Pieces of the Dream: King, The Help and Hollywood’s White Savior Syndrome

by Dax-Devlon Ross

I.

“Shallow understanding from people of good will is more frustrating than absolute misunderstanding from people of ill will.”

MLK, Letter from Birmingham Jail

A few days ago I returned to Dr. King’s “Letter from Birmingham Jail.” The last time I’d read the letter in its entirety was high school. I suppose I was moved to return to the letter by the recent opening of the King memorial. But I also heard echoes of King’s upbraiding of the “white moderate”  in Patricia Turner’s  measured critique of The Help in The New York Times as well as Martha Southgate’s eloquently acerbic Entertainment Weekly cover story. Like Mississippi Burning and To Kill a Mockingbird, the story advances a view of racism and the civil rights era that is incompatible with the facts. That the central function of these stories is to soothe the psyches of good whites who do not consider themselves racists or having benefited from racism is troubling. That they evidence the persistence of the white savior complex in American cinema is nauseating. That they do so at the expense of people who felt and continue to feel the brunt of racial bias is morally inexcusable.

But this has all been exhaustively and perceptively rendered already. What I found myself wondering was why there is such a disconnect in our American realities and how in 2011 this particular story can stir up such dissimilar emotions?

The Sean Bell Verdict

by Dax-Devlon Ross

 

 

The Sean Bell Verdict:

The Dangers of Comparing Apples and Oranges

 

The first thought that came to my mind when I heard about the Sean Bell shooting back in November of 2006 was, not again. My second thought, there must be more to the story. No way a mere seven years after the 41 shots aimed and fired at Amadou Diallo provoked citywide uproar were 50 bullets (paid for, once again, with taxpayer money) going to be aimed and fired into the body of another innocent black man. Not in the new and improved, post-Guiliani New York. The previous mayor was, after all, the purported embodiment of a kind of smug indifference to black and brown life that, for all intents and purposes, created a climate in which one could say it was “open season” on black and brown males with a straight face. Comfortable with my initial impulses, I deliberately, and perhaps willfully, disregarded any news about the trial, including the ruling and the ensuing protests.

 

Why, especially since I am a black man who works and lives in New York City with youth of color, cares deeply enough about social justice to teach and write about it, has himself had his share of run-ins with law enforcement, and is still fairly young, was I not among the loudest voices in support of justice for Sean Bell? The answer lies in the question itself. It is precisely because of all the things that I am, do, believe and have been through, that I have, up to now, recused myself from commenting on or writing about the case. 

 

Albert Einstein once defined insanity as doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results. For me, participating in an uproar over Sean Bell with the expectation that a collective cry of outrage would register in the halls of justice was a doomed enterprise. But it was the automatic comparison people made (and continue to make) between Bell and Diallo that really irritated me. It was, in my opinion, like setting a dinner table when you know good and well that the cupboards are bare.

 

Sean Bell was not Amadou Diallo. He was not reaching for his wallet on an otherwise empty, unassuming street when he was sprayed with bullets. He was leaving one of the seediest strip clubs in New York City at 4 o’clock in the morning. Is that a crime? No. Is it a significant detail that should be taken into consideration? Absolutely. Not because it suggests Bell or his entourage had a proclivity for crime but because the club itself was a known criminal hang out. Is it sad that this was the night before Bell’s marriage? Yes. Is it relevant to whether the offending officers were guilty or not? No.

 

The danger in comparing Bell to Diallo is (at least) six fold. First, it discourages and frustrates any meaningful and constructive dialogue about the facts of the night of the shooting, and how the law was applied to those facts to reach this particular decision. Second, it conflates completely distinct situations into a one-size-fits-all “fate of the black male” narrative, in turn perpetuating dangerous myths about the value of black life. Third, it reinforces a victim mentality among black people. Fourth, it reinforces unwarranted feelings of shame and guilt among whites. Fifth, it abstracts the “police” into an amorphous body of untrustworthy hyper-violent thugs out to get people of color. Finally, it alienates anyone, like myself, who has an opinion that deviates from the norm.  

 

 

•1.      Encouraging meaningful and constructive dialogue about the law and its application.

 

Under our rule of law, the prosecution must prove its case beyond a reasonable doubt. “Beyond a reasonable doubt” means that a “reasonable” person would be convinced based on evidence that the accused is guilty. It is not absolute certainty but it is also not mere uncertainty. This burden of proof exists to protect both jurors and the accused. Is it foolproof? No. Is it a tremendous advancement over trial by fire or by combat? Without a doubt.  In the Bell case, the prosecution’s job was to prove that a “reasonable” police officer in a similar situation would not have opened fire on Bell’s car. The presumption, therefore, is that the cops were justified (re: innocent until proven guilty). In the judge’s opinion, the prosecution failed to prove that the officers were not unjustified. (This is not the same thing as saying the cops were justified.) The judge came to this conclusion based on what he called “significant inconsistencies” in the testimony of key prosecution witnesses. Chief among the factors Judge Arthur Cooperman listed as influencing his decision were:

 

• 1. Prior inconsistent statements by witnesses
• 2. Inconsistencies in testimony among prosecution witnesses
• 3. Criminal Convictions
• 4. Demeanor on the witness stand of witnesses
• 5. Motive witnesses may have had to lie and the effect on truthfulness. (key witnesses had already filed a civil suit against the NYPD for $50,000,000 and were receiving payments from Al Sharpton).

 

Here is where we as a community could use the trial as a teaching tool: Without sugar-coating it, and taking into consideration the judicial system’s record of unequal treatment toward blacks and other people of color, Sean Bell’s friends blew the trial. Leaving aside the motive key witnesses may have had for the moment, the conflicting stories some offered, the criminal records others carried, and the manner in which certain key witnesses conducted themselves on the witness stand all speak directly to the lack of respect, lack of honesty and contempt for authority we as a community are trying to address day in and day out. In a perfect world, maybe prior criminal records would not matter; in our flawed world they do. In a perfect world, maybe a witness’s “demeanor” should not taint the way a judge or jury perceives their testimony; in our prejudiced world, it does. On the other hand, in a perfect world I hope that consistency of testimony always counts. As for the witnesses who filed a $50,000,000 civil law suit several months before the criminal trial even began, I can only scratch my head and wonder who was advising them.

 

            Race and culture impact our judicial system. Anyone who denies as much at this stage of the game probably isn’t worth trying to convince otherwise. However, we do a disservice to the next generation when we tell them the justice system failed Sean Bell because he was black without talking about the company he kept. It doesn’t do any good to preach about the value of respect and honesty when we ignore the role those character traits (or their shortage) played in the outcome of the trial. We need to tell our students that the company Sean Bell chose to keep brought him down in the end. They didn’t pull the trigger and I have no doubt that they loved him, but when they could have risen to his aide in a court of law, their past baggage weighed them down. By addressing all of these issues we not only talk about personal responsibility and integrity, but about the way the law works.

 

•2.      Resisting the Myth of the Meaninglessness of Black Male Lives

 

The Diallo-Bell association, though attractive and momentum building, makes it seem as though black men are just being randomly gunned down in New York City. Speaking as a black man who has had his share of police firearms pointed his way in his 33 years, I steadfastly repudiate this gloomy fate. I refuse to accept premature death as a natural life process. I reject those who say such things like, “Black male lives are meaningless in America.” These false notions only perpetuate a sickness I see in too many young black men (and women) on a daily basis. That their lives are expendable; that they aren’t going to live long anyway; that death (along with prison, poverty, disease and job discrimination) is lurking around the corner. This kind of thinking only feeds a pessimistic world view that we as a community are fighting to put to rest.  It also removes any and all responsibility young people have in their encounters with police. They have choices. They always have choices. But when we tell them that they’re no better than target practice for police pistols, we’re in effect telling them that they have no control, no choice. We can teach them to kill cops with kindness whenever their paths cross; to be polite; to even smile-whatever it takes to allow them feel like they are in control. Whatever it takes to live. 

 

3. Resisting the Black Victimhood Trap

 

There is also a deeper, broader and more historically rooted problem with turning Sean Bell into another martyr: it encourages black people to fall back into a mode of reactionary protest that is no longer an effective tool for social engagement or change. In this day and age the civil rights style protest – the march, the sit-in, the boycott, the picket – tends to reinforce the feelings of victimization that prompted the protest in the first place. More often than not, the modern protest lacks a clear objective and can simply be ignored by the media (MLK’s nonviolence was always aimed at gaining global sympathy via the media) without consequence. At best it allows people to grieve publicly, which is important. At worst, though, it allows people to mistake “symbolic” action (marching for a couple of hours, boycotting for a day) for “real” action that requires prolonged commitment to social justice or, worse, to wind up feeling as though social activism is a waste of time when nothing changes after the protest ends. A constructive solution means coming up with a goal-oriented educational and/or advocacy campaign, organizing it and implementing it, which, to be sure, I’ve seen in pockets. 

 

4. Resisting the White Savior/Victimhood Trap

 

Black people weren’t the only victims of the Bell ruling. White people who care deeply and passionately about social justice were placed in a winless situation as well. In a piece posted on the Huffington Post, a well-intentioned college professor discussed the verdict in her class. After listening to her students (some of whom had never even heard of Sean Bell) discuss the case, she closed the class with the following,   

 

I decided to… test for racism in the Sean Bell case. “Ok, class,” I said, “I have a question for you: would the Bell verdict have come down the same way if the victim of the shooting had been a 23-year old white man?”

The chorus swelled up. “Hell no,” some of them yelled.

And then, Nadine, who today was wearing her hair neatly corn rowed, made the final statement.

“If it had been a white man, the cops wouldn’t have gone after him in the first place,” she said, “and then none of this ever would have happened.”

Amen, Nadine.

Amen.

Huh?! What?! Never in the piece does the professor mention to her class that two of the cops were black or that there is such thing as a reasonable doubt standard or burden of proof or that the Bell case was rife with faulty witnesses. Never. What she does mention, at the very beginning no less, is the Amadou Diallo case. This is exactly the kind of over-simplified politically correct conversation passing for “real talk” that keeps us from confronting race and justice in a way that works towards solutions. This professor reiterates a few limp platitudes and a reputable media outlet passes it off as meaningful commentary. It’s just not as simple as black and white. As well-meaning as the professor was, she only succeeded in reinforcing two dangerous ideas to her class (which was half white and half black). One, white life is more valuable than black life. Two, the average white American has some special purchase to power that black people don’t have and can therefore “save” black Americans by being less racist. Ultimately, it is as important for white people not to buy into the hype of their existential importance as it is for black people not to buy into the hype of their existential insignificance.

White Americans who’ve been raised in the post-civil rights era in particular have learned to walk a fine line when it comes to talking about issues involving race. Some choose to avoid race issues altogether. Some, rather than risk appearing racist in public, quietly take their cues from acknowledged black media personalities like Shelby Steele and John McWorther. Others overcompensate by taking “anti-racism” to such an extreme that black people become either blameless victims or unimpeachable race saviors. None of these approaches removes the stain of white victimhood (i.e. a sense of powerlessness, due to our society’s racist past and politically correct present, with regard to open and candid discussions about prejudice).

5. Mending the Rift between Black and Brown Males and Cops

By linking Sean Bell with Diallo (and others), we only lend credence to the perception – declarations of all officers not being crooked notwithstanding – that the police are indeed out to get young black men. Without arguing whether this is in fact the case, it without questions exacerbates the tensions between young black men and the police by fueling the distrust and animosity within both groups. There is a sense among too many young black men that there is something courageous and justified about standing up to the cops. Courageous is standing up for one’s rights, not simply bucking authority. There is a difference between the two. It’s imperative that we take the time to teach our students the difference. It’s not enough anymore to tell them they have rights or to even hand them a booklet. We need to begin simulating actual police encounters in school. This way if and when one does occur, our students (and the bystanders who often provoke and stoke the unrest) have the tools to diffuse rather than escalate the situation.

6. Inviting Dissenting Opinions

I know I’m not the only one out here who has felt like his opinion had no place in the “Justice for Bell” discussion. Out of respect for the family and the freshness of the wound, I kept my opinions close. I can no longer do that in good faith. There is an opportunity here to move the conversation in a different direction, to educate and challenge, but it won’t get there on its own. We have to be willing to take it there. We can say we invite all opinions to the table, but as long as people don’t feel those opinions will be supported rest assured they won’t be uttered publicly.

In the coming years the Bell trial will undoubtedly become a widely studied case in law schools. They’ll examine the testimony and the applicable law. They’ll take the judge’s ruling apart and put it back together again. Law journals will publish articles about the case. It will be cited in cases yet to come. Middle and high schools have the same opportunity to use the Sean Bell verdict and the passions it incited to challenge students, families and  professionals who work with them to move beyond black and white clichés while it is still fresh on our minds. Otherwise, the Sean Bell shooting will calcify into yet another in a series of black male tragedies that are only thawed to remind us of how far we haven’t come. 

                                               

All Revolutionaries Ain’t Built the Same

by Dax-Devlon Ross

Black Radical:

The Education of an American Revolutionary, 1946-1968

Author: Nelson Peery

Publisher: The New Press, 2007

 

 

 

Black Radical: The Education of an American Revolutionary follows author Nelson Peery’s journey as a political revolutionary in the post-World War II era. The memoir is the sequel to Peery’s award-winning memoir Black Fire, which, among other things, told the story of Peery’s experiences during the Depression and his political awakening as a soldier in the South Pacific. First off, it was a pleasure to read something so earnest, so forthright and unpretentious. If one thing shines through in Peery’s writing  it is his style of presentation. Irrespective of his commitment to revolution, Peery’s writing comes across as belonging to someone who genuinely devoted his life to a higher cause—in this case, serving humanity.

 

One has to appreciate the book’s sense of balance, which, again, says something about the writer. Peery doesn’t just say he is dedicated to the working class or even live his life among the working class — though he had opportunities to live otherwise — he writes his story from the perspective of a common individual (AKA proletariat). It would have been easy for Peery to have written solely about the Communist Party or about the various social movements of the ’40s, ’50s and ’60s. He could have written heroically about himself, inserted himself into the sweep of history; instead he resists the compulsion to self-aggrandize in favor of the simple, quite often unromantic reality of fighting for change. Revolution, the one Peery lived through between 1946 and 1968 — the period the book covers — involves all of the peculiarities and particulars of everyday life: marriages, divorces, childbirths, deaths, prosperity, action, inaction, depressions. To be a revolutionary, according to Peery , is to be a human being willing to hold steadfast to his/her faith in peace and plenty for all, not just a few. In Peery’s world being a revolutionary requires nothing special. Anyone willing to acknowledge the shortcomings of the present — their own included — and continue fighing for a better world anyway (which we all do!) has the revolutionary spirit already in them.

As history, Black Radical offers a ‘People’s History of the Cold War and the Black Revolution.’ The rise of McCarthyism, the rumblings of the civil rights movement, and the apogee of the Watts Rebellion are all told through the humble eyes of a communist who made his living laying brick. This is not a story written from above the fray or in the warm mist of victory. This is a clear-eyed odyssey through the “Black Bottoms” of mid-century Cleveland, Detroit, New York, Minneapolis, and Los Angeles. Through it all we see Peery’s family torn apart, the wilting of his first love, the disintegration of his first marriage, the disappearance of comrades, the painful defection of others and the countless untold casualties of the repressive Red Scare regime. We see Peery bumping against the currents of the historical moment not only as a working person, intellectual and black man but as a serious radical, all of which, consequently, placed him at odds in practically every social setting he found himself in. In Black Radical the whole tangled mess of this nation’s troubled growth spurt from the precipice of fascism to the edge of revolution unravels against a single, simple man’s life, and it is better for it.

 

 

As a meditation on life, BR offers us all important lessons about what it meant to be a revolutionary. It meant keeping your mouth shut even when you’ve been belittled by a condescending ranking white comrade or a bigotted southern cop, getting on a bus to go underground at a moment’s notice, living long periods without a name or a connection to the world you loved, being tracked and trailed by the FBI and its army of informants. We often picture the revolutionary in a romantic light. Doing so feeds our need to believe life can be lived on a grander scale, even if that life is brief and fraught with pain. Revolution, though, is organizing people, educating people, creating consensus among people. It is retreating when your heart longs for a fight, pausing at the critical juncture where the personal risks clouding the political. Revolutionaries bide their time the same way prisoners learn to. They discipline themselves. They don’t waste time pitying themselves. They look forward even when the weight of the past is bearing down on them. In many respects revolutionaries are fanatics and zealots. They must be. History depends on their madness to propell us all forward.

 

At the same time theirs is also, quite clearly, a life worth living; for the revolutionary ideal, the vision of a future free of exploitation, feeds the revolutionary’s spirit  with something that capitalism’s promise of prosperity simply can not. Peery’s life is instructive here. By choosing to be a part of the events of his day — to be accountable for his time here — his life flowed in the direction of the momentous. Leadbelly, Paul Robeson, Malcolm X — these are just a few of the well-known names that pass through the pages of Black Radical. But while Peery acknowledges these heroes respectfully, he does not indulge in sychopantism in order to make himself appear more important by association. He would rather tell us about the nameless and faceless, the few who hold up the wall of resistance while the rest of us wait for the ‘right’ time to join the revolution. In fact, though Peery dedicates this book his late wife, it could easily be read as a memento to a generation of unsung heroes who kept the beat of resistance alive when its pulse teeterd on the brink of flatlining.

 

As literature, BR picks up where Ralph Ellison’s hero in Invisible Man leaves off. The parallels between Invisible and Peery should not be overlooked by any serious reader. Both stories concern thoughtful and articulate young black men from the South who are attracted to the Communist Party. Both stories culminate in a riot. But rather than give up on both his people and the class struggle the moment he feels betrayed by both, Peery chooses to fight on, and to work to build the party and the movement that he wants. Whereas Invisible virtually accepts his disinherited status, Peery refuses anyone else’s claim of right to struggle for human freedom. BR’s response to IM is that communism isn’t the problem. The people who become communists — middle-class whites who choose to fight alongside blacks who have no choice but to fight, for example — are the problem. As an historical footnote, it is important to remember that Invisible Man won the National Book Award at the height of the anti-communist mania. Despite Ellison’s professed allegiance to art above all else (and the book’s literary brilliance), we can not overlook IM’s politics if we hope to understand its critical success. 

 

As a writer, Peery is more than capable. He does not try to dazzle us with his style. His prose is fluid. His stories at once effectively capture his inner emotion and the spirit of the age. When he dons his polemicist cap it is always within the context of the story itself, always in stride.  Peery’s true gift as a writer is to make the complex concrete. He brilliantly bridges the gap between the political theorist and the blue-collar worker as only someone who has lived in both worlds can. Like any skilled craftsman he focuses on the doing the work correctly so that it serves its purpose. All of the bells and whistles that too often mar otherwise important books are, for the most part, left in the bag. As refreshingly straight forward as BR’s style is, however, it is also a luxury: Nelson Peery has a story to tell. He does not have to unearth it or manufacture it or invest it with filler (gatuitous sex scenes, stereotypical signifyin’ scenes, romanticized standing up to the Man scenes) to make up for the life he didn’t lead but would like to tell others about nonetheless.  Unlike many, too many, Nelson Peery actually has lived a life worth writing about.

 

HNIC

Jesse, Obama and the Politics of Race Part I

by Dax-Devlon Ross

“So, who do you think’s going to get the nod?”

“I like Edwards but I don’t know if he can win it all. He’s missing something.”

“What about Hillary?”

“She rubs me the wrong the way. There’s something about her I just don’t like.” 

A week ago yesterday I overheard this conversation. It was between two middle-aged white men. The three of us were the only customers in a Manhattan coffee shop I sometimes frequent after work. Even though I was seated directly between them and they therefore had to talk over me, neither of them asked my opinion. Certainly I could’ve interjected, offered my two cents, but I didn’t.. Their frankness, their nonchalance, attracted me more than anything they actually said. I mean, how could these two seemingly intelligent men seriously engage in a conversation about the presidential election without even mentioning the man standing directly between Hillary Clinton and John Edwards? How could they so blatantly and unabashedly disregard a man who’s raised more money than both of these candidates? I was honestly fascinated. By simply not mentioning Barack Obama’s candidacy they indicated so much more about what still plagues our country than anything they could’ve actually uttered. Given the fact that, to date, Obama has raised more than $50 million dollars ($10 million more than Hillary and oodles more than any other candidate from either party) from more than 150,000 donors, and that he and Clinton are running neck and neck in Edwards’s home state of South Carolina, how on earth could these men honestly believe that Edwards has a better shot at winning – at this point at least – than Obama?  And yet they did. As casually as they’d overlooked me sitting between them, they were even more casual in their dismissal of Obama’s candidacy.

The Twilight of the Gods?

by Dax-Devlon Ross

 Jesse Jackson’s rise, Sharpe James’s fall and the end of the black folk hero

According to biographer Marshall Frady, Jesse Jackson’s rise to preeminence following the assassination of Dr. King didn’t just happen. It was set into motion even before King’s death when Jackson attached himself to King and the SCLC while he was still a divinity student. King saw something powerful and troubling in Jackson. He was brilliantly gifted with something magical, some creative magnetism – a vision and the audacity to evoke it – that drew people in. But once he had someone, King and others noted, he sucked them dry with his compulsive need for attention and adulation-patronage. Frady traces Jesse’s obsessive roots to his childhood, repeatedly referring to him as having grown up an “illegitimate child” living under “another man’s roof.” In turn, he attributes Jesse’s clinging to Dr. King, his hanging off his every word, to his search for affirmation from a father figure. In fact, Frady’s biography is very nearly a psychoanalytic study; it certainly isn’t an intimate portrait. At best it’s a story of a man (perhaps not even that) whose ego was so unrelenting in its pursuit of the affirmation it did not receive early on in life that it pushed beyond the boundaries of conventionality, taboo and appropriateness, and in doing so eclipsed the fear and self-doubt that stands in the way of so many of our aspirations. Hence, the duality. Jesse is both folk hero and false prophet; both man of the people and poverty pimp.

Where are all the Black Novelists?

by Dax-Devlon Ross

A friend sent me this essay from the New York Times the other day. She’d just finished reading my latest book of essays, A Staircase of Words, and she figured it would be of interest to me. It speaks to the challenges writers like myself face on a daily basis. Check it out.

By MARTHA SOUTHGATE

I am a 46-year-old writer of “literary” fiction. I’ve had three novels published – the first for young people, the last two for adults. All have won minor prizes, been respectfully reviewed and sold modestly. I’ve been awarded a few fairly competitive fellowships and grants. The business is full of fiction writers like me. With one difference: I’m black, born and raised in the United States. At the parties and conferences I attend, and in the book reviews I read, I rarely encounter other African-American “literary” writers, particularly in my age bracket. There just don’t seem to be that many of us out there, and that’s something I’ve come to wonder about a great deal. And so I got on the phone with some editors and African-American writers to talk about it.

For many writers, middle age is when they hit their stride. Robert Gottlieb of Knopf, who has been Toni Morrison’s editor for many years, said, “Many very fine writers take time to get there.” Looking at the white American fiction writers who have the most cultural prominence, one quickly sees a large group in their 40s or 50s (Michael Chabon, Jonathan Franzen, Rick Moody, Jane Smiley, Michael Cunningham et al.) who have generally had four or more major works of fiction published. Gottlieb points out that Morrison’s first two books sold adequately, but it wasn’t until her third novel, “Song of Solomon,” published the year she turned 46, that she had a commercial breakthrough. “It was larger and more ambitious, demonstrating a new power and authority, and the world noticed,” he said. “Some careers start with a bang – ‘Invisible Man,’ ‘Catch-22.’ Others take time to find a significant readership – Anne Tyler, Toni. And sometimes I feel that those are the healthiest ones.”

But when you look at the careers of African- American writers, you don’t always see that healthy arc. Ralph Ellison, for example, seemed to lose his way completely after “Invisible Man.” These days, there are only a few names of black authors born in the United States, beyond Morrison’s, that the average reader of serious fiction might easily drop – Colson Whitehead, ZZ Packer, Edward P. Jones. Of these three, only Jones is over 40.

In some ways, the American literary scene is more racially and culturally diverse than ever. A few examples: Of the 21 writers on Granta’s recent Best of Young American Novelists list, six (including Packer and Uzodinma Iweala) are people of color (many colors: black, South and East Asian, Hispanic), and seven were born or raised outside the United States. Indian writers born or educated here, like Jhumpa Lahiri, Vikram Chandra and Kiran Desai, win critical acclaim and big sales. “Girlfriend,” “urban-lit” and other branches of commercial genre fiction by African-Americans have continued to enjoy a boom since the door-busting success of Terry McMillan’s “Waiting to Exhale” in 1992. But black authors writing in an ambitious, thoughtful way about American subjects are harder to find – even when they do get published. Malaika Adero, a senior editor at Atria Books, said: “Literary African-American writers have difficulty getting publicity. The retailers then don’t order great quantities of the books. Readers don’t know what books are available and therefore don’t ask for them. It’s a vicious cycle.”

A History of Conflict: Entry #5

by Dax-Devlon Ross

Nas, Jay-Z and the ties that bind them to African-American Intellectual History

Part II

Note: If you have not been following this series you may want to begin with Entry #1

Deconstructing the Santa-Clausification of Jackie Robinson

by Dax-Devlon Ross

Yesterday Major League Baseball did the right thing, a wonderful thing, in honoring Jackie Robinson. The 60th anniversary celebration of baseball’s desegregation couldn’t have come at a more appropriate time either. Race and sports are yet again at the forefront of public dialogue. With the suspension of Pacman Jones, and the never-ending soap opera surrounding Barry Bonds, the pro athlete is in need of some good P.R. Major League Baseball players and managers stepped up big.

But once the clock officially struck 12, I was left wondering why Jackie Robinson had never felt real to me as a kid; why his name never evoked the stirrings of supreme adulation in my soul like Ali’s and Malcolm X’s. Growing up, Jackie’s was a name I knew because I had to know it. He stood beside Rosa Parks and Martin Luther King Jr. in the pantheon of inviolable, unassailable black deities from the days before technicolor, immortals I dared not question or criticize. Cornel West calls it the “Santa-Clausification” of our heros. It’s when we strip them of their personhood for the sake of symbolism. He originally used the term to describe the public’s perception of Dr. King: the gulf between the Dr. King we learn about in schools and the Dr. King of actually flesh and blood— a mortal man with doubts, a man with an appetite for the fairer sex that drove him outside of his marriage. According to West, it’s only when we begin to deal with our heros as people who walked the earth that we can learn from them and appreciate them and even strive to exceed them. On the flip side, as long as they remain untouchable we remain untouched.

Why Reverend Al Remains Relevant

by Dax-Devlon Ross

As universally reviled as Al Sharpton supposedly is, we can’t seem to get enough of him. In the last two months ‘Reverend Al’ has been in the news non-stop. Two months ago a pair of scientists discovered a link between his slave ancestors and Strom Thurmond’s slave-holding forebears. A month ago he was accused of waging a political turf-war with Barack Obama. Three weeks ago he stood astride Sean Bell’s family at press conferences following the indictment of the three officers accused of murder. Two weeks ago he and Russell Simmons called for yet another end to the violence in the hip-hop community. Last week he became synonymous with the Imus affair after the he grilled the shock jock/serious journalist on his satellite radio program. This past Friday Bill Maher had the Reverend on his popular weekly news program to discuss the scandal. Even the HNIC Report became a hot source for Sharpton news. For more than a week nearly 100 unique visitors per day read a three-week old piece on Sharpton and Obama that had gone unnoticed initially.

The flood of attention on Reverend Sharpton got me thinking: How has this man managed to remain in the public eye for so long?

Rutgers and Racism: A Familiar Refrain

by Dax-Devlon Ross

This isn’t the first time Rutgers basketball has found itself at the center of a racially charged controversy. Just four months prior to C. Vivian Stringer’s arrival on the Piscataway campus in the summer of 1995, the school’s African American student body was doing its best to rekindle the fire of the sixties generation. For weeks the campus became a hot-bed for political activity. Protests. Teach-ins. Fire alarms. Bogus bomb threats. A highway was taken over.