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The Majic of JuJu, an appreciation of the Black Arts Movement by Kalamu Ya Salaam

An Excerpt—A Dialogue between Kalamu ya Salaam (Deep River) and Margo Natalie Crawford (Afro-Blue)
                                  
Afro-Blue:  James Baldwin in his short story “Sonny’s Blues” (1957) depicts the blues as “deep water.” When I hear your name, Deep River, it makes me think about the deep rivers of the black aesthetic experience.
         Langston Hughes says “I’ve Known Rivers” and Baldwin says:  “He wanted Sonny to leave the shoreline and strike out for the deep water. He was Sonny’s witness that deep water and drowning were not the same thing — he had been there, and he knew. And he wanted Sonny to know. He was waiting for Sonny to do the things on the keys which would let Creole know that Sonny was in the water.”
         But let me explain my name.  I call myself “Afro-Blue” as a way of escaping other prisms like “Afro-pessimism” and, also, “Afro-centrism.” When I read The Magic of Juju, I felt the “deep water” of the Black Arts Movement. In the midst of some of the current art of drowning, I sometimes feel nostalgic for this movement that predates me. I think the children of the Black Power movement feel the presence of its absence. Do you feel nostalgic about the Black Arts Movement? Why did you write The Magic of Juju?
Deep River: Why not? Everybody has an autobiography—I mean that literally. Everybody has a story to tell: how I came to be who I am. I happened to have been born during interesting times and, under the influence of Langston Hughes, I decided early on to pursue writing. That was nearly fifty years ago. So that is one reason: self reflection, thinking about how I became who I am, why and what were the ramifications of the choices I made.
Another reason is—and this is in no particular order—I did not see any books on our work, on the Black Arts Movement. Tons of Harlem Renaissance work, bunches of books on the Black Panthers. But where were the books on the Black Arts Movement, a movement that was more far reaching that the Harlem Renaissance, which by the way I think is both mis-named and misunderstood (I’ll come back to that in a minute). Moreover, I’m sure the absence of books on the Black Arts Movement is not an accident but rather part of a systemic effort at erasing our history.
Writing The Magic of Juju is itself an act of defiance. I know—check that, I should say “I believe” because I don’t have hard evidence in hand—I believe that the academy has actively discouraged detailed investigations of the Black Arts Movement primarily because of the politics. Although most critics will not say so outright, the reality is that the Black Arts Movement is characterized as racist because, to use a shorthand, we were perceived as “hating whites.”
Now, who is in charge of the academy? For sure it’s not Blacks, nor is it—Gates and a handful of others notwithstanding—Negroes are not in charge either, not in the overall sense. Sure, a few individuals with considerable influence, and some might even argue with more than a little power, exist but considering the literally thousands of higher-ed institutions, the overwhelming majority of gate keepers are not only racially white, they have a white consciousness, which in order to remain white necessarily means excluding blacks and other people of color.
Look, to put it bluntly, you can not remain “white” and be intimate with “non-whites,” which is why race mixing, i.e. miscegenation, has a pejorative connotation. It seems to me, if one is truly democratic, then one is open to the world. We who are called African American have been open. True, our openness has not been always by choice but we have learned to live with a spectrum of color rather than some dark essential. Look, Elijah Muhammad was obviously of mixed racial heritage—if you catch my meaning.
Black consciousness is not a reflection of biological essentialism. (I know this seems a bit off the path from explaining why I wrote The Magic of Juju, but this is an essential aspect of the real answer.) For me, Black consciousness is a political concept, not a biological concept. I define Blackness as color, culture and consciousness. Moreover, color is the least important element and consciousness the most important element.
Color is raw biology. For African Americans that rawness means, to use that loaded term, “miscegenation.” Indeed, for us in the diaspora, and particularly for those of us in the good old USofA, there is no purity in blackness. We are the original melting pot. We are America at its biological best in that, whether by choice or by circumstance, we embrace all elements.
Culture is collective behavior, views and values. Certainly an individual can manifest a culture but the culture itself is developed at a collective level.
Consciousness is identity both personal and social. This is the crux of blackness precisely because biology is not a choice; you don’t choose your parents, your ancestors. Culture is collective and thus never simply the result of individual action. We are born into cultures and as we humans come to consciousness we have the opportunity to shape the cultures into which we were born or to assimilate into a different culture. Consciousness is dynamic, ever changing even as it has a specific beginning on an individual level. Of course we can go Jungian and talk about the collective consciousness of a specific group of people in a particular time and space. In any case, whether consciously, subconsciously, or unconsciously, we humans make choices.
With whom and with what do we identify? That is the ultimate determinant of our behavior at the level of choice. Of course we don’t control all elements of our lives—but concerning the myriad of matters over which we do have a choice, consciousness becomes the key to determining our behavior and to a large extent determining our destiny.
The big, two-part question is with whom do we identify and how do we actualize our identity? That was a key element of the Black Arts Movement. We identified with working class Black people, which effectively often, but not necessarily, put us at odds with many academics who are petit-bourgeoisie to the max.
I’m defining class in terms of relationship to the means of production and accumulation of wealth. Those who sell their labor to earn a living are working class. Those who manage the labor of others or who offer professional services are the petit-bourgeoisie. The bourgeoisie are those who earn their living and accumulate wealth based on earning profits, collecting rent and/or interest accrued from their property, both intellectual and material. That’s a simplistic thumbnail, but it’s important to understand this distinction because most of the people who write books are petit-bourgeoisie in their orientation whether they are actually petit-bourgeoisie in their consciousness. For example, just because you are a licensed professional, a Ph.D. or an M.D. or J.D., your degree doesn’t necessarily tell us with whom you identify and in whose interest you work.
In general, however, the petit-bourgeoisie identifies with the bourgeoisie rather than the working class. One can immediately see the conflict that the Black Arts Movement had with academics. There is a similar dynamic happening with hip hop, except because of the commercial success of hip hop within the capitalist society, there is an acceptance of hip hop in academic circles far greater than the academic acceptance of the Black Arts Movement. In America, money will change you and change how you are viewed and are accepted by mainstream society.
Part of the Magic of Juju, the concept, is the reality that juju transforms. Blackness is not static, unchanging. Baraka called it the changing same. The key though is that we change both ourselves and our environment. Any study of Black culture necessarily has to be a study of change within a give society, a given space and time, whether we are looking locally, regionally, nationally or internationally. We set the parameters of our study—and even those parameters will change over time—then we proceed to study what happens/happened and why. We might even venture a guess about what will happen next.
I’m taking the time to sketch out some of these definitions because other wise we cannot have a real dialogue if we don’t share a common understanding. It’s not about agreement but rather about epistemology, how it is we know whatever it is we think we know. The first step in knowing is having a common language. In Black culture the common tongue is first music and then orature and kinetics, and only at a tertiary level, literacy. That is a big difference between Black culture and what is commonly called White culture. White culture in the USA validates literacy, business, and technology.
You want to peep where a Black person’s consciousness is? Check out the music they listen to—not the books they read or the movies they watch, check out the music they listen to—and if they don’t listen to music, there better be some major extenuating circumstances, otherwise you’re not dealing with a conscious Black person. Notice, I said “music” as a general category rather than a specific genre of music.
I’ve written extensively about music. During my days as a music critic I won two ASCAP Deems Taylor awards for excellence in writing about music. The reason I mention that is to make clear that I choose not to identify with the mainstream even though I have the ability to compete and excel in the mainstream. Black Arts Movement artists chose not to identify with the mainstream even though we were capable of doing so. Blackness consciousness is just that: a conscious choice rather than a biological default.
Moreover, our blackness includes whiteness, redness, brownness, yellowness and any other human “ness” there is. All of that is part of who we are. The expansiveness of Blackness is a major threat to those who want to be White. Our very being threatens White existence. We are tar babies. Touch us and get stuck.

—Kalamu ya Salaam

Prince / Miles Davis Full Concert 12-31-87 (Miles From The Park)

Life is Living Festival, Bobby Hutton/Deferemry Park, Oakland, pics by Standingrock 10/8/16

MILES DAVIS: TIME AFTER TIME

Miles Davis - Kind of Blue - 1959 (Complete Album)

So what
don't say shit to me
Dear White People
I love you madly
taught your children
no matter no hate teacher
not sick like that
sick with love
sick need love so bad
so what
where is love
show her to me
let me kiss her
embrass her
tongue in mouth
african love
so what
--Marvin X
10/9/16

Marvin X poem: I remember Bobby Hutton

Most honorable revolutionary youth
ona mission of his generation
Fanon said youth must fulfill or dishonor generation of elders
Little Bobby
revolution
youth defiance
aggrogance
pride hubris
no card playing
bid whist
checkers
dominoes
revolution
no girls no alcohol
serious to the bone
alone but youth would follow him
revolution
Lil' Bobby
revolution in his eyes
heart
soul
wanna be part of this
revolution
let me fight OGs
gimme that gun Big Man
let me get down Big Man
go attack the pigs
killed MLK
fuck da  pigs
off da pigs
revolution
Lil' Bobby Hutton
16 years old
bold
wanna be free
capitalism
oppression
joined Huey and Bobby
trinity
holy
revolutionary
Lil' Bobby
My sister D
worked at North Oakland Center with Bobby Seale
when Lil' Bobby came through
mother wanted him in school
Lil' Bobby wanted revolution
fuck school
Black Panther Party School was his school for real
Secretary of BPP
confronted me at Black House
message from Huey
close down youth club in basement of Black House
I reject order from Supreme Commander
fuck Huey I say
Saw death for me in Lil' Bobby's eyes
I rejected order from his leader, Huey P. Newton
"We deal with you, later, dude," Lil' Bobby said.
All that night
Panthers clicked weapons at door of my room
I didn't care
I'm crazy too.
I don't take orders  from no nigguhs nigguh!
 madness of military discipline
There must be order in revolution
give orders
take orders
simple.
Long live Lil' Bobby Hutton
Long live revolutionary youth!
--Marvin X
10/8/16

Marvin X was blessed to experience the revolutionary personality known as Little Bobby Hutton. He is eternally grateful to have known Little Bobby, a youth with revolution in his eyes, body and soul; who gave his life for the revolution. Mao said, "Some deaths are lighter than a feather, some deaths higher than Mount Tai!" Bobby Hutton's death was higher than Mount Tai!

BOBBY HUTTON -
The Day My Beloved Brother Comrade was Murdered

---

On April 6, 1968, two days after Martin Luther King had been murdered, I got dressed and prepared to go to Central Headquarters of the Black Panther Party (BPP) along with Panthers Jimmy Charley and Terry Claridy. I read a chapter of the "Red Book - Quotations by Chairman Mao" before I left. We arrived at Central Headquarters at 45th and Grove St. to get assigned to various locations to sell the Party's newspaper "The Black Panther," collect donations and pass out leaflets in the community about the barbecue for the "Free Huey Newton" defense committee to be held at then called - Defremery Park on April 7th.

Later that evening, around 4pm, other Panthers and I, in groups of two and three, were circulating in the community and going to high schools spreading the word that despite the murder of Dr. King, they should stay cool, lay low and refrain from all counterproductive and random violence, because riots would cause nothing but mass genocide. If trouble erupted, it would be open season on blacks and the BPP would be the first attacked.

Around 6pm, some Party members and I met at a Panther's apartment off San Pablo Ave. We decided that we would ride in three vehicles transporting food and supplies for the barbecue picnic and at the same time we would observe and patrol the police activities in the Black community.

Around 7:30pm, after patrolling and picking up supplies for the rally, two policemen turned their cruiser south observing and following us onto 28th street and Union street where we had stopped for a minute for Eldridge Cleaver who had to urinate. Eldridge and L'il Bobby Hutton were riding in a 1961 Ford with several other Panthers. I was riding shotgun, in the center of the back seat, armed with a banana clip 30 caliber carbine. Panther Charles Bursey was to the left of me and Donnell Lankford was to the right. The officers pulled their cruiser to a stop in the middle of the street side by side with these vehicles. (The 1961 Ford with Florida license plates had been observed all week because it was known by the Oakland Police as a Panther vehicle.) Gunfire erupted at once, two wild shots were followed instantly by a deluge of lead that riddled the squad cars and shots were fired by police into the rear window of the 1954 Ford in which I was riding.

More policemen flocked to the shooting scene. Charles Bursey was able to get out of the car and escape the scene. Donnell Lankford, who was to the right of me, attempted to open the door so we could take cover, but the door was jammed. The door finally came open, but as soon as we tried to exit the vehicle, there were about a dozen police with their guns and shotguns drawn and thrust into our faces. They were making racist, insulting remarks while we were lying face down, handcuffed behind our backs, helpless on the pavement. They made statements such as, "you niggers just lost Martin Luther King and if you make one move we will not hesitate to blow your heads off."

We were then put into the police paddy wagon. Donnell, John L. Scott and I were the first to be arrested. The over- reactionary pigs sprayed mace into our eyes after we were already handcuffed and helpless. As the police wagon drove away from the scene, I could barely see out the back, but it appeared to me that there were black people running behind the wagon saying, "Free these brothers, you racist cops." I told my comrades in the police wagon that this was a deliberate ambush, attempting to commit genocide against the BPP.

The booking officer asked me if I wanted to make a statement after being booked. I said no, I was taking the 5th amendment until I consulted with my attorney, Charles Garry. They put Lankford, Scott and me into different holding cells. I could hear racist statements like, "They should kill Eldridge Cleaver. He's like a wild animal running amok." Note: the ambush of other Party members was still going on at this time. Later that night, Harold Rodgers, Charles Garry's assistant attorney, visited me in my cell and told me that one Party member did not survive. That was the Party's first member and treasurer, Bobby James Hutton.

Long Live the Spirit of L'il Bobby Hutton.

Terry M. Cotton, former political prisoner and BPP member

Miles Davis - Kind of Blue - 1959 (Complete Album)

Dr. Nzinga on Lil' Bobby Hutton, model for revolutionary youth

The Defermery's are alive,

says the beige council woman.

They may be living but

Bobby Hutton is dead

and we have renamed the park

to keep him alive

surely you understand

life and death eternally binary

we are binary people

live or dead

black or white

in or out of favor

out of office

out of the city

on the other side

out of time

out of life

outside of life

Bobby Hutton is dead

Denzil Dowell is dead

I hope they claimed a token

for Denzil  somewhere in

Richmond I have cried on Center

St. after the sage burned out

& the egun gun danced

we claimed the corner

baptized it in the name

of Godz who favor drums

to let Huey know we remember

to remember

lay claim to him in all his parts

elevating the genius accepting

that flawed humans are the

handz of the  Godz

we remember to remember

a bowl of honey by the

cactus in the yard

we pray for the flower

& warriors who sacrificed

like graceful ocean divers

suiciding burning like fire

knowing they were never

meant to be slaves

their death marks the place

we crossed over

spirits walking waiting

to be claimed

we have renamed

Defermery and given it to

Bobby Hutton so that his spirit

has a place to grow

-- the beige

lady says we can have the trees

they are already ours we have claimed

them --

she can not give us what we

have taken

-- we don't want wampum

popcorn and beads we have taken

what we need--

a place to remember

crossing over

slaves who refuse

burning like fire

burn baby burn

we honor the fire

we honor the flames

Long live Bobby Hutton

Ayodele Nzinga, MFA, PhD | October 8, 2016 at 9:30 AM | Tags: ayodele wordslanger nzinga | Categories: belonging, Black Arts, North American African Perspective, right handed poems, warrior art | URL: http://wp.me/p14Q31-2jH

Laney College Theatre presents Color Struck by Donald Lacy; Marvin X opens with a reading from his play Salaam, Huey, Salaam

Alicia Mayo captures Marvin X reading Salaam, Huey, Salaam, at Laney College Theatre. He opeded for Donald Lacy's Colorstruck, 10/1/16

 Tureada Miken, Judy Juanita, former editor of the Black  Panther Newspaper, Marvin X. Judy reminded Marvin and told the audience, she remembers Marvin X at Merritt College as skinny as a toothpick. Eldridge Cleaver described him as a skinny Black Buddha.

 Marvin X in Laney College Theatre dressing room, getting read to go on stage.

 Master actor/commedian, playwright, author of Colorstruck, Sir. Donald Lacy

 Nurjehan, co-wrote essay in The Movement, Black Men Matter

 Nurjehan, assistant to Marvin X, businesswoman

Oakland Community Leaders Tell Uber: Work with Us to stop Displacement

 

 

Oakland Community Leaders Tell Uber: Work with Us to Stop Displacement

August 11, 2016

Oakland Community Leaders Tell Uber: Work with Us to Stop Displacement
Open Letter to Be Published in Oakland Post this Afternoon

Contact: Bruce Mirken, Greenlining Institute Media Relations Director, 415-846-7758 (cell)
OAKLAND, CALIFORNIA – Today 20 Oakland community leaders are sending an open letter to Uber CEO Travis Kalanick calling on him to work with them to ensure that Uber’s move to Oakland doesn’t worsen displacement and lack of opportunity for poor and working class residents. The open letter will be both delivered to Mr. Kalanick and published in this week’s Oakland Post, available in print this afternoon and online Friday morning.
The group is especially concerned by the rapid displacement of nonprofits and low income individuals that accelerated after Uber announced its plan to move to Oakland. Noting that two of Uber’s senior advisors — David Plouffe and Eric Holder — are former Obama administration officials who played key roles in advocating and defending diversity and equality for all, the Oakland leaders believe that UBER has the ability to work with the community to develop a path of shared prosperity and minimize displacement of individuals and community organizations.
The full text of the letter and signatories follows:

Open Letter to Uber CEO Travis Kalanick

Dear Mr. Kalanick,
When President Obama delivered his State of the Union address on Jan. 12, he said, “Today, technology doesn’t just replace jobs on the assembly line, but any job where work can be automated. As a result, workers have less leverage for a raise. Companies have less loyalty to their communities. And more and more wealth and income is concentrated at the very top.”
The president’s words must come to no surprise to you since his former senior adviser David Plouffe and his former Attorney General Eric Holder are now senior advisers to you.
Both of these gentlemen have distinguished themselves as advocates and defenders of diversity and equal opportunity for all.
In the San Francisco Bay Area, a technology-driven economy has squeezed workers and disrupted affordable living conditions, even while the overall economy is flourishing.
Here in Oakland this economic disruption has made it harder for a family to pull itself out of poverty, harder for people to remain in the middle class and tougher for workers to live close to their jobs.
The benefits of this technological surge have been very uneven and have led to the biggest wealth gap we have ever seen.  Your unwillingness to release your diversity data worries us about your commitment to Oakland’s diverse residents, especially since your advisers have a history seeking diversity through openness and transparency.
The evidence is clear that a tech-driven economy is accompanied by some serious challenges, including the displacement of the working poor.  That said, we reject the idea that we are powerless to shape the impacts of technology on diverse cities, especially given Oakland’s history of fighting back against policies and actions to disrupt and displace our neighborhoods.
We believe that there’s a great deal we can do to improve prospects for Oakland’s future and its current residents.  We propose a three-pronged effort.
First, we recommend a set of basic agreements in the areas of jobs, education, infrastructure, entrepreneurship, housing, community engagement and research. There’s a strong consensus on several areas that can bring prosperity to Oakland’s current and future residents and there is no need to completely “reinvent the wheel.”
Second, we call on Uber to work alongside us to develop new organizational models and approaches that not only enhance productivity and generate wealth for Uber, but also create broad-based opportunity for working-class residents.
The goal should be inclusive prosperity in Oakland, and not just prosperity for Uber’s full-time workers. Your statement on your website saying that “we strengthen local economies” gives us hope.
Third, we request a meeting with you and a small group of us to reach an understanding. And, given that the digital revolution can get you this letter at half the speed of light, we expect to hear from you within three working days.
As you may agree, we believe that technology is delivering an unprecedented set of tools for bolstering growth and productivity that is currently unharnessed.
Together we can create a city of shared prosperity if we learn about each other, find ways to meaningfully collaborate, and together address the challenges brought by a growing tech workforce in Oakland.
If one simple idea can lead to a $65 billion valuation and perhaps the biggest IPO the world has ever seen, then it’s possible for us to co-disrupt and co-develop a road of shared prosperity in Oakland.
Signed,
Paul Cobb, Post News Group
Orson Aguilar, The Greenlining Institute
Chris Iglesias, The Unity Council
Anne Price, Insight Center
Sondra Alexander, OCCUR
Rev. Michael McBride, Pico National Network
Rev. Dr. J. Alfred Smith, Jr., Allen Temple Baptist Church
Junious Williams
John Gamboa, California Community Builders
Joe Brooks, PolicyLink
Gay Plair Cobb, Oakland Private Industry Council
Rev. Dr. Gerald Agee, Pastor/Friendship Christian Center
Jae Maldonado, Street Level Health Project
Jane Garcia, La Clinica De La Raza
Zachary Norris, Ella Baker Center
Guillermo Mayer, Public Advocates
Joshua Simon, East Bay Asian Local Development Corporation
Marvin X, Black Arts Movement Business District
(organizations listed for identification purposes only)

###

THE GREENLINING INSTITUTE
A Multi-Ethnic Public Policy, Research and Advocacy Institute
www.greenlining.org
@Greenlining

When Advocates Get Bought Off

Sep
12
2016

By Bruce Mirken

Read more from Bruce

Categorized in Blog, General

Organizations that represent communities facing discrimination or other mistreatment face a constant struggle: How do we raise enough money to have a meaningful voice without letting our agenda be hijacked by those who can write big checks?
We and other organizations (at least those with a conscience) struggle with that question all the time, and I’d never claim the choices are easy. What follows is the story of one group – one I personally wish I could support – that appears to have gotten it spectacularly wrong in the context of a current political campaign.
Here at Greenlining, we’ve long been concerned about the intersection of money and politics. As an organization that works on behalf of communities of color and low income folks who generally tend to be less able to “pay to play,” we often find ourselves opposing moneyed interests. For example, we strongly support consumer protection for telecommunications customers and guaranteed access to affordable broadband. AT&T, which tends not to like regulations that cost it money, just gave $70,000 to Congress’s deregulator-in-chief, Paul Ryan. No doubt it’s sheer coincidence that telecom deregulation is a top Ryan priority.
I could give a hundred more examples. But AT&T is a business; we expect it to support policies that enhance its profits. We don’t expect purported community advocates to advance corporate interests that might harm their constituents.
As a member of California’s LGBT community, I need Equality California, the major state-level LGBT advocacy group, to speak for me. Instead, Equality California’s political action committee has taken hundreds of thousands of dollars from the California Apartment Association, the California Association of Realtors and other business and corporate interests, and appears to be using that money in a way that has very little to do with LGBT community interests and a lot to do with the interests of landlords and developers.
The amount of money being raised and spent by the Equality California PAC this election cycle is more than double what the group has spent in any recent election. And the majority of it – including a $340,000 ad buy recently reported in the San Francisco Chronicle – is going to attack San Francisco Supervisor Jane Kim, a candidate for the state Senate in the district representing San Francisco and the northern end of San Mateo County.
I need to pause here for a couple important disclaimers: We know Jane Kim, who was a Fellow in our Leadership Academy many years ago. But Greenlining is nonpartisan, so we’re not endorsing her or anyone else in this race, and nothing I’m saying is meant to imply support for or opposition to anyone. But there’s a principle at work here that’s bigger than any individual election contest.
San Francisco and the greater Bay Area are in the throes of a massive housing affordability crisis, a crisis that directly impacts LGBT residents. Surveys have found that LGBT homeless make up 20 percent of San Francisco’s overall homeless population and half of the city’s homeless youth. Kim has pushed aggressively for stricter affordable housing requirements. Cleve Jones, founder of the AIDS Quilt and protégé of San Francisco’s first openly gay elected official, Harvey Milk, wrote recently, “At this point in our history –  for LGBT San Franciscans –  the most important issue is housing.”
Reasonable people can agree or disagree with Kim’s policy proposals on housing, but it’s beyond question that developer, landlord and real estate interests have a financial self-interest in opposing them. To take hundreds of thousands of dollars from these groups and immediately put a similarly huge amount of money into a campaign that appears to enhance those financial interests creates the appearance – at the very least – of having been bought off.
Equality California’s executive director has justified the ad campaign based on the fact that Kim’s opponent is gay, but again, the organization has never put this kind of money behind any LGBT candidate for any office, anywhere. It sure looks like the group’s stated reason doesn’t tell the whole story.
I can’t read anyone’s minds here, so I can’t say positively what’s going on. But I can say that those of us who seek to represent communities facing inequality or discrimination need to avoid even the appearance that we’re bought and paid for by commercial interests.

Marvin X performs opening monologue in Color Struck, Laney College Theatre, Friday, Sat., Sept. 30, Oct 1

Colorstruck 2016 – 2017 Conversations N’ Color Tour

Poet/playwright Marvin X will perform the opening monologue for Donald Lacy's Color Struck at Oakland's Laney College Theatre, Fri and Sat., 8pm. 

Colorstruck returns to Laney College Theater by popular demand! After a highly acclaimed performance at the 26th Annual NAACP State Convention in Manhattan Beach, and a rousing standing ovation at The Fairfield Theatre, COLORSTRUCK is coming back to rock Oakland!

Join us for an unforgettable night of entertainment and dialogue.

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Dates for performances are as follows:
OAKLAND PERFORMANCES BACK BY POPULAR DEMAND
Friday  September 30, 2016 8PM
Laney College in Oakland, California
Click here to purchase tickets for Laney College on September 30, 2016!
Saturday  October 1, 2016  8PM
Laney College in Oakland, California
Click here to purchase tickets for Laney College on October 1, 2016!

Official National Museum of African American History & Culture Construct...

See the National Museum of African American History and Culture Constructed in Under Two Minutes

The official National Museum of African American History & Culture Construction time-lapse by EarthCam

Arionne Nettles

The National Museum of African American History and Culture may have taken over four years to build, but you can watch its construction in less than two minutes.
Tech company EarthCam captured the museum’s construction progress in a time-lapse movie from May 2012 to September 2016. The National Museum of African American History and Culture is the Smithsonian Institute’s 19th museum and the HD imagery from the EarthCam construction camera highlights the beauty of the Freelon Adjaye Bond/SmithGroup vision.

Courtesy of EarthCam
National Museum of African American History an

Black America's Wealth Illusion

I write this piece following the ground work laid by W.E.B. Dubois’s Veil of Double Consciousness. The veil he described was a visualization of the racial duality blacks take on as part of their American identity. I now undertake the daunting task of clarifying the new veil of economics that has covered the struggles of a generation. The decadent veil looks at black Americans through a lens of group theory and seeks to explain an illusion that has taken form over a 30-year span of financial deregulation and new found access to unsecured credit. This veil is trimmed with million-dollar sports contracts, Roc Nation tour deals and designer labels made for heads of state. As black celebrity invited us into their homes through shows like MTV cribs, we forgot the condition of overall African American financial affairs. Despite a large section of the 14 million black households drowning in poverty and debt the stories of a few are told as if they represent those of millions, not thousands. It is this new veil of economics that has allowed for a broad swath of America to become not just desensitized to black poverty, but also hypnotized by black celebrity. How could we not? Our channels from ESPN to VH1 are filled with presentations of black Americans being paid a king’s ransom to entertain. As black celebrity has been shown to millions of people, millions of times, the story of real lives has also been lost, and with it the engine that thrust forward the demand for social justice by the masses. The heartbeat of social action is to recognize your mistreatment, and demand better. With each presentation of Kobe Bryant’s 25 million dollar a year contract, or Oprah’s status as the sole African American billionaire a veil of false calm is created within the overall American economic psyche about the immense black wealth disparity. Young black men from ghettos across America that used to dream to make great changes in racial inequity now just dream to be a millionaire and be like mike and dunk a ball or dance on a stage. The decadent veil not only warps the black community’s vision outward to a larger economic world, but it also distorts outside community’s view of Black America’s actual financial reality.

Federal Reserve numbers show the median net worth (Assets less Debts) for white households in the top 1 percent is about $8.3 Million dollars. While median net worth for all white households is $112,000 — this is the exact midpoint of America’s 90 million white families, where half or 45 million families have more and the other half possesses less. That makes for a staggering 74 times less wealth for an average white household when compared to the asset holdings of the top 1 percent of white homes. This is among the highest levels of income stratification between classes in the developed world. Yet, the wealth difference between the American black household in the top 1 percent and the average black household is several times worse. As reported by MSNBC the median net worth of the few black households in the top 1 percent was $1.2 million dollars, while according to the Census median net worth for all black households was about $6,000 in total.

A black family in the 1 percent is worth a staggering 200 times that of an average black family. If black America were a country we would be among the most wealth stratified in the world.

It is because of this concentration of wealth that any view of averages is destroyed for black America, the disparity between rich and poor is too high. When a few families have a massive percentage of wealth it pulls the average up so astronomically that it makes the mean present a false narrative. The key in this kind of stratification is to look closely at the median and understand its real world impact.

Looking more closely at the numbers according to MSNBC the Grio Black America is a mere 1.4 percent of the Top 1 percent of households. That means only 16,400 black households of the total 14 million black families are in the top 1 percent. Yet based on the regularity with which media flaunts young black men signing million dollar sports and music contracts, and the frequency with which they display fabulous videos with African Americans in expensive cars and houses you would think a larger percentage of us were rich.

The sad truth is that added together all black households are worth a mere $1.4 trillion of the $80 trillion of total U.S. household net worth. A group that is 13 percent of the U.S. population and built one of the the wealthiest countries the world has known as slave labor controls less than 1.75 percent of that country’s household wealth. With a massive amount of the small slither in the hands of a small black elite. According to the Pew Research Study, 35 percent of Black households have Negative or No Net Worth. Another 15 percent have less than $6,000 in total household worth, that’s nearly 7 million of the total 14 million black households that have little or no security.

The veil created by mass media, sports organizations and our own psyche in Black America is one of safety through presentation. It is an inversion of the same model implemented by Dr. Martin Luther King so many years ago, except where Dr. King instilled global empathy by showing images of Bull Conner’s disciples water hosing black teenagers. Instead NBA commissioner Adam Silver hands black teenagers million-dollar deals and ESPN then projects that as a normal image of black life across the globe creating apathy for Black America’s truly dire financial straits. This all being shown despite there being a prison rate amongst young African American males that is higher than we have seen in any modern society in history. While media projects Beyonce signing a Pepsi $50 million ad campaign throughout the World Wide Web, the fact that single Black mothers across America have a median net worth of a mere $5 dollars falls in the shadow of the singularity of her financial success.

Even though their numbers are infinitesimal in comparison to the whole of Black America the 21st century million dollar black celebrity’s image has grown to a point of normalcy in homes across the world. So much so that the lives of those struggling financially in urban centers across America have become overcast by the projection of these larger than life individual brands. The issue is our veiled mask glazed with decadent trim has in many ways hidden the true consequence of our historical scars. Without that veil removed, we project progress that has not yet occurred, and in doing so perpetuate an illusion that may in the end destroy us all.

“To be a poor man is hard, but to be a poor race in a land of dollars is the very bottom of hardships.” W.E.B. Dubois - Souls of Black Folks

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The Wealth of African Americans

Little Known Black History Fact: Wealth of African Americans

Posted 3 years ago.

Erica L. Taylor, The Tom Joyner Morning Show

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According to the Institute for Policy Studies, the wealth of the Forbes 400 billionaires is equal to the wealth of the entire African American population. There are currently 41 million blacks in America.  After the economic crises in 2008, wealth, specifically in African American households, declined dramatically.  According to the research, the amount of billionaires that would fit “in a high school gym” equals to the entire number of black households – about 14 million.

On the list of billionaires includes only one African American woman: Oprah Winfrey. Winfrey holds a net worth of $2.9 billion. She is one of six other black billionaires all over the world.
The numbers are also supported by the homeownership percentages for African Americans. 43.1 percent of blacks are homeowners while white homeownership is at 73.3% and Latino at 47.6%. According to the study, African Americans make up 13 percent of the U.S. population but have only 2.7 percent of total wealth.

This study was first mentioned in an article by Bob Lords on January 15, 2014 on Otherwords.org. Lords wrote:

As we commemorate Martin Luther King Jr.’s 85th birthday, we’ve all come to know his dream. Above all else, he dreamed that one day this nation would rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed: “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal.”
Yet here’s the grim reality facing black America today: The net worth of just 400 billionaires, a group that could fit into a high school gym, is on par with the collective wealth of our more than 14 million African- American households. Both groups possess some $2 trillion, about 3 percent of our national net worth of $77 trillion.

We chose to honor Dr. King by making his birthday a national holiday because of his tireless work for justice. And MLK stood not only for social justice, but for economic justice as well.
Back in 1951, he told his future life partner, Coretta Scott, that a small elite should not “control all the wealth.” “A society based on making all the money you can and ignoring people’s needs, is wrong,” Dr. King explained.

And the “March on Washington” was “for jobs and freedom.” At the time of his assassination in Memphis in 1968, Dr. King was standing with striking sanitation workers in their fight for economic justice.

How would MLK view the Forbes 400 controlling as much wealth as our entire African-American population of about 41 million people? Could that state of affairs co-exist with his dream?
Hardly. At the outset of that speech about his dream, the civil rights leader noted that one century after the Emancipation Proclamation, “the Negro lives on a lonely island of poverty in the midst of a vast ocean of material prosperity.”

Dr. King’s dream was as much about economic justice as it was about social justice. Today’s distribution of wealth in America represents his nightmare come true — even with Barack Obama serving as our president.

What derailed the dream? How is it that, 50 years out from MLK’s speech, black America has such a dismally small slice of our nation’s wealth?

Here’s how: In the 1940s through the 1960s, U.S. economic opportunity and upward mobility outside the African-American community were the envy of the world. Back then, economic inequality was plummeting.

While discrimination kept black America mired in poverty, Dr. King watched tens of millions of other Americans climb from humble beginnings to affluence. So, he justifiably believed that if African Americans could break free from the yoke of racial discrimination, they too could share in the American Dream.

It would take a generation or two until most of them made it, but eventually they’d get there.
Soon after the chokehold of racial discrimination on the advancement of blacks finally started to loosen, however, America began its return to the society that existed before Dr. King’s birth, where a small slice of the population lives in opulence while average Americans struggle to get by.
Today, it’s not social injustice, but extreme inequality that constrains economic mobility, not just for black Americans, but all of us. America, once the land of opportunity, now has a level of economic mobility lower than that of almost all other rich countries.

By the time African Americans broke mostly (but not entirely) free from racist constraints on their economic mobility, they were whacked with a new obstacle: the almost equally suffocating injustice of extreme inequality. They’re not the only ones suffering. But because they were locked out of the egalitarian economic progress that took place during Dr. King’s lifetime, they’re disproportionately represented in the group now stuck on the lower rungs of the economic ladder.

So here we are, a half-century after Dr. King described his dream, living through a nightmare where 400 ultra-rich Americans control as much wealth as our entire African-American population.
(Photo: PRPhotos)

The World’s Most Powerful African Americans on the Forbes Celebrity 100 List:

1. Oprah Winfrey ranks number 1 in Money: $290 M.

black wealth , homeownership , Money , Oprah Winfrey

Man killed by police for reading while Black in North Carolina

Charlotte Police Kill Black Man Who Witnesses Say Was Unarmed, Reading

Refinery29•September 21, 2016

Charlotte Police shot and killed a Black man while searching for a wanted person on Tuesday. Keith Lamont Scott, 43, exited his vehicle and was shot by Charlotte-Mecklenburg police officer Brentley Vinson, who is also Black, shot him. Witnesses say that Scott was unarmed and had a disability. Scott was not the person the police were searching for. This just a day after Terence Crutcher, another unarmed Black man, was shot and killed outside his stalled vehicle by police "Police said they were searching for someone who had an outstanding warrant at The Village at College Downs complex on Old Concord Road when they saw a man with a gun leave a vehicle," The Charlotte Observer writes. Police said

Michael Hafford

September 20, 2016, 8:15 PM

Charlotte Police shot and killed a Black man while searching for a wanted person on Tuesday. Keith Lamont Scott, 43, exited his vehicle and was shot by Charlotte-Mecklenburg police officer Brentley Vinson, who is also Black. Witnesses say that Scott was unarmed and had a disability. Scott was not the person the police were searching for.

This just days after Terence Crutcher, another unarmed Black man, was shot and killed outside his stalled vehicle by police

"Police said they were searching for someone who had an outstanding warrant at The Village at College Downs complex on Old Concord Road when they saw a man with a gun leave a vehicle," The Charlotte Observer writes.

Police said that the man “posed an imminent deadly threat to the officers, who subsequently fired their weapon striking the subject,” in a statement provided to the Observer. “The officers immediately requested Medic and began performing CPR.”

His family, however, says that Scott couldn't have posed a threat. Scott's daughter, identified on Facebook as Lyric YourAdorable Scott, used Facebook Live to broadcast the aftermath of the shooting. She said that her father was disabled. He was reportedly married and had seven children.

“The police just shot my daddy four times for being black,” she says at the beginning of the video. “They Tased him first and then shot him.”

Scott's brother and sister both spoke to the media. Scott's brother says he was waiting for his daughter, reading a book. He further says that the officers were in plainclothes. Charlotte police have neither confirmed nor denied that statement.

Scott's sister says he didn't have a gun.

Brentley Vinson, the officer who shot Scott, has been placed on paid administrative leave pending a full investigation per department policy, a police press release say.