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tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-74337746489355215072019-01-05T03:31:58.419-06:00Remedial Redneckand not-so-redneck friends . . . Remedial - Adj. 1: tending or intended to rectify or improve; changing for the better. Adj. 2: remedial - tending to restore to health.CWhttp://firstname.lastname@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-7433774648935521507.post-19621580793472269132018-05-09T10:32:00.003-05:002018-05-09T10:32:44.557-05:00Racism, Sexism, Homophobia and Dirty Computer By Guest Columnist
C. Leigh McInnis, Psychedelic Literature

Many of y'all have asked if I've seen Janelle Monáe's Dirty Computer, and, if so, what do I think of it. Since it's easier to send one email rather than several, I'll try to make my response as quick and painless as possible. Monáe's Dirty Computer is an interesting/excellent retelling of a much-told narrative about Big Brother (the Government) working to oppress anyone it deems as "the other" or dangerous for being different and having individualized ideas. (See Brave New World, 1984, George Clinton's video for "If Anybody's Gonna Get Funk Up It's Gonna Be You," etc.) As an older person, I've learned not to discredit something because it is derivative of something older if the new thing manages to present the subject matter in some new way or provide some new understanding of it. That is what Wordsworth meant when he asserted that the job of the poet is to make the familiar unfamiliar so that we can re-recognize it. Or, that is what T. S. Eliot meant when he asserted that the job of the poet is to know the canon of history so that one can, then, carve a unique place for oneself. (Unfortunately, Eliot's "canon" was really, really white, but the gist of his point remains.) That is also what my own Pops indicated to me when I had written this excellent poem in which I called Ronald Reagan "Ron the Ray Gun," and he said, "That's nice son…almost as nice as when Gill Scott-Heron used it twenty years ago." Clearly, I needed to study the canon more. With all of that said, I not only love the cinematography, movingly creative music, and imaginative lyrics of Dirty Computer, I love that she, like Prince, openly and invitingly, builds on the past to create something new rather than just rehashing the old and never adding anything to it. Knowing that Monáe loves and worked with Prince, I find the title Dirty Computer interesting because in The Lyrics of Prince I state that Prince's Dirty Mind (1980), "presents the understanding of sexual thoughts (and other rebellious thoughts) as being normal. In its promo for the album, Warner Bros asserts that 'behind the frequently shocking lyrics is a deep belief that by removing the taboos and allowing youth to express its sexuality in all of its forms, we will achieve a more wholesome society'" (179). I also add:

"Once I got a glimpse of it, looking at the Dirty Mind cover was a revelation. There is this skinny black kid wearing nothing but a raincoat and drawers, looking as if to say, 'If you find something wrong with this picture, there is something wrong with you, not me.' At that moment I realized that there were others out there attempting to find their own voices and identities, which need not be validated by a group. Even at this point, I do not believe that I was asserting the political identity of those blacks who see more to gain by ingratiating themselves to whites. I am talking about the fundamental notion that denying rights to a race is tantamount to denying rights to individuals and vice versa. I am talking about forcing both whites and blacks to deal with blacks on interpersonal levels and thus exploring the totalities of our human self, especially in the arts. This, of course, can only be achieved when African Americans are willing to remove themselves from the white-controlled social and economic institutions and risk the losses of economic gains to retain control of their humanity, which is reflected through their art. This is essential since white Americans have a definite history of not being able to conceptualize the idea of the African-American individual because we, as a country, have not yet begun to deal with Ralph Ellison's Invisible Man and the economic and political invisibility of black people" (17-18).

