Harriet Tubman - Lift Her Up!

It is time for clean up duty. The damage has been done. The Russell Simmons video that was an alleged comedy about Sister Tubman has been pulled from YouTube. I suspect there may be other copies of the video that will be posted again and again.

There are people who insist that it is their right to laugh at the video and call it funny. It is their way of fighting political correctness. Those people are not my immediate concern. 

There is a problem that we can do something about. Nothing goes away on the Internet. That damn title of the video is the most recent search engince citation containing Harriet Tubman's name.

When it comes time school children to do a search guess which item is going to come to the surface? There are currently about 290,000 Google listings for Russell Simmons, Tubman and Sex.

Do you want to be the teacher or parent that has to explain this?

Those poor kids are going to be bamboozled about Abraham Lincoln, Vampire Killer. What do you think this will do to them? Grown folks, we gotta clean it up.

Lift Her Up! 

Here is your assignment. If you have a post about Ms. Tubman that is appropriate then post it on your blog and tell two friends.

If you have a book recommendation or want to do a book review of something that you have read to your kids post it up and tell two friends.




If you know of a video NOT created or paid for by Russell Simmons that can help people understand the real deal lets share that link that up as well.

We need to push the title of the video way, way down in the search results. This is also a good time to inform the young ones that we have a history that cannot be bought with silver and gold.

You can be angry or you can do something about it.

I'll add citations and other info in this post but I can't do this by myself. As many tweets that went out about the video is that's how many good resources we'll need to flush it out.

For People that Cut History Class and Have to Get up to Speed

Harriet Tubman Humanitarian, Leader, Hero Mini Documentary

TeacherTube video on Harriet Tubman as Older Woman
Intro Video on Harriet Tubman Byway in Maryland

One hour video from the Brooklyn Museum's Elizabeth Sackler Center on Feminist Art - Author Beverly Lowry discusses her book Harriet Tubman: Imagining a Life

U.S., State and Local Government Sites

America's Story from America's Library - Harriet Tubman
National Park Service Underground Railroad Monument Page
Maryland's Harriet Tubman's Underground Railroad Byway



For Parents and School Research

Good Reads Book List on Harriet Tubman
IMDB Page on the movie A Woman Called Moses performed by Cicily Tyson
Library of Congress Harriet Tubman Online Resources
Scholastic Harriet Tubman Web Hunt
University of North Carolina at Chapple Hill - Black Abolitionist Papers about Harriet Tubman   
WorldCat Library Search of Books, Audio, Articles and other media

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Not Very Good At Letting Go of CDs

I've got software. Maybe too much. I'm looking for the burning software that I know I have so that I can burn an .iso file. I need to burn the .iso file to make a bootable CD to get into my prior computer because I have forgotten the password.

I need to get into that box to get the registration number for the prior version of the burning software so that I don't have to pay full price for the new version if I can't find the prior version software.

Which may or may not work on a 64-bit system.

www.aldaily.com

I just found a CD with bookmarks from 2002 with hundreds of links to long gone websites. Or sites that I should visit more often but I forgot that they existed like Arts & Letters Daily.

This is why people need an RSS Reader. So that people like me can have breadcrumbs back to the sites that mattered.

In 2002 everybody was still rattled by the economy. I seems to have spent a lot of time on job sites and Craigslist. It was also the start of the freelancer sites where you could compete for a job through a web interface. That changed when people from other countries came in and under-bid the Americans off the site.

That hurt.

I was hanging out at survival and self-sufficiently links. Not what you think, these folks provided information on how to stretch a dollar or urban food gathering aka supermarket dumpster diving. No weapons were involved.

There were links to a long gone free magazine called ComputerUser. A lot of links to digital photo sites from GeoCities; heck a lot of GeoCities links period. It was the place to go for fan pages and info on obscure topics.

A lot of the early digital video sites that I visited but couldn't do anything with because the technology wasn't consumer friendly. But I kept an eye on it just the same. I was into radio drama from the looks of it; still am only now I go to drama podcasts sites.

So much has changed.

But not my need to quit procrastinating on household chores and finding that software.

And yet, I wonder if I can find that link to the site that had people being intimate with the trees for charity? Yes, that one is exactly what you think it is but I seem to remember the lush greenery more than anything else.

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Not The Buddha or Be Careful of What You Quote

I'm puttering along half doing the dishes, quarter cleaning the bedroom and totally not writing as I should when I find this quote on a web page that I printed out on September 1, 2001:

“Your work is to discover your work and then with all your heart give yourself to it.”  Attributed to Buddha.

I like it. Sounds about right.  But then I say it again and it doesn't feel right. I run it though the Googlenator. On the surface all kinds of sites are linking and promoting this quote.

Except one. I am led to this web site called Fake Budha Quotes.com and I start reading.

Oh dear.

Bodhipaksa did the research to make the case that this is a possible misinterpretation of a bad translation.

If it sound good we as humans want to share it. I almost posted this quote to Twitter. I would have been in a long line of people to have done so. It wasn't with malice or evil intent. Still in all the Buddha didn't say it.

Yet this is how lies become truths or at least accepted paths of thought.

Early this morning I got yanked back into a post about the high number of single African American women who have children outside of marriage. I read the original post 10 months ago.

To me this was just one person expressing an opinion based on limited to no facts. I suspect that the author has other agendas besides equating a racial lack of moral compass with her perceived alternative options.

Yet folks read that posts and started to co-sign with what was written. 





If folks went to the New York Times article written in 2012 and looked at one of the sources cited,  Nonmarital Childbearing in the United States, 1940–99 by the National Center for Health Statistics, that report was an attempt to look at this issue spanning decades.

It is 40 pages of information, statistics and history that (in my opinion) due to society pressures may be a bit distorted or skewed. 

If you look at the data every group of women from every racial and ethnic backgrounds have had children outside of marriage. There are times when the numbers jump. There are periods when certain groups are not reported.

The report is not a quick read. If anything, you could use it as a question springboard to what was going on in the 1940 (War comes to mind. Soldiers on leave. Fear and the need to affirm life?)

Like in the above video from 1947 when the fellas want to shun the "bad girl" that comes to the table. She wasn't in the back seat of the car by herself. They can't even articulate the double standard so hey, let's blame the girl.

Compare that time to the 1960s.  Culturally, what was going on then?

See where I going with this? You have to understand the context and the people of the time.

What are the real facts, not the ones that make you feel good or sounds like it is plausible.

It is tricky. It is sticky. The only confirmed fact is that when most men stick their dicky into a fertile vagina without birth control there is a good chance of conception.

I so long for the day when information literacy become a fad that people won't let go of.

Maybe there needs to be a song about critical thinking got them crazy and they won't let go, naw they can't let go.

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Text and Subtext or I'm Too Touchy

It is March 1, 2013.  I thought I'd be relieved that Black History Month was over because pound for pound it has been one of the most difficult BHM that I have experienced in a while.

It has been a month of people behaving badly. Grinding to the last nerve kinda bad. Not enough to wish for divine intervention. But close. And I have been hurt, angered, raged up and resigned to the stupid as normal. You can't hold on to each and every bit of idiocy roiling down the road.

There are time when you need to speak up and fight back. But when you do expect to hear something like "I am to blame for being too sensitive."

What ticked me off this week?

The Bloomberg BusinessWeek cover on a new wave of speculative housing boom. The cover seems to show that Latinos and African Americans are being excessively happy at the money grab regarding housing.

Bloomberg Businessweek Cover February 25 - March 3, 2013

 
There is that old (false) meme that it was the fault of the sub-prime buyers that caused the crash. Not the corporations that sold debt paper from firm to firm. Not the feeding frenzy that had radio and television commercials on every station begging people to buy a home, no money down. Not the Ponsi activities of Bernie Madoff and other corporate con artists.

Yes, I hear you #10,384 in the comments. "It was a Latino dude that drew the picture so how could it be racist?" 

Because the actual article has nothing to do with the cover. Because the images used are stereotypical exaggerations of people of color going ding dong crazy because they have cash. And you know how we get cash, right?

It is another reminder that neo-post racists society is alive, well and prospering. What was the brief that the artist got? What does he believe about the housing crisis or is this a bad attempt to tell up happy days are here again?

Or are we invoking Greed is Good for another run around the block?

Some days I can ignore the goofy.  Like when they painted that 16-year old white model in bronze make-up and called her an African Queen. That has happened before; the fashion would really has a hard time with people of color.

Read a bit of the Black Voices Huntington Post comments. The effort to devalue legitimate objections to the paint job could be heartbreaking if you let it. I wouldn't read more than 10 of them cuz it is crazy making stuff.

There are other days I have to think about how far we've come and how to be vigilant when a justice of the Supreme Court thinks that my right to vote is a racial entitlement. This is an excerpt from Justice Scalia:

The problem here, however, is suggested by the comment I made earlier, that the initial enactment of this legislation in a -- in a time when the need for it was so much more abundantly clear was -- in the Senate, there -- it was double-digits against it. And that was only a 5-year term.

Then, it is reenacted 5 years later, again for a 5-year term. Double-digits against it in the Senate. Then it was reenacted for 7 years. Single digits against it. Then enacted for 25 years, 8 Senate votes against it. And this last enactment, not a single vote in the Senate against it. And the House is pretty much the same.

Now, I don't think that's attributable to the fact that it is so much clearer now that we need this. I think it is attributable, very likely attributable, to a phenomenon that is called perpetuation of racial entitlement. It's been written about. Whenever a society adopts racial entitlements, it is very difficult to get out of them through the normal political processes.

I don't want to be accused of taking the quote out of content. There is an office SCOTUS Transcript of the Section 5 Pre-Clearance Obligation.

Sniff, as if voters suppression didn't happen in the last few elections.

You do have to have not only a thick skin but also a discerning eye for what is being presented. There is intent, there is malfeasance and there evil.

There are also people that make mistakes. Laps of judgement. Ignorance.

There are days when you can't tell the difference.

February 2013 was like that for me.

So yeah, I'm a bit prickly.

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Who Speaks for the Negro Audio Archive

Maybe this should have been posted on the library blog but I think this Robert Penn Warren audio archive has a resonance beyond libraries collections. I've been reading the transcripts of some of the recordings. Some of narrative is a challenging read.

Not because of the subject matter. It is because much of what these people experienced is being re-vamped for this time. The Voter ID Card/Poll Tax obstacle course is but one example.

http://whospeaks.library.vanderbilt.edu

Author Robert Penn Warren toted a reel to reel tape machine and spoke with the humble and the famous folks during the time of the Civil Rights movement.

These tapes have been digitized and there are transcripts of the conversations. It is a wonderful and yet hurtful look at how we have and have not changed.

Reverend Joe Clark talks about folks being color struck and self hateful that they do all they can not to be black:

...And, the upshot of it all is the only thing that they have to base this artificial situation on is the color of their skin and the texture of their hair, which to me is not a satisfying standard, because after all we had nothing to do with it. You have no personal sense of accomplishment in being fair with light skin and when you look beyond the skin color and the hair texture and you ask, well, what have you done to justify your existence here – and – then in ninety nine cases out of a hundred there is nothing there. 

There are contemporary 21st Century music performers doing the same things. Straight up minstrel shows for profit. Assimilation 101.

There is a lot of historical grounding in the audio. These are not the mythical people found in my elementary school history books. This is" my life is on the line and I want folks to know why" documentation.

Funny how some of the old tropes are being re-worked in the current election. Words like lazy. Subsidies. Nanny state.  Swap out communism for socialism and you can see how much has and hasn't changed.

You can listen to the audio on the site or you can read the transcripts. I would suggest you start with the non-famous folks first. They need to be heard.

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Do We Even Know What Freedom Means?

Because when you constrict the rights of freedom of thought, expression and the right to vote in order to "be safe" you have lost everything.

What do we know or care about freedom if you won't move from polemics to action.

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Trying to Understand Shamrock Socks in February 2012

I have no love for Valentine’s day. In this case, I mean I do not have any guy I’m going to be snuggling up to come February 14th. I am okay with that reality. At peace with the world. Tra, lah, trah, lah.

Okay, not not really.

It is Black History Month aka African American History and Heritage Month. The flag waving permissible issms are at a all time high and show no sign of dipping below the legal legal of sanity. The only grace I can take hold of is the the debates for the Republican contenders for the White House are taking the month off.

For the record, I am not associating the GOP contenders with Target.  The fact that the GOP contenders have tried to make people that look like me targets for their bile is beside the point.

And I do have one.

I was in Target. Target has black hair care products that I generally have to ride a bus three hours to get to a store that has the same stuff at a huge mark-up. I can get it $15 cheaper at Target.

Target has food, mostly processed food but the one near me has some fresh items. Target has clothes that fit potions of my body in a price range I can afford.

They have Valentine’s day stuff that is just about to go to half price. They have St. Patrick socks. Well, socks that have shamrocks on them.

I know what they don’t have. A decent affordable stand alone .mp3 player. A topic for another time. They also don’t have anything about celebrating African American History or Heritage Month. 

There are no banners. No placards. No streamers.  Not a balloon. Not fond of balloons anyway so that could be a plus.

I’m looking at those St. Patrick influenced socks and I am trying to figure out why are they putting the shamrock stuff out in February? I’m standing there internally scratching my head. 

Then it comes to me. Beer. 

On St. Patrick’s day everybody wears the green. Folks having no genealogical peeps from the island will be fixing corned beef and cabbage or at least reading about a heart healthy version in a magazine or newspaper.

There will be big parades that will be inclusive and exclusive. At least here in California. There will be beer drinking and some will even drink beer that is colored green.  Oh, and there will be green peppermint McFlurries and shamrocks on cookies.

You can sell St. Patrick’s day. 

You can’t exactly sell Black History Month. It is problematic.

If this was the 1970s you could move red, green and black socks.  It is not the 1970s anymore.  How about some “Remember the Dream” socks?  Well, perhaps not.

You could have posters in the stores with photos of historical ancestors but I’d be kinda worried which ancestor’s poster would wind up hanging in the toilet paper section.

Then you would have those folks that would complain. There is always somebody to complain but these particular people would complain that "there isn’t a White History Month so why should anybody recognize Black History Month?"

These same folks will be also be complaining through Women’s History Month, Latino/Hispano/Chicano/Mexicano Heritage Month and Asian and Pan Pacific Heritage Month. Some of those whiners will be debating again in March.

Really Not Picking on Target

We are told that everybody wants to wear the green for a day. Watch your local papers and advertising  circulars. A stereotypical green having nothing to do with living people to be sure but it is celebrated and sold with enthusiasm.

It involves food and beer and, well, that is about I know about the day.

Authentic Irish and Irish American history is fascinating, complex and is woven into the building of this nation. That isn’t what the commercial St. Patrick’s day is about but we do a strange form of let’s pretend.

Authentic African American history is fascinating, complex and is intractably woven into the building of the nation. It seems that folks would rather let the days go by.

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Go On and Catch Some Tail for Yoda's Daddy

The man put up 93 million dollars of his own money to make an all black action movie? Or an action movie with a black cast? You can say this has my attention. In a few days, the movie Red Tails will open at the box office. A gentleman by the name of Mr. George Lucas has produced a movie that is inspired by the Tuskegee Airmen of World War 2.

As a rule, I do not like war movies, shoot em up bangs bangs or glorified murder. I do like a good story. I am 110% down with encoding our history into the collective but often forgetful memory of this nation.

This is a trailer of the movie: 



Mr. Lucus is a little concerned that if folks don't turn out for the flick than will put the kibosh on future multi-million dollar movies staring black folks with white actors in minor supporting roles.

This is a clip from the daily show where he talks about how studios told him they didn't know how to market the movie or that it would not do well internationally because other countries would not want to view "limited appeal" movie.



Dear Mr. Lucas, do not fret about blowing $93 million dollars. I think it is safe to say you are going to recoup that investment in about a 10 hours of the movie's release. Not to mention that as soon as a couple dozen grandmas get wind of the movie a couple thousand junebug grandsons are going to be dragged into the theaters.

But that isn't what the movie studios where talking about, is it? They said they didn't know how to market the movie so that white folks would want to go see it. 

Understandable myopia coming from that crowd.  Need new blood in Hollywood. Those vampire and zombie movies they keep making have drained what little sense they have about modern audiences. 

People will turn out for a good movie, period.

I got my calculator out on this one:

• Living WW2 war vets of any ethnicity $$$
• Living vets of any war who appreciate military history $$$
• Every living Tuskegee graduate $$$$$
• Military historians $$$$
• People who want to see their history on the screen $$$$$$
• Loyal Fanboys and Fangirls who want to get in on the ground floor of a possible new gaming world $ x infinity.

If it is good movie and some white folks can mentally cross that bridge then yeah, whoopie and good on ya. You have a hit.

But if it isn't then it will be okay too. The world will still turn. There are black movies being made and that will happen inside and outside of the current film industry. Looks like it will be outside because even if this is a block buster they will attribute it to Lucas skills as a filmmaker and promoter and not the film or subject matter.

The stories will be told with old tech or new tech. The days of traditional film making filters is coming to an end anyway.

So take a load off G. From the looks of it I don't think it will be flop. I stopped looking toward Hollywood for quality movies a long time ago. I might make an exception for this film but have no expectation of finding a good film to pay $12 for a long time.

Now in your next film if you could do a little something that celibates the slightly older but wiser women with some curves it would be greatly appreciated. If she happened to be driving a space ship that would be very cool too.

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There Is Still Much to Say

There was a time when 999 was the highest amount of posts you could upload on Blogger. I wasn't too worried about it because I didn't think I'd reach 999 posts. I don't think about things like that because they intimidate me.

Here I am. Number 1,000 according to my post log. Dang! I feel good about it.

I wrote long before there was blogging. Use to do an e-mail news letter. Had a old school user page that required HTML. I never warmed up to Dreamweaver but I gave it a go because I had much to say and thought my voice was as valid as some of the others on the World Wide Web.

In 2004 I came to Blogger.


In one of my early post I shared the lyrics to Sky Pilot. There was no way to easily embed video. There was no YouTube and I would not have known about this video from the CBC in Vancouver.  This is a video montage created by the CBC performed by Eric Burdon and The Animals:



I have an attacment to this song because I would hear it on the radio. I might have been between 9 and 11 years of age. I don't remember. But I didn't connected the song with the Vietnam war.

I thought of Snoopy and the Red Baron. I was a kid.  I related to the world that I knew.

This is such a different place. I now understand about the price of war on human bodies and minds. I understand that there have been other wars and some folks are now shopping for a new one to keep the military industrial corporation going.

"You'll never, never, never, reach the sky."

There was a time when I did not have my face on the blog. In 1999 had read a book about being on the Internet that talked about this guy who was making serious cash money doing web work but it got out that he was a black man.

His work dried up. At that time there were people that would attack you for being "the other."

Not much has changed. There are increasing attacks on women and feminist bloggers.

I have learned that you can't hide who you are. There are people that need to see that an African American woman has a blog. That I write about a variety of issues and concerns.

There is no point in trying to pin me down to a specific topic, not in this blog. One day it is politics, the next is noticing that Brookstone in the mall has a bunch of vibrators on sale for the holidays.

Seriously, not the cheap stuff. We are talking the upper level stroke, stroke, stroke until le petit mort kind of gear.

I get distracted. Too much is going on these days.

I bought a fountain pen. I'm going back to writing on paper first and then uploading. Has more to do with eye and hand preservation. It also has to do with allowing the words to come at a contemplative speed. I want time to think, not just react.

I don't like Facebook but I check in on friends. I like Google+ better but I don't have the time to do more than and comment on friends and followers post. There is some new widget that allows me to copy my post here to my G+ page. I might do that. Not sure.

Twitter, which I didn't initially care for, has been my day to day catch up with folks.

My blog - this is my home ground. My stoop. I know it. I'm okay here. I haven't been posting much because I got stuff going on. I have to make decisions about my life in 2012. What do I want to do? What do I need to do?

No matter what those choices are I still intend to blog. And write. Maybe a video now and then.

This blog is what made the connections with other people possible.

There are days when I get fed up with the stupidity of human beings. The American branch has plum lost their minds. Not sure they are going to get it together, it will take something awful to re-connect with each other.

It doesn't have to be that way but not sure if we can come together. Too many forces profit from keeping us apart.

So I still blog. One post at a time. I hope I remain unpredictable but who knows what changes can happen. Be open to the possible has served me well. I commit to that and the future.

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Learning From Old Movies - The Animal Kingdom

I am coming up on my 1,000 post. I tend to think that I haven't don't anything a thousand times. Nonsense, we all have. We just don't think of them. Anyway, I needed an old movie fix. You rarely can go wrong with a Leslie Howard movie.

YouTube Link for The Animal Kingdom

Actually it was Ann Harding. I had seen another movie in which she scopes out a playboy with potential and decides to plot to marry him. It was a lesson on entrepreneurship in the depression. Ann's business was marriage, making her husband look good and keeping him happy. William Powell's business was to avoid marriage and responsibility.

Anyway, in The Animal Kingdom Ann and Leslie were doing the do outside of the bands of matrimony. They were the best of friends, were lovers and no strings. She goes off oversees and Leslie meets Myrna, who does love him but wants to recreate him into a proper rich dude. Which he does not want to be.

Moving on. This was a pre-code film. People talked about sex. Well, you do have to decipher quite a bit about sex in the film. Myrna used a sleeping gown to great advantage. She definitely roped the dope but you can only do that a few time before the dope gets to thinking that the rope is a harness and he doesn't want to be in one.

In other words, juicy gets em crazy but you can't keep it up. Most of the time.

The movie has a happy ending for two of the three leads. From the DVD cover you can get a clue.

When people talk about the simplicity and morality of an early time I'm not sure what time that would be. These weren't bad people. Leslie wanted his friend and his wife. His wife wanted him. His friend wanted to be left alone because she didn't want to be a homewrecker.

Life if complicated. Always has been. Always will be.

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The Edge of Night and Memories

Before blogging there were web sites and e-newsletters. I started an e-newsletter to keep my computer students and my friends up to date about software programs and the Internet. My friends at the time didn't understand what the Internet was or why I was so jazzed about it. They thought it was something like CB Radio.

I made so many mistakes back then. Spelling, typing, factual; you name it I did it. I kept plugging away at it and I got better. I learned from other people. I learned I didn't have to write a book each time I hit the keyboard.

I didn't want to make money, I just wanted to let people know what was going on and how things were changing. It was a form of self expression. There is nothing wrong with that; despite what other will say about journal writing and blogging.

I was exploring, learning, laughing and connecting with other people who had interests other than what was on the soap operas. Not that there is anything wrong with soap operas or the people that love them. No disrespect intended.

Much love to The Edge of Night



A day in September 2001 changed that. I didn't know if there would be a tomorrow. I didn't trust the Bush administration. I didn't know if the war hawks would bomb first and figure out later.

I knew that I wanted to be of service and help. So I wrote about elephants in the room, emergency preparedness and looking out for each other.

The truth of the matter was that I was alone. I could call people and e-mail folks but for many hours I was by  myself.

It was my edge of night in that I could be scared but if I was going out I wanted to do something positive. So, that is what I do.

There have been earthquakes, floods, fires and riots. There have been dark nights of the soul.

Lots of them.

So my memories and lessons about that time carry forward. Be of service. Keep learning. Make more contacts and friends. Limit the negative voices. Live in the day.

I still make mistakes.

It is all right.

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The 21st Century Political Minstrel Video Show

Some of my questions have been answered and new ones take their place. This is hopefully my last post on the political media connections to the traditional form of minstrel theater.

It is my exploration. If you don't know what minstrel theater is check out my prior posts on the subject:

• The Minstrel Show - Minstrel 101
• The Minstrel Show - History in a Nutshell
• The Minstrel Show - I've Seen This Before
  

Once again, this isn't about white people bashing. Minstrelsy is the mother of burlesque, vaudeville, stand-up comedy, slap stick, Bugs Bunny, Laugh-In and The Onion. It is also the foundation of social media defining a group of people with stereotypes, mis-information and hatred.

Minstrel theater is institutional racism that makes a profit at the expense of other people. It is a living laboratory of prejudice, class and power. It is not just a white/black dynamic. It is an uncomfortable, itchy culturally shared history.

For the record, there were black performers who willingly wore the cork. There were many people who refused.

There are African American performers today who wear the invisible cork and can't deposit money fast enough. There are other performers who refuse and still need two trucks to carry it to the bank.

I've selected this video as the 21st century representation of current political video minstrelsy:



I dogged it back to the source of TurnRightUSA where the creator is very proud and ecstatic that his video has had such as response.

The creator of the video has been supported with comments that ring with hate for anyone with a liberal/progressive point of view, of support of the message of the video and, "Why are black people upset? Have you seen a rap video lately?

Why This Video Is 21st Century Minstrelsy

1. Minstrelsy needs fear. It needs to generate anticipatory fear and make it tasty. Red demon eyes on stripper. That would be a check in the affirmative column.

2. Minstrelsy depends on the presentation of black people as the other. The other is presented as a fool, a grifter or a predator. The other is always lesser than the viewer.

Let's see now, two black fools with money and guns. Check to the second power.

3. Minstrelsy needs an Interlocutor acting as the Voice of Authority guiding the audience into the super secret black world, in this case, two black men and a white woman acting as a stripper.

Instead of proving the allegations the video spends a great deal of time invoking images of assorted criminals flashing across the screen.

It is just a buzzing repetition over and over as our modern day Mr. Tambo and Mr. Bones get busy with a bucking azz in hot pants wiggling in anticipation.

4. That is also a feature of minstrel theater. Sex and violence. The early minstrel shows before E.P. Christy were loaded with stereotypical sex and violence; with black men going stone cold crazy over white women.

Let's see, AK-47, check, flipping fanny being stuffed with money, double check.

5. The big finish is a call to action. Support the one (white) man who can deliver you from evil, skanky stripper women running for congress and gangsters who threaten to take our country.

Epilog

There will be much more sophisticated political videos to come in the current election cycle. There will be more trashy ones too.

If the video or political media messages needs racism, sexism and stereotypes to convey their point of view then yes, they are partying like it is 1849.

All I'm asking thinking people to do is look and see if those communications are applying the minstrel template to sell their message. Sometimes it will be tricky but the template will rat them out most of the time.

Like I said, this is my opinion. I based it on my readings, research and my own understanding of my experiences as an African American woman. For some of you that isn't enough.

To borrow a well known Twitter hashtag from Mrs. Erin Kotecki Vest, #suckit

In a few days or weeks, there will be another video that will make this one look like cotton candy. How will you handle it?

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The Minstrel Show - History In a Nutshell

This is by necessity a conflated history of the theatrical minstrel show. The short version is that since the meeting of Africans and Europeans on American soil there has been minstrel performances and shows.

I'm starting in the 1900s but it goes back much further in time. This is where the tangles of history get complicated. In order for white folks to create theatrical minstrel shows you had to have black people, Christianity and spirituals.

There were former slaves that wanted to convert to Christianity. There were other freed men and women that were strongly encouraged or given no faith based choice in the matter. According to the New York Public Library Performing Desk Reference, the freed slaves looked at churches or religious groups that were similar to their African music practices.

Despite heavy segregation, there was a cross pollination of African and American/British spiritual music influences. Those influence moved from the sacred to the secular.

You also had the performances of the Fisk Jubilee Singers who traveled the world singing and raising money to support Fisk University. Their performances was another introduction to African American performers and music. These performers were talented, professional and presented the highest caliber of musicianship.

Yet, they didn't fit the stereotypical image of black people. According to the Fisk Jubilee Singers web site:

The first concerts were in small towns. Surprise, curiosity and some hostility were the early audience response to these young black singers who did not perform in the traditional “minstrel fashion.”

However, white performers were paying attention. About 1820 or so, a white performer named Thomas "Daddy" Rice observed a black street singer or a black stable hand (could have been the same person, it isn't clear from my readings) singing a song called "Jim Crow."


Thomas Rice put burnt cork on his face and started performing his version of the song. It was a hit and the song becomes an American standard.

Imitation is the sincerest form of making a dollar and other white performers jumped on the minstrel black face cash wagon. Soon almost any white performer with a lick of skill was in black face make-up and traveling the country performing.

Putting on a minstrel show was inexpensive, you didn't need a lot of props and you literally could borrow, appropriate and source your material from freeman performers. In addition, white performers could draw upon their own stereotypical views of what they thought they knew about black people.

Make no mistake, in the context of the time minstrel shows were very popular with both white and black audiences. Rich folks went to the opera, broke folks went to the minstrel shows.

Make that white broke folks. Africans and African Americans were not permitted to perform or be in attendance at a theatrical performance. Unless the theater had a separate performance for the non-white population they would have seen minstrel shows as part of carnivals, medicine shows or traveling troops of performers.

So in essence you had white performers appropriating content or inspiration from black performers and adding an overlay of stereotypical images to perform before a white audience.

Like I said, this is complicated. Ok, next up Minstrel 101 for sure.

Resources for Minstrel History

George Mason University Roy Rosenzweig Center for History and New Media Minstrel Show

History of the original Fisk Jubilee Singers

Library of Congress Minstrel Poster Collection - Al "G" Field

Musicals1o1.com page on Minstrel performances

The New York Public Library Performance Art Desk Reference - The Birth of American Popular Music Pages 239 - 242 and the NYPL On-line search collection for Minstrel Shows

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The Minstrel Show or I've Seen This Before?

I only have a surface understanding of the minstrel show. In the late 1960s and 1970s I was raised during a time of black power, affirmation and determination.

I knew about vaudeville. I knew about white performers in black face. It was a history I could read then walk away. It was gone. There were other things to learn about.

So I thought.

Some of you have no idea of what I am talking about. This is a clip with Slim Williams, performing in black face make-up, his mayoral political stump speech:

Have I Lost My Flipping Mind?

No.

I have been getting mighty steamed up by the constant flow of stupidity, mendacity and flat out hate on hate political expression. It is politics mixed with sexism, racism and the damn near avocation of gender repression in order to fix the economy.

Why I am seeing this inane fear based rhetoric again and again? Something familiar but cloaked in time.

I think I can show that there are contemporary 2011 examples of this old theatrical art form. Or hate speech. Institutionalized power plays at being powerless in a safe fantasy world. Stage craft.

Call it whatever you feel comfortable with but understand that genesis of the minstrel show was based on observation and exaggeration of Africans and African Americans.

It is a theatrical form of bondage and domination where the oppressor gets to play at being a smart happy submissive. Not that I know anything about bondage and domination except for that workshop I sat in on a few years ago by accident.

Very informative. Honest, it really was a good workshop about power and control issues. There is an element of that in the structure of the minstrel show.

I want to look at modern political and entertainment videos that communicate power and control messages. Before I can do that I need to share the reason for doing these posts and the structure of minstrel performances.

This is a difficult exploration. This can be painful and not the ways you might think. My goal is to point out the performance style that is being applied to contemporary videos and by political operatives.

You might not want to come down this path for dozens of really good reasons. That is okay. I guess I'm trying to give a blanket trigger alert but it is impossible.

One more thing. This is not about white people bashing. There are black folks and other types of minstrel shows masked as advertisements and music videos. I saw a young black woman in a wig bathed in infrared light who performed a sexual jig with her amplified white lips.

A straight up minstrel performance. She isn't the only modern performer doing 21st century race based American minstrel performances.

Research Starting Points:

There is a web site that I've been hanging around for a few days. Ken Padgett's Black-Face.com where I've been reading about the origin and history of these types of performances. There is also a YouTube channel that has scenes from a 1951 film called "Yes, Sir Mr. Bones" that showcased some of the white and black performers.

I have been researching other sources as well from a theatrical and sociological perspective. In the next post, Minstrel 101.

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In Memory of Mr. Gil Scott-Heron

I'm tired. I'm tired of the willful ignorance that is romping around as political discussions. On this day one of the great men of poetry and music has pass to the other side. I speak of Mr. Gil Scott-Heron.

I saw the man perform many years ago. I don't know much more to say. I did a tweet. I wrote 480 words in Facebook.

But my heart wants to write a book and nobody reads anymore, so I am told. This is a poem from the (currently) last album Where Did the Night Go?



I can tell you that one of the first things I did when I got my hands on the Internet was to look for him. No joke. He had been quiet for too long and I was trying to catch up. I wasn't alone.

Eventually the silent collective of those of us caring about GSH found out he was in England. Having some turbulence over there with the chemicals. I had to adjust that the man who made it clear to leave the stuff alone was juiced and volatile.

This is The Bottle



It took about 10 years for the BBC interview video to surface on the web. I could see he had been roughed up by his addictions. Gil was still inside but not the same. Still, the silent collective couldn't let him go. We sent invisible good wishes and petitions up on high on his behalf.

These past two years were very encouraging. I didn't care if he was doing covers of blues songs or small snips of poetry. The man was working and staying focus. As much as he could. Maybe the next album would light into the soul like a B-Movie

.

When folks do a tribute page they want other people to know that this person is important. You should know why we honor this conflicted but talented man. He wasn't perfect. Dang sure no angel.

Scott-Heron made it hard to be a fan.

But for a moment we gather and understood what it was and what it could be in terms of storytelling, poetry, performance and musicianship.

I'm about to crash. I need to sleep. Or be sad. Maybe both.

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Counting Down the Days Paying Attention

I listen to a lot of podcasts like The American History Guys. One thing I learned from the fellas is that you respect the people who had to make decisions in a certain space and time.

You can step back and evaluate it from your time frame. You can dig in and try to put a context to what the heck was going on to make folks so nutso crazy (my words, not the History guys) and you can see both sides and understand that the historical picture is complex.

If you have been around me in real space you know I've been keeping track of the end-timers. I got word on three separate dates, for example May 21, 2011, October 21, 2011 and December 12, 2012. I'll add more as time goes on.

Or not.

Now let me be clear. I cannot not nor will not disrespect a person's belief system. If you believe that the end really is here then ok, I think you have more important stuff to do than read this post.

I can however step back and look at people's behaviors, billboards and more importantly how some folks will behave on May 22, 2011.

It has been trippy. People putting bible tracks in my face. I must look like a class-A sinner cuz I get that a lot. The guy walking through Pasadena carrying a really big cross. The up tick in pride of knowing that you are the chosen and I am not.

The selling of everything you own and your home? Oh, my. That is some serious commitment that might be a bit uncomfortable to sleep with on the 23rd.

I mean, the whole conceptual thing is one big dang gummed wow. I'll tell you one thing; it does bust up a good chunk of writer's block. If you can't get a story or poem out of this then lay down the pen and walk away.

So I have to say that I am on high investigative alert. This is my first end-time so I do want to try and document properly. I'm counting this one as a practice because I have two other dates and I'm sure a bunch more will pop up for 2012.

The camcorder is charged up. I have got paper, pen and a spare camera for back-up. I think I'm ready. I'm set either way. I've got relatives in both places.

No worries here.

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Day Late and A Dollar Short - Videoblogging Week Day 2

Yep. I scrabbled something up. I have stuff but stuff takes time and I don't have it. I have to be okay with that concept. I can't have and don't want the 27 hour day. I'm sleep deprived as it is.

But I do want to put in my two cents about libraries and not just because I invested educational time and effort. We are still humans. We do need contact with other humans that doesn't require an electronic interface.



Don't get me wrong, I have truly benefited from technology. I have been able to prove many a gatekeeper that they were wrong, I can do it.

We still need the verbal in-person communications. We need to see other people that are different from ourselves. We...

Dang. I just heard in my head the voice of Captain Kirk. I don't know why; I'm a Spock girl.

Actually I do respect actor William Shatner because that man is a case study in survival. However life comes to him that is how he takes it. Typecast, breaks the casts, re-invents himself time and again. His career is like the symbol for infinity. I like Kirk but I respect the endurance and talent of William Shatner.

Where was I? Oh, heck. I forgot. I need my nappy time. Well, the video will explain all or not a lick. I gotta wake up early so dig y'all later.

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Betty Wright - Clean Up Medley on the Freakout Extra

Oh my goodness. This was so much fun to watch I might turn around and watch it again. Way back in the day Betty Wright had a hit called Clean Up Woman; a very instructional song about love, attention and opportunistic people willing to recycle your discarded loved one.



Time passes and Betty, who really is a talented woman, re-creates her hit woven with with musical imitations of Patti LaBelle, Tina Turner, Barbara Mason, the O'Jays and Al Green.

I'm petitioning for folks to remember Betty Wright for Women's History Month; the musicians and performers who knew how to command a stage and left you feeling better than when you walked in the door.

No special effects, no gimmicks, just a master making magic on the stage.

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Johnny Guitar - The Film I Missed That I Shouldn't Have

This is a school of my own making by the way. Citizen Kane, Forbidden Planet Pressburger and Powell movies and just about anybody's film noir. I may have heard about the movie Johnny Guitar but if I knew that Joan Crawford was in it I would have passed it by.

Independent of her reported personal life I just don't cotton to her as a film star. She is the rough rider. Crawford is either bullet tough or spooky.

Not seeing this movie was a big mistake. Huge. This is one quirky kick-ass movie. It is not a woman's film. This is a film that has women in the lead and the men are in a subordinate character position. And yeah this is a shoot `em up western.

This is a segment of the film where the characters are introducing themselves to the audience. Check it out:



I gotta tell you this is a full flavor western. These women are playing for land, power and control. It is about the railroad, cattle ranchers and the new blood coming into the community.

Cattle ranchers don't like farmers or city folk. They don't want change. They don't want a railroad depot. What would you do to preserve in amber your way of life?

New kid in town sees the future and is getting ready for it. Nobody is going to get in her way. The railroad is the symbol of change, of money and opportunity. It is a way to obtain power and control.

The two lead actresses are fierce. Crawford and Mercedes McCambridge ain't sleep walking through this one. Each one is pitch perfect in their roles.

When you are not focusing on the story the eye notices the beautiful colors, the intensity of colors in the interior and exterior shots. The land is a bright dirt red. The sky a vibrant blue. I'm going to have to watch it again with the sound off just looking at the composition of the shots and the colors.

When we think about the 1950s and films it is brought up as the time of the happy housewife. The time when the men have the adventure and the women stay home waiting tending home and hearth. The movies of that time reflected that attitude.

Not this one. Yes, there is a love object. Sterling Hayden is a fine actor. Subtle. Sometimes he is there in the moment and sometimes he is the focal point of the scene.

I've been mulling this movie over and over again trying to understand the historical place in time, the one in the western and 1954. Much to think about and contemplate.

Anyway this is as good a start as any to Women's History Month.

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The AFRO American PSA Experiment

Over at my other blog I was yakking about creating a public service announcement for the AFRO American archive. I wanted to show that you don't need a big time advertising agency to make a promotional video about something that you think other folks should know about.

You might need more talent and design skills than I possess. Actually, you don't. We need to stop talking about doing stuff and just up and do it to the best of our abilities.

This is where I am this day.



I really want to let other people like librarians, genealogists, researchers, historians and those of us with an interest in history to know about this resource.
It doesn't happen much anymore but I had students asking for information for more information Sarah Goode like clock work during Black History Month.

Each one of us is a connection to another person's history and by extension to the national history. That history does not end with the election of a president.

I'm going to keep trying to get it right. Because I will not allow a bunch of low hanging fruit inside and outside of Congress to determine who I am and where I came from. I know parts of my history and I'm working on the rest of it.

It will not be erased without a fight.

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