ourtropes

"It might just be that after devoting so much of our energy to the unfulfilled promise of..."

Wed, 04 Apr 2012 02:14:54 -0400

“It might just be that after devoting so much of our energy to the unfulfilled promise of respectability, a politics of deviance, with a focus on the transformative potential found in deviant practice, might be a more viable strategy for radically improving the lives and possibilities of those most vulnerable in Black communities.”

- Cathy Cohen, “Deviance As Resistance: A New Research Agenda for the Study of Black Politics”

theblackhandside: James Baldwin & Dick Gregory: “Baldwin’s...

Mon, 02 Apr 2012 00:20:46 -0400

theblackhandside:

James Baldwin & Dick Gregory: “Baldwin’s Nigger” (1969). Genius.

Corner of E. Baltimore and Caroline St.

Sat, 31 Mar 2012 17:11:28 -0400

Corner of E. Baltimore and Caroline St.

Joel Olson, 1967-2012

Sat, 31 Mar 2012 13:08:49 -0400

Joel Olson, 1967-2012:

Mourning the Loss of a Colleague, Comrade, and Friend

We are deeply saddened by the loss of esteemed activist, writer, scholar, and NCV Contributor Joel Olson, who passed away while on sabbatical in Europe.

Joel was Associate Professor in the Department of Politics and International Affairs at Northern Arizona University in Flagstaff, Arizona, where he specialized in political theory. A noted expert on racial politics and extremist ideologies, he was the author of The Abolition of White Democracy(University of Minnesota Press, 2004) as well as numerous articles and reviews. Joel was working on a second book, entitled American Zealot: Fanaticism and Democracy in the United States, at the time of his death.

During the 1990s Joel was involved with the Love and Rage Revolutionary Anarchist Federation and later went on to form Bring the Ruckus! He was a well-known figure in the anti-racist and pro-immigrant movements in Arizona, working with grassroots groups including Copwatch and the Repeal Coalition.

Joel was a powerful voice in radical politics, a dedicated father, and someone who worked tirelessly through his words and deeds to raise critical consciousness and promote justice in the world. He will be missed by all of us here at NCV, and we ask that you keep him and his family in your thoughts.

White Picket Fences, White Innocence

Sun, 25 Mar 2012 15:07:09 -0400

White Picket Fences, White Innocence:

[N]ational security meant protecting white homes and white property values. Open carry and stand your ground laws merely reinforce this regime by giving white citizens carte blanche to police the “dangerous” racial other. Fifty-seven years after Emmett Till was lynched in the name of white womanhood, the murder of Trayvon Martin…is yet another testament to the terror of white picket fence innocence.

patrickjoust: Baltimore

Thu, 22 Mar 2012 10:55:00 -0400

patrickjoust:

Baltimore

Racially-Approved American Murder: They Kill Because They Can

Wed, 21 Mar 2012 15:51:05 -0400

Racially-Approved American Murder: They Kill Because They Can:

Florida and lots of other states in recent years have noted that too many Black people are getting away with life, and need to be stopped, so they crafted legislation that would allow white fear to trump Black rights to breath air. In such jurisdictions, evocation of white fear now provides the same justification for summary murder as claims of rape of white women did for mob lynchings, back in the day…The racial intention was clear, the results totally predictable. George Zimmerman doesn’t seem like a very bright young man, but even he knew that Florida civil society wanted some Black folks dead.

When predominantly white “activist” types converge on public space downtown, it’s...

Tue, 20 Mar 2012 00:44:28 -0400

When predominantly white “activist” types converge on public space downtown, it’s called Occupy Baltimore (@occupybaltimore), and it’s allowed to continue relatively unmolested by the state for many months. When predominantly black “non-activists” converge on that same space, it’s a “chaotic” “mob” and is met with the full force of the state almost immediately.

"To call #GeorgeZimmerman a monster is too easy. And it lets everyone off the hook. Nah. He’s not a..."

Sun, 18 Mar 2012 17:41:57 -0400

“To call #GeorgeZimmerman a monster is too easy. And it lets everyone off the hook. Nah. He’s not a monster; he’s an American—acting and behaving in the way that DEFINES what it means to be truly American. Let us deal with THAT.”

- Son of Baldwin, for #TrayvonMartin (via sonofbaldwin)

The Cry of Jazz (1959) [ Part II, Part III, Part...

Tue, 13 Mar 2012 22:34:57 -0400

The Cry of Jazz (1959) [ Part II, Part III, Part IV ]

“Whatever happens to you can happen to me. And, in addition, I’m Negro.”

A student turned me on to this today. Edward O. Bland, based on his unpublished book, The Fruits of the Death of Jazz, with a lot of help from Sun Ra and the Arkestra.

Two Visions of ‘Black’ Evil, One White Gaze: Reading Kony 2012 and the Murder of Trayvon Martin

Tue, 13 Mar 2012 16:24:28 -0400

Two Visions of ‘Black’ Evil, One White Gaze: Reading Kony 2012 and the Murder of Trayvon Martin:

While Trayvon Martin is the farthest thing from Joseph Kony, the fear they cause, the criminality within the dominant imagination, and their presumed threats to civilization leads to similar treatment irrespective of their polar existences. If this wasn’t the case, maybe we could see a nationwide push to bring about justice for Martin. In this transformative world, financial contributions would be directed not to an organization that seems intent on supporting military intervention in Uganda; instead money would flow to groups committed to challenging the criminalization of blackness within the United States and throughout the globe. How about a Justice for Trayvon 2012 movement? What about a movement committed to eradicating AIDS or infant mortality throughout Africa? What about one that listens to and works alongside of those already engaged in these fights for justice? Under these circumstances we may actually see accountability, justice, and peace for millions of people.

bradicalmang: Reading the Riots: ‘It was a war, and we...

Tue, 13 Dec 2011 01:48:00 -0500

bradicalmang:

Reading the Riots: ‘It was a war, and we had the police scared’

Rioters speak for the first time about why they took part in the summer 2011 disturbances, the most serious bout of civil unrest in Britain in a generation. Paul Lewis presents the findings of a Guardian and London School of Economics study that reveals how the riots were sparked by poverty, injustice and a visceral hatred of the police

This is a must watch.

Indeed.

“I wasn’t there for the robbing; I was there for revenge.”

"They say, “I love Bessie Smith.” And don’t even understand that Bessie Smith is..."

Tue, 29 Nov 2011 15:04:54 -0500

“They say, “I love Bessie Smith.” And don’t even understand that Bessie Smith is saying, “Kiss my ass, kiss my black unruly ass.” Before love, suffering, desire, anything you can explain, she’s saying, and very plainly, “Kiss my black ass.” And if you don’t know that, it’s you doing the kissing.””

- Clay, from Amiri Baraka’s Dutchman (1964)

Why does every slightly courageous or antagonistic gesture that...

Thu, 10 Nov 2011 00:49:00 -0500

Why does every slightly courageous or antagonistic gesture that comes from the occupy movement have to be immediately accompanied by aggressive stipulations of privilege and racial/sexual normativity? Clearly no one should be attacked by cops. I just can’t stand how this movement’s constant appeals to its own innocence and righteousness seem to simultaneously insist on reinscribing others as appropriate objects of state violence.

“Stop beating students”? Why not, “stop beating (everyone / anyone)” ? Why not, “stop existing,” full stop?

(h/t hungryghoast for the youtube)

Video

Tue, 08 Nov 2011 19:57:40 -0500

Fred Moten: Black Optimism / Black Operation

Thu, 03 Nov 2011 12:07:06 -0400

Fred Moten: Black Optimism / Black Operation:

There is a voraciously instrumental anti-essentialism, powered in an intense and terrible way by good intentions, that is the intellectual platform from which black studies’ disavowal of its object and aim is launched, even when that disavowal comes in something which also thinks itself to be moving in the direction of that object and aim. I’m trying to move by way of a kind of resistance to that anti-essentialism, one that requires a paleonymic relation to blackness; I’m trying to own a certain dispossession, the underprivilege of being-sentenced to this gift of constantly escaping and to standing in for the fugitivity (to echo Natahaniel Mackey, Daphne Brooks and Michel Foucault) (of the imagination) that is an irreducible property of life, persisting in and against every disciplinary technique while constituting and instantiating not just the thought but that actuality of the outside that is what/where blackness is—as space or spacing of the imagination, as condition of possibility and constant troubling of critique.

Critical Ethnic Studies Association

Thu, 03 Nov 2011 11:28:12 -0400

Critical Ethnic Studies Association:

CRITICAL ETHNIC STUDIES II:

Settler Colonialism/Heteropatriarchy/White Supremacy

Social Transformation and the Academic Industrial Complex

Another Major Conference! (Yes)
To Be Held at the
University of Illinois-Chicago,
September 19-21, 2013 (not 2012)

Confirmed speakers (more to come!)

Taiaiake Alfred, University of Victoria

Robin D.G. Kelley, University of Southern California

Vijay Prashad, Trinity College

Jasbir Puar, Rutgers University

Cedric Robinson, UC Santa Barbar

Patrick Wolfe, La Trobe University

Jessica Yee, Native Youth Sexual Health Network

Call for Papers will follow in January 2012

Jared Sexton: People-of-Color-Blindness Jared Sexton,...

Sat, 29 Oct 2011 13:12:21 -0400

Jared Sexton: People-of-Color-Blindness

Jared Sexton, Associate Professor and Director of the Program in African American Studies at UC Irvine, will discuss the concept of “people of color,” highlighting a form of blindness to the singularity of racial slavery internal to its articulation. The first section of the talk charts briefly a theoretical itinerary that reads the radical black feminism of Saidiya Hartman and Hortense Spillers and the political ontology of Frank B. Wilderson against the prevarication regarding slavery and its afterlife in prominent strains of critical theory. The second section attempts to situate Wilderson’s formulation of “afro-pessimism” with respect to the “black optimism” articulated by Fred Moten and other theorists of black performance.

People-of-Color-Blindness: Notes On the Afterlife of Slavery (.pdf)

(via abolitionista)

live helicopter feed over occupy oakland

Tue, 25 Oct 2011 23:49:26 -0400

live helicopter feed over occupy oakland

topaz-dreams: nikonecons: Nina Simone - Revolution. Harlem...

Sun, 23 Oct 2011 12:42:31 -0400

topaz-dreams:

nikonecons:

Nina Simone - Revolution. Harlem Cultural Festival, 1969.

Amazing! Check this NPR piece from 2009 too:

“Remembering Harlem’s Black Woodstock”