March 26, 2012

My Adidas...

Back in the early 1980s hip-hop icons Run DMC came out with a famous song highlighting their love for Adidas:

I wore my sneakers but I'm not a sneak
My Adidas cuts the sand of a foreign land
with mic in hand I cold took command
my Adidas and me both askin P
we make a good team my Adidas and me
we get around together, rhyme forever
and we won't be mad when worn in bad weather

Run DMC was one of the first hip-hop groups to talk about their love for a particular brand.  Now of course the idea has morphed into larger more expansive discussion or commercialization of consumer culture (or “bling bling”) which includes beverages, watches, cars, etc…Run DMC didn’t intend to, but they helped perpetuate the whole idea of clothes being an integral part of identity, in this case hip-hop identity.  They also helped foster in an era in which hip-hop was seen as not just a musical genre but a lifestyle – one which was quickly coming to a suburb near you.

Fast forward to this Century.  As we know, hip-hop identity has now been incorporated, commoditified and globalized.  Hip-hop culture has become, if not the quintessential American youth culture, then at least one of the dominant ingredients of Black youth culture.  This includes the ever present use of hooded sweatshirts – more colloquially known as “hoodies.”

On Gloria Ladson-Billing’s Facebook page, she posted a link (http://tinyurl.com/cb4fxjd) which highlighted (or perhaps lamented) Geraldo Rivera’s comments about Travyon Martin and his hoodie being as responsible for his death as Zimmerman.  I don’t want to rehash the entire discussion which ensued, but the range of comments went from “disgusting” to “a village is missing it’s idiot” to “blaming the victim” to questions of race and clothing. 

In American society, as Melissa Perry-Harris noted on her show this past weekend (http://tinyurl.com/cvgurpt) , there is an unofficial dress code for Black boys – No colors (especially red (Bloods) or blue (Crips)), no sagging pants (in some cities it is actually “against the law” to do so), and no hoodies – especially up.

Pictured in this blog, are two images of Travyon Martin.  Take a real good look at them.  Are the clothes he is wearing indicative of “typical” young Black culture?  In perhaps the most widely shown photo of Travyon, he’s wearing a “Hollister” t-shirt.  How many brothas in the hood do you know who wear that brand?  In a different photo, Travyon is at a ski resort with his snowboard and goggles.  How many brothas do you know who snowboard?

The answer to those two rhetorical questions, as TourĂ© articulates in his excellent book Who’s Afraid of Post-Blackness is that there are thousands of Black folk, young and old who wear Hollister, American Apparel, Abercromie & Fitch, Lands End or any other brand of clothing.  What is problematic is that we as a culture in our minds eye create stereotypes based on certain types of clothing being worn by particular groups.  And when this happens, we create a sometime deadly equation – perception/stereotype + fashion + race = fear.

One is left to wonder, if Travyon was wearing his Hollister shirt would he still be alive?


**On a personal note, I concur with the President.  Not only IS my son Travyon Martin, so was (am) I.  This is a deeply personal situation, but one which is not even remotely new.  What I see as extremely problematic is that we highlight the injustices whenever cases such as this arise and partake in the usual street theater and feigned surprise at the injustice, but, after a period of time (say when the news cameras and Roland Martin’s of the world leave) we move on back to our normal daily lives until the next time, and the next time.

Emmet Till, Amadou Dialou, Shawn Bell, Oscar Grant, Travyon Martin….

March 19, 2012

On The Playground Is Where I Spent Most of My Days...

This week, in honor of March Madness, I want to focus on collegiate athletics.  Specifically I want to focus on an article from last fall in The Atlantic by noted historian (and biographer of Martin Luther King, Jr.) Taylor Branch (http://tinyurl.com/43s7pzm) and a recently released report from The Institute for Diversity and Ethics in Sports (http://tinyurl.com/834m6of).  Each of these articles focus on the differentiation between white male athletes and their Black male counterparts.  They also identify some of the positive things taking place with Black male athletes. 

For example, while there is a 20% gap in the graduation rates between Black and white male football players (which is identified as the “Graduation Success Rate” or GSR), the overall GSR for non-Black athletes is 40% and for Black athletes, 60%.  This seems to be a positive result that we can take away from athletic participation.  The key, of course, is to identify what Black student athletes receive that their same race non-athletic counterparts do not.  Perhaps it is the mentoring and tutoring programs athletes receive, the rigor (or lack thereof) of course selection, or group think in which being successful on the court or field translates to wanting to be successful in the classroom.  What is known is that while we can celebrate the differentiation between the Black athletes versus the non-athletes on campus, the numbers (40% versus 60%) are still extremely anemic.
As we take a breather from watching the games and examining our brackets hoping for the team we're rooting for to win, perhaps we should also examine the culture of collegiate athletics which breeds what Branch describes as an environment in which the “United States is the only country in the world that hosts big-time sports at institutions of higher learning.”  Why do we celebrate “March Madness” far more vigorously than May madness, otherwise known as Graduation?  Why is it that everyone is getting paid in college athletics, save for perhaps the swim coach, except the student-athletes?  Should we go so far as Branch and infer, either explicitly as he does, or implicitly as most do, that high profile college athletics is nothing more than a “plantation” mentality, meaning the athletes are the only ones not receiving compensation for their efforts?

More importantly than the idea of whether or not college athletes should get paid beyond their scholarships, which I believe they should, the question we should be thinking about as we watch the excitement of the NCAA Men’s Tournament is, how many of these young men (specifically young Black men) will be turning their tassels and throwing their hats in the air sometime in May (or a May sometime in the near future)?  Only one team can cut down the nets at the end of the Tournament, one team gets the confetti and their “One Shining Moment,”  hopefully more than that will receive their “One Shining Moment” walking across the stage and receiving their degree less than two months from now.

March 13, 2012

Broken Glass Everywhere...


Very rarely on this blog have I discussed my dissertation topic or even presented ideas surrounding black boys and public education.  Today I want to raise the issue because of two recently released reports concerning the issue.  The most widely distributed report noted that Black students (especially boys) face more harsh punishment in school than their peers. (http://tinyurl.com/86sfkod) The second report, less published in popular media (such as the New York Times) focuses on Black male student success in college (http://tinyurl.com/7thdcdn).  Both reports focus on Black males and public education, but one, the former, takes the usual deficit model perspective of this particular population, while the second report focuses on the successes of this population.  One is left to wonder why the New York Times focused on one but not the other.

What has been continually problematic in the public discourse is how various groups who have historically not had a voice have been presented in the public domain –i.e. popular media such as the Times and other mainstream publications including Time, Newsweek, the three major networks and three major news channels (CNN, MSNBC, FOX).  One question is why is it more “popular” to continue to talk about Black boys (or persons of color in general for that matter) as a deficit, rather than from a more positive perspective?  In plain language, what is so unique about highlighting faults rather than focusing on successes?

This trend of focusing on the negative is not unique to discussions surrounding Black boys and public education, but arguably has taken over the discourse in the public arena.  Putting the focus on the harmful aspects of student behavior, in particular Black boy’s negative behavior, serves what purpose?  It is as if the Department of Education (who released the report) needed validation for what many of us in public education already knew.  To use a sports analogy, for an example as glaring as this, we didn’t need empirical data for something which obviously passes the eye test with 20/20 clarity.  In other words, walk into any public school in America and look around. What do you see?  If it is a low performing school (especially high school), what you are likely to see is that an overwhelmingly large number of Black male students classified as Special Education, in detention or labeled (either publicly or through the teacher “grapevine”) as “troubled.”  Consequentially teachers, who more often than not do not reflect the diversity of the school where they are employed (see: Ann Ferguson’s excellent book Bad Boys: Public Schools in the Making of Black Masculinity), rather than seek solutions, immediately seek to eliminate the source of their “problems.”

What this ostracism does is create a self fulfilling prophecy for many Black boys.  In contrast, how often do we hear about a teacher, counselor or administrator taking a Black boy under their wing and mentoring them to achieve college acceptance?  Ironically, it takes place more often than people in the public discourse think.  Dr. Shaun Harper’s report on Black boys and college success demonstrates that more research needs to be done from the perspective of what these students can do academically rather than continually placing the emphasis on the low expectations anticipated of them by too many in public education.

March 5, 2012

No Snitching is Not Just a Neighborhood Phenomenon. Teachers are Guilty Too.

Starting with Obama’s Inauguration in 2009, it seems as if every public intellectual, public school teacher and education reformer felt that a new day in public education had arrived..  Gone would be the punitive NCLB law with its coercive mandates and demeaning labeling that goes with those measures.  Although the Administration has advanced new education policy measures, NCLB is still in existence and countless critics have argued that some, namely Race to The Top (RtTT) are as bad, if not worse than the previous Administration’s policies concerning public education.
          The largest numbers of hopeful people were public school teachers.  Public school teachers are overwhelmingly Democratic and their Unions (both the American Federation of Teachers (AFT) and the National Education Association (NEA) contributed greatly to the Democratic Party and Obama’s Campaign.  What have they received in return?
            If one were to do a survey of public school teachers today, they would probably respond that the return on their investment has not yielded much, if anything positive.  In fact, many would say things have gotten worse.  Doing a simple Google search, over the past month the words public school and; “teachers sabotaged” (35k) “teacher bashing” (40k), “teacher failure” (3.4million) and “bad teachers” (3.8million) have shown up in the public discourse more than “Lady Gaga” (144k) and “Whitney Houston” (237k) combined.  What does this mean?
            At the very least, looking at the raw numbers, one can conclude that there is currently a large amount of public discussion centered on the efficacy and influence of public school teachers.  What is problematic is that “good” teachers either self-identified or otherwise, are generally the ones leading the chorus of cries about teachers being mistreated, bashed, sabotaged and labeled failures.  Absent from this discussion are the teachers who perform poorly, do no help students succeed, and do not serve their profession well.  Where are their voices?  When do we actually hear from those who are the ones all of these policy changes and accountability are supposed to flush out?
            Poor performing teacher voices are silent.  They are not the ones who write into the The New York Times (see: Confessions of a “Bad Teacher” - http://tinyurl.com/7bdgt9d and Hard Working Teachers, Sabotaged When Student Test Scores Slip http://tinyurl.com/7cs28ct as two recent examples).  They are not the ones who March on Washington (See http://www.saveourschoolsmarch.org/).  They are the ones who languish behind closed doors, out of the public eye and the public arena, and continue to contribute to the downfall of public education in this country. 
             While it is admirable for “good” teachers to stand up to “being bullied,” they also need to tell the truth.  Not everyone in the profession is as high achieving, motivated and disciplined as those who continue to feel bashed, and those who comment so frequently in the public arena.  Rather than feeling inadequate and less than, perhaps it is time for the good teachers to not just call out those who need assistance, but at the very least, admit they exist.  To deny their existence is to continue to deny the reality of the profession.  It also makes good public school teachers susceptible to feeling that when the public discourse speaks of inadequate and ineffective teachers, that they are talking to you.  It is time to start snitching and start telling the truth.