 So, yes, Monáe's Dirty Computer causes me to think/remember all those thoughts and emotions, but I never think that she is merely copying or imitating Prince in the way that my Pops never saw Prince as merely copying or imitating Little Richard, James Brown, Jimi Hendrix, or Smokey Robinson. As Prince was learning from the past to craft new ideas for the current problems rooted in past ills, Monáe is doing the same. Rightfully, folks will compare Dirty Computer to Beyoncé's Lemonade, but I would offer that they also remember Andre' 3000's videos for The Love Below for the visual and lyrical similarity as well as the videos from Janet Jackson's Control and Rhythm Nation 1814 albums as conceptual counterparts. Of course, from a film perspective, Dirty Computer is the niece-child of Prince's The Beautiful Experience, featuring Nona Gaye as one of his love interests, and distant cousin of his Love 4 1 Another. Like Prince and many others before her, Monáe shows sex and sexuality as socio-political canvases and tools. In short, if you think that most of Prince's "sex" songs are exclusively about "sex," you just haven't been paying attention. (Since I don't have time to explain all of that, here is a link to an online excerpt from the chapter "Sex," from The Lyrics of Prince.) Monáe has chosen to stand firmly on Prince's use of sex/sexuality for the intersection of how America's major issues of race, gender, and class are rooted in the white supremacist need of heterosexual white males to dominate (which can mean to exploit, fetishize, and/or destroy) everything that is not a heterosexual white male. More specifically, Monáe has decided to ask her patrons just how "woke" they really are by asking them if they understand and agree with the notion that the same evil that creates racism and sexism is the same evil that creates homophobia? As such, the storyline of Dirty Computer does not separate racism and sexism from homophobia. Being of a different race, being of a different gender, and being gay are all viewed as equally evil by the villainous government entity that is seeking to "cleanse" or make "normal" all the "dirty" people for being, again, of "the othered," be it racial, gender, or sexual preference or orientation. To Monáe's question, I must reply with, god-help me, Marlon Wayans' answer that I might just be "woke-ish" but not quite woke.

 Before I address my being "woke-ish" and not quite "woke," there are four songs/videos from Dirty Computer that I'd like to address briefly as the film's highlights. The visual for all of these songs and the entire narrative is stunning. The use of color and camera angles, especially how colors and camera angles represent singular emotions and ideas and how the blending of colors and the shifting of camera angles represents the blending, blurring, and shifting of emotions and ideas, works well to punctuate the narrative. Next, Monáe is an excellent poet/storyteller. Even when the music doesn't always move me, her lyrical imagery always paints a clear picture of why I should be interested in a particular song's message. "Crazy, Classic, Life" is funky, soulful, bouncy, and soft simultaneously. It allows one to dance, rock, sway, bob one's head, or just escape within the groove. And, when she states, "I'm the American dream, not the American nightmare," she is making it clear that this entire body of work is not her making a plea to be accepted by the establishment but her declaration that those who are unable to see her and the entire rainbow of humanity as "normal" and "beautiful" are the ones who are perverted and should be reeducated. Next, "Screwed" is a straight nod to the 80s—visually, musically, and lyrically—combining funky guitar, bouncy beats, and undercover socio-political lyrics in the vein of Nena's "99 Luftballons" or Prince's "Party Up," "Sexuality," or "Ronnie Talk to Russia," especially when Monáe chants, "See, if everything is sex/ Except sex, which is power/ You know power is just sex/ You screw me, and I'll screw you too," which is a really interesting way to understand Aretha Franklin's "Who's Zooming Who?" which essentially means "who's fucking who?" which was always meant to be understood literally and metaphorically as it relates to gender and traditional politics if one also understands what Franklin is really discussing in her song "Respect," which is a cover of Otis Redding's "Respect" with all of its gender and traditional politics. (So, yes, children, songs about sex are not always just about sex, especially when there is a creative artist working.) As for "Make Me Feel," if you know that I'm a fan of da Funk, you don't have to ask why I like this song. Either you are funky or you ain't. And, if you don't like "Make Me Feel," then you just ain't funky. Let's move on. When one combines "Screwed" with "Pynk," which is probably the most creatively metaphoric and soulful song of the project, one realizes that Monáe is working within what I call the Prince sexual trope where sex becomes a metaphor for engaging, understanding, critiquing, and offering a solution to the neurosis of humanity by realizing that the neurosis is often, not always, connected to one's narrow or perverted notion of sexuality or human sexual nature. First, "Pynk" opens—pun intended—by comparing the vagina to other body parts and other aspects of life that are essential for survival. Then, after asking how they can make the best parts of life "last forever," Monáe provides "'Cause boy it's cool if you got blue/ We got the pynk," which is a really interesting answer/resolution/solution for a couple of reasons. On the one hand, this is the classic notion that men and women need each other. Monáe is working, symbolically, within the notions of blue being the color of male and pink being the color of female. As such, if "you/males" got the "blue," then "we/females" got the "pynk." Thus, Monáe seems to be asserting a similar point that I stated of Black Panther that

"viewers learn that the natural state of male and female energy is not to be at war with each other but to supplement and complement each other so that duality becomes holistic human existence, which can function to reduce domestic violence and sexist hiring and promotion practices while also adding even more brainpower to reduce ills, such as global warming, the growing amount of food deserts across the United States, and the absence of economic infrastructure in inner cities."

And, yet, on another level, with much of the imagery of Dirty Computer showing same-sex relationships as normal, even the scenes of "Pynk" show Monáe's character with a female lover, and with Monáe recently proclaiming herself as pansexual, the notion of "pynk" being the healing agent to "blue" connects with and tropes that mystic and healing notion that Prince often gave to the female characters in songs, such as "Lady Cab Driver," "Anna Stesia," and others. Monáe, building on Prince' sexual trope legacy, is presenting pynk, the vagina, or its essence as something physical and metaphysical. The vagina becomes a symbol of woman or womanhood as the womb/creation of humanity and as humanity's primary healing/salvation agent as well. But, this healing can only occur when humanity is made aware of the power of the pynk. Further, for Monáe, this awareness can only occur when people relinquish what she views as their rigid, prescribed, and man-made notions of sexuality. In contrast, a pansexual is one who views all human behavior as being based on sexuality and is one who engages sexual activity with people of any sexual orientation or gender identity. So, a pansexual is not limited/restrained or made "blue" by limited/restrained gender identities, which is also portrayed in "Make Me Feel" when Monáe switches back and forth between male and female dance partners, ultimately ending sandwiched between them in her own pansexual ecstasy. Additionally, by understanding that the term "pansexual" has its etymology in Pan, the Greek God of "music," "sex," and "ecstasy," the Prince connection seems even more clear as, of course, Prince, for much of his career, presented himself as a "raceless" and "genderless" highly sexual being. Unlike Michael Jackson who often presented himself as an "asexual" being until he was accused of child molestation, Prince, like the Greek God Pan, was a very sexualized being who combined sexual pleasure and spiritual pleasure in ways that failed to conform to the sexual confines of others. And this is the rub for Dirty Computer, which causes me to wonder if I'm just "woke-ish."

Because "Screwed" and "Pynk" are before "Make Me Feel," viewers understand that "Make Me Feel" is a part of the larger narrative's discussion of otherness. "Make Me Feel" is the apex of the racial, class, and sexual liberation and utopia to which Monáe has been working and that the government agency of the narrative has been seeking to locate and "cleanse." To the funkiest groove of the entire narrative, Monáe's character pimp strolls, with her female partner, into this ambi-racial and ambi-sexual utopia like she's the ish and like this is what life is always meant to be. In addition, it seems that being funky, liberated, and tolerant are the only requirements to access Monáe's utopia (Uptown, the New Breed, or the New Power Generation). At this moment in the narrative, she is as comfortable, fearless, and unapologetic as Prince is on that Dirty Mind album cover. And to make sure that viewers all understand completely what she is doing, Monáe throws in a "Good God, I can't help it" to make it clear that she is troping the same musical and metaphorical tradition that Prince was troping from his mentors. Now, with all of that firmly established on top of this hot as fish grease groove, Monáe poses one final question to viewers like me. Can I accept racism, sexism, and homophobia as the same types of evils? And, that's where I may just be woke-ish.

From the time I was eight until now, I never saw Prince as a gay man, and I have no reason as to why I never saw him as a gay man. I don't know if it was because I was already inundated with the gender-bending of glam rock, but I never once looked at Prince and thought "gay." Interestingly, enough, the only thing that raised an eyebrow for me was in 1991, after years of having other people ask me about his sexuality, when Prince grinded on the floor with his male dancers and I thought, "Okay, I get how someone could think dude is gay," but, by then, ironically, Prince was actually moving more toward the traditional/stereotypical persona of masculinity. Yet, what I didn't realize until my late twenties and early thirties, by reading Prince fanzines, such as Uptown and Controversy, and fansites, such as Housequake.com and Prince.org, is that a good number of people found their sexuality though Prince's challenging the sexual norms of masculinity. While I was just seeing a dude, particularly a black dude, simply not allowing anybody to tell him what to do or how to be, others, particularly those of the LGBTQ community, were seeing someone say it is okay for them to embrace, love, and be themselves openly. (Prince was for many of his generation of the LGBTQ community what Sylvester was for many of his generation, and I never made or saw the connection even though I knew who Sylvester was. It was impossible for most black folks not to know who Sylvester was because "You Make me Feel (Mighty Real)" was all over black radio, black clubs, and the skating rinks.) Still, although I never saw the connection between Prince and Sylvester, I can't deny that others saw the connection as it has been one of the prevailing themes of articles written about Prince since his death, and probably half the articles/talks at the Prince from Minneapolis Symposium at the University of Minnesota addressed some aspect of Prince's impact on or relationship to the LGBTQ community. So, I don't find it odd that at her most creative moment, through which she is also channeling and connecting with Prince, one of Monáe's major themes is fighting against the oppression of same-sex relationships or connecting the struggle of the LGBTQ community with the struggle against racism and sexism.

Dirty Computer

As an artistic product of the Purple Funk, Dirty Computer's connecting racism, sexism, and homophobia causes me to question whether I am a hypocrite because I will sign a petition by poets that denounces the legal discrimination/oppression of someone based on sexual preference even though I still view the male-female relationship as the normal romantic relationship. And, to be clear, I don't take my words lightly because I understand that the connotation of my statement is that same-sex relationships are "not normal," which is the way of thinking from which Monáe is attempting to liberate me. According to Slavoj Zizek's "Courtly Love, or, Woman as Thing," when it comes to sex, both genders and all sexual orientations are caught in hierarchical dilemmas posed by the bottomless inhuman partner that dwells, Oz-like, behind the curtain of the lover's image; that is, the Real. According to Zizek, "The problem is that once the relationship between the two sexes is conceived of as a symmetrical, reciprocal, voluntary partnership or contract, the fantasy matrix which first emerged in courtly love remains in power." Thus for Zizek and Monáe, thinking of romantic relationships as being dependent upon gender or gender identities is a false and oppressive construct or structure rooted in women being submissive to men and all other constructs or structures being deemed as flawed or perverted. This concept is also thoroughly explained in works, such as Sandra Gilbert and Susan Gubar's "Infection in the Sentence: The Woman Writer and the Anxiety of Authorship," Judith Butler's "Imitation and Gender Insubordination," and lots of insightful writing by bell hooks. Beginning with Zizek and navigating my way through Gilbert, Gubar, Butler, hooks, and Monáe, this is complicated for me because I currently don't attend church because I have yet to be able to reconcile the notion that a perfect God can create an existential universe, which simply means that my notion of the male-female relationship as the "normal" romantic relationship is not based exclusively on religious notions. Still, this is a line that Monáe and others have drawn in the sand. If racism is bad and sexism is bad, why is not the oppression of someone because of their sexual orientation not equally as bad? The conundrum for me is that I agree that all three acts of evil/oppression are equally as bad, but I still hold to the structure that the male-female relationship is the only relationship that can perpetuate humanity through childbirth. However, I must face the hypocrisy/irony of my desire never to have children because being a writer was more important to me. Additionally, for me, one of the two greatest issues facing African people, along with white supremacy, is too many people having babies they don't want or can't afford. So, it is ironic that I'm basing my notion of the male-female relationship as the "normal" romantic relationship when, again, I think that life would be better if less than half the people on the planet had children. So, in raising the issue of same-sex relationships in this creative manner, Monáe has done her job as an artist, forcing a recipient to think more thoroughly about one's notions regarding the issue. Unfortunately, while challenging art is often the most useful art, it is usually not the most popular art. As James Baldwin asserted, love has never really been a popular agenda because most people don't really understand the definition of love. Yet, this doesn't answer Monáe's ultimate question. And, at the core of Monáe's question is the demand for receivers of her art to contemplate what actually defines homophobia. Further, is someone like me, who thinks it is wrong for anybody to be legally denied a marriage license or to be legally denied service of any type simply based on one's sexual orientation, a hypocrite because I still have the notion of male-female romantic relationships as the norm? Can I fight against the socio-political oppression of the LGBTQ community while simultaneously perceiving the male-female romantic relationship as the norm? Is my position the equivalent of a white person saying, "Well, I think that black people should have legal rights even though I think white people are the norm of humanity"? And, if anyone thinks my comparison of the two ideas are extreme, consider a great line from the film, Assault at West Point: The Court-Martial of Johnson Whittaker in which the so-called liberal white person says to the black person he is helping, "I want you to be free not equal." While I continue to ponder this issue, I appreciate someone like Monáe for using her art to have people think about how these issues connect and relate. We may not always agree. But, if I don't, at least, consider the relationship of racism and sexism to homophobia, I can never really consider just how enlightened or "woke" I am when it comes to treating others as I want to be treated. What I don't want to be is someone who mindlessly moves to music without thinking critically about the work's message. Fortunately, Monáe is the type of artist who makes that almost impossible to do.

--- About  C. Leigh McInnis

CWhttp://email@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-7433774648935521507.post-56516580890776081032016-11-13T15:46:00.000-06:002018-05-09T09:58:37.379-05:00Pinning Down THE Truth is a Slippery Notion . . .

Akin to holding onto a greased pig while applying lipstick

It's a messy, sloppy operation that's seldom successful. Facts now, provable facts, those are not quite so hard to come by in this age of technological advance, recordings of both audio and video on nearly every phone, and a phone on nearly every person.

Which is why I'm musing, as I have been for several years, about facts being so hard to come by while white lies, half-truths, outright lies, exaggerations and fantasies flood the media (and I mean that in the widest sense of the word) in such total abundance.

A lie gets halfway around the world

before the truth has a chance

to get its pants on.

 -- Winston Churchill

Has the world turned upside down, or have we just reverted to long held human stock-in-trades like rumor and whisperings? Something's wrong when you can't post satire on FB without a flood of "likes" and "dislikes" from people who seem to have no clue that they are reading satire, unless you tell them so at the top (and even then, some folks don't read carefully enough to catch the disclaimer at the top).

I find I am not alone in wondering about these things, but what is in short supply is a call from the heartland for fact-checking and truthfulness in journalism, news people and even a modicum of the same from bloggers and outliers in the new industry. I won't ask why we shouldn't have it in the fake-news/clickbait industry  http://nymag.com/selectall/2016/11/can-facebook-solve-its-macedonian-fake-news-problem.html  (it's their livelihood, as slimy as it may be), and I won't ask why w shouldn't have it from the partisan liars who spend their time trying to control the rest of us with their spider web spin.

According to Nicholas Kristoff,

You may not realize that our Kenyan-born Muslim president was plotting to serve a third term as our illegitimate president, by allowing Hillary Clinton to win and then indicting her; Pope Francis' endorsement of Donald Trump helped avert the election-rigging.

You perhaps didn't know that Clinton is a Satan worshiper at the center of "an international child enslavement and sex ring." Or that Chelsea Clinton isn't Bill Clinton's daughter, but a love child of Hillary's by another man — or that Bill has his own love child with a black prostitute.

Oh, the scoops we miss here at The Times!

I hope no one missed the fact that Kristoff was pointing out the fabrications, not promoting these views - if you did, stop reading right now - you're a hopeless idiot.

I just want to know where the fact checkers are among the main stream media, and more than that, among the people as a whole (who consume the click-bait and listen to the spinmeisters as though they spