-for-monteiro/

Comments

ACADEMIC FREEDOM

rhone - 02/12/2014 - 19:14

I am disappointed with Dr. Asante not lobbying stronger for Dr. Monteiro's and Dr. Muhammad Ahmad's contracts to be renewed. Their Communist and Islamic socialist perspectives are ABSOLUTELY NECESSARY for the survival of the Department of African American Studies. They are vital to the Department's academic freedom. To let their contracts expire without challenging Dean Soufas is irresponsible leadership. I emailed Dr. Asante asking if he would support the American Studies Association's boycott against Israeli universities for denying academic freedom to Palestinian universities, and he said he would take the matter up with faculty "at the next occasion." The President's office, tragically, have come out against the boycott and in support of Zionist colonization of Palestine. There is obviously no sense of urgency on Asante's part to challenge this, and to protect Palestinians' academic freedom. This is absolutely related to his inability to protect the Department's academic freedom. Dr. King said that an injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere. Dr. Asante is missing the importance of seeing the Palestinian struggle against American imperialism as our own struggle against imperialism in America. The scholarship of Drs. Ahmad and Monteiro teach us this, and should not be dismissed so suddenly. Their scholarship and philosophies are pillars that hold the Department up. -RF.

Comment

We must express extreme concern for the treatment Temple University is giving two of our greatest revolutionary scholars, Dr. Tony Montiero and Dr. Muhammad Ahmed (Max Stanford), both have been denied tenured although they are the most popular North American African professors on campus.

Molefe Asante, recently appointed chair of African American Studies, must get it right. Is he sailing down the Nile (as in denial) or is he on the Hapi River? See my Parable of the Poor Righteous Teacher below.

--Marvin X, MA, Academy of da Corner, 14th and Broadway, downtown Oakland CA

Parable of the Poor Righteous Teacher

for Haki Madhubuti (Don L. Lee), Dr. Anthony Montiero

and Dr. Muhammad Ahmed

Dr. Anthony Montiero

Sooner or later, they always come for the teacher. After all, the more popular, the more dangerous. The more serious and sincere, the more a threat to the bourgeoisie whose philosophy is do nothing, say nothing, know nothing. Thus, the serious teacher has no seat at the table. Yes, he is tolerated for a time, maybe a long time, but the plot was hatched the first day he arrived to teach, when the contract was signed, his doom was sealed.

No matter what chairs he established, no matter how many institutions he created in the name of God. The bourgeoisie care nothing for God, only as a cover for their filthy behavior in the dark, their winking and blinking at the water hole.

The teacher must know absolutely if he is on his job he won't have a job, for no matter how many years he gives of his soul, his mental genius, he is not wanted. No matter how many students he is able to raise from the box, his services are not wanted.

The bourgeoisie do not want Jack out of the box, this must be understood. They prefer Jack and Jackie stay confined and proscribed in the box of ignorance. They are mere pawns in the game of chance the bourgeoisie play until they are removed from power, after they steal all they can, when the coffers are empty, the institution bankrupt and they are under indictment.

Now they will never put down their butcher knives, never turn into Buddha heads. This is why one must practice eternal vigilance with them. They are planning and plotting the demise of the poor righteous teachers at every turn.

So the teacher must teach his students about power, but when he does, his exit papers are signed. He may not know this. He may believe he has friends on the board of trustees, but he is only fooling himself. He is a starry eyed idealist, a dreamer, who shall be awakened from his dream one day for sure. And on that day he shall find his office door locked. His classroom door secured by a guard. His students transferred to other colleagues he thought were with him. But they will only say to him, "Sorry, brother."
--Marvin X
4/5/10

Prof. Umoja discusses why he wrote We Will Shoot Back

Wednesday, February 12, 2014

Islam and the Black Arts Movement: Marvin X's Love and War poems, 1995

Declaring Muslim American literature as a field of study is valuable because recontextualizing it will add another layer of attention to his incredibly rich body of work.He deserves to be WAY better known than he is among Muslim Americans and generally, in the world of writing and the world at large. By we who are younger Muslim American poets, in particular, Marvin should be honored as our elder, one who is still kickin, still true to the word!--Dr. Mohja Kahf

Cover art by Emory Douglas, Black Panther Party Minister of Culture

Fly to Allah, 1969, is the beginning of Muslim American literature, according to Dr. Mohja Kahf.

Marvin X, 1972. His Black Educational Theatre performed Resurrection of the Dead, a myth-ritual dance drama, 1972. His actors were students from his drama class at University of California, Berkeley.

Syrian poet-professor-activist, Dr. Mohja Kahf

Dr. Mohja Kahf and Marvin X. She invited Marvin X to read at the University of Arkansas, Fayetteville, where she teaches English and Islamic literature.

Love and War

poems

by Marvin X

review by Mohja Kahf

Have spent the last few days (when not mourning with friends and family the passing of my family friend and mentor in Muslim feminism and Islamic work, Sharifa AlKhateeb, (may she dwell in Rahma), immersed in the work of Marvin X and amazed at his brilliance. This poet has been prolific since his first book of poems, Fly to Allah, (1969), right up to his most recent Love and War Poems (1995) and Land of My Daughters, 2005, not to mention his plays, which were produced (without royalties) in Black community theatres from the 1960s to the present, and essay collections such as In the Crazy House Called America, 2002, and Wish I Could Tell You The Truth, 2005.

Marvin X was a prime shaper of the Black Arts Movement (1964-1970s) which is, among other things, the birthplace of modern Muslim American literature, and it begins with him. Well, Malik Shabazz and him. But while the Autobiography of Malcolm X is a touchstone of Muslim American culture, Marvin X and other Muslims in BAM were the emergence of a cultural expression of Black Power and Muslim thought inspired by Malcolm, who was, of course, ignited by the teachings and writings of the Honorable Elijah Muhammad. And that, taken all together, is what I see as the starting point of Muslim American literature. Then there are others, immigrant Muslims and white American Muslims and so forth, that follow. There are also antecedents, such as the letters of Africans enslaved in America. Maybe there is writing by Muslims in the Spanish and Portuguese era or earlier, but that requires archival research of a sort I am not going to be able to do. My interest is contemporary literature, and by literature I am more interested in poetry and fiction than memoir and non-fiction, although that is a flexible thing. I argue that it is time to call Muslim American literature a field, even though many of these writings can be and have been classified in other ways--studied under African American literature or to take the writings of immigrant Muslims, studied under South Asian ethnic literature or Arab American literature.

With respect to Marvin X, I wonder why I am just now hearing about him-I read Malcolm when I was 12, I read Amiri Baraka and Sonia Sanchez and others from the BAM in college and graduate school-why is attention not given to his work in the same places I encountered these other authors?

Love and War Poems is wrenching and powerful, combining a powerful critique of America ("America downsizes like a cripple whore/won't retire/too greedy to sleep/too fat to rest") but also a critique of deadbeat dads and drug addicts (not sparing himself) and men who hate. "For the Men" is so Quranic poem it gave me chills with verses such as:

for the men who honor wives and the men who abuse them

for the men who win and the men who sin

for the men who love God and the men who hate

for the men who are brothers and the men who are beasts....

"O Men, listen to the wise," the poet pleads: there is no escape for the men of this world or the men of the next.

He is sexist as all get out, in the way that is common for men of his generation and his radicalism, but he is refreshingly aware of that and working on it. It's just that the work isn't done and if that offends you to see a man in process and still using the 'b' word, look out. Speaking of the easily offended, he warns in his introduction that "life is often profane and obscene, such as the present condition of African American people." If you want pure and holy, he says, read the Quran and the Bible, because Marvin is talking about "the low down dirty truth." For all that, the poetry of Marvin X is like prayer, beauty-full of reverence and honor for Truth. "It is. it is. it is."

A poem to his daughter Muhammida is a sweet mix of parental love and pride and fatherly freak-out at her sexuality and independence, ending humbly with: peace Mu it's on you yo world sister-girl.

Other people don't get off so easy, including a certain "black joint chief of staff ass nigguh (kill 200,000 Muslims in Iraq)" in the sharply aimed poem "Free Me from My Freedom." (Mmm hmm, the 'n' word is all over the place in Marvin too.) Nature poem, wedding poem, depression poem, wake-up call poems, it's all here. Haiti, Rwanda, the Million Man March, Betsy Ross's maid, OJ, Rabin, Mumia Abu-Jamal, and other topics make it into this prophetically voiced collection of dissent poetry, so Islamic and so African American in its language and its themes, a book that will stand in its beauty long after the people mentioned in it pass. READ MARVIN X for RAMADAN!

Mohja Kahf

Associate Professor

Dept. of English & Middle East & Islamic Studies

University of Arkansas-Fayetteville

Did you vote Nigguh? Did ya do time to pay faya crime?

Holder Urges States to Lift Bans on Felons’ Voting

By MATT APUZZOFEB. 11, 2014

Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr., testifying before the Senate Judiciary Committee last month. Mr. Holder has made clear he sees criminal justice and civil rights as inescapably joined. Mark Wilson/Getty Images

WASHINGTON — Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. called Tuesday for the repeal of laws that prohibit millions of felons from voting, underscoring the Obama administration’s determination to elevate issues of criminal justice and race in the president’s second term and create a lasting civil rights legacy.

In a speech at Georgetown University, Mr. Holder described today’s prohibitions — which in some cases bar those convicted from voting for life — as a vestige of the racist policies of the South after the Civil War, when states used the criminal justice system to keep blacks from fully participating in society.

“Those swept up in this system too often had their rights rescinded, their dignity diminished, and the full measure of their citizenship revoked for the rest of their lives,” Mr. Holder said. “They could not vote.”

Mr. Holder has no authority to enact the changes he called for, given that states establish the rules under which people can vote. And state Republican leaders made clear that Mr. Holder’s remarks, made to a receptive audience at a civil rights conference, would not move them.

“Eric Holder’s speech from Washington, D.C., has no effect on Florida’s Constitution, which prescribes that individuals who commit felonies forfeit their right to vote,” said Frank Collins, a spokesman for Gov. Rick Scott, a Republican.

The speech by Mr. Holder reflects his role as the president’s leading voice on civil rights issues. Mr. Obama has spoken only sporadically about race during his presidency, approaching the subject gingerly.

But Mr. Holder has made racial inequities a consistent theme, and in recent months he has made it clear he sees criminal justice and civil rights as inescapably joined.

He has sued Texas and North Carolina to overturn voter-identification laws that studies show are more likely to keep minorities and the poor from voting. He is pushing Congress to eliminate mandatory minimum sentences for nonviolent drug offenses. And he has encouraged low-level drug criminals sentenced during the crack epidemic to apply for clemency.

“On all the issues that he’s framed, he’s put these two themes together and he sees them very much as intertwined,” said Marc Mauer, executive director of the Sentencing Project, a research group that favors more liberal sentencing policies. “The criminal justice system is the civil rights issue of the 21st century. He hasn’t used those words, but that’s what I hear when I listen to him.”

Mr. Mauer said Mr. Holder was the first attorney general to advocate repealing voting bans. The Justice Department said it knew of no other attorney general who did so.

Like mandatory minimum sentences for crack cocaine offenses, laws banning felons from the voting booth disproportionately affect minorities. African-Americans represent more than a third of the estimated 5.8 million people who are prohibited from voting.

Nearly every state prohibits inmates from voting while in prison. Laws vary widely, however, on whether felons can vote once they have been released from prison. Some states allow voting while on parole, others while on probation.

Some states require waiting periods or have complicated processes for felons to reregister to vote. In Mississippi, passing a $100 bad check carries a lifetime ban from voting.

In four states — Florida, Iowa, Kentucky and Virginia — all felons are barred from the polls for life unless they receive clemency from the governor.

“This isn’t just about fairness for those who are released from prison,” Mr. Holder said. “It’s about who we are as a nation. It’s about confronting, with clear eyes and in frank terms, disparities and divisions that are unworthy of the greatest justice system the world has ever known.”

Watch Now: The Olympics meets politics

Mr. Holder’s statements carry little political risk. Congress could pass a law guaranteeing felons the right to vote, but similar proposals have failed before and the Obama administration has not advocated similar legislation, despite Mr. Holder’s comments.

Studies show that felons who have been denied the right to vote were far more likely to have voted for Democrats than for Republicans. In 2002, scholars at the University of Minnesota and Northwestern University concluded that the 2000 presidential election “would almost certainly have been reversed” had felons been allowed to vote.

In Florida, the state that tipped that election, 10 percent of the population is ineligible to vote because of the ban on felons at the polls, Mr. Holder said.

In 2011, Governor Scott required felons to wait five years after completing their sentence before they can apply to vote again.

“For those who are truly remorseful for how they have wrecked families and want to earn back their right to vote, Florida’s Constitution also provides a process to have their rights restored,” said Mr. Collins, the governor’s spokesman.

In Iowa, felons can apply to the governor to restore their voting rights if they can prove they have paid their fines and court costs.

“Iowa has a good and fair policy on restoration of rights for convicted felons,” said Jimmy Centers, a spokesman for Gov. Terry E. Branstad, a Republican. “We don’t have any plans to change the process.”

Kentucky, however, is considering changing its Constitution to allow some felons the right to vote. The proposal passed the Democratic-led House last month, and Republicans, who control the Senate, have indicated a willingness to consider it.

Gov. Steven L. Beshear of Kentucky, a Democrat, says felons — except for violent offenders and sex criminals — should get to vote again once their sentences are complete. He supports the proposal being considered in the Senate, his spokeswoman said Tuesday.

In general, state laws have become more lenient toward felon voting over the past two decades as crime decreased and voters cared less about tough-on-crime policies. More recently, liberal Democrats have found allies among civil libertarians as the Tea Party movement gained momentum.

Senator Rand Paul, a Kentucky Republican and a possible presidential candidate, has endorsed his state’s effort to give felons the right to vote. He has also joined Mr. Holder in calling for reducing the prison population and an end to mandatory minimum sentences for low-level drug crimes.

“His vocal support for restoring voting rights for former inmates shows that this issue need not break down along partisan lines,” Mr. Holder said.

of Mr. Paul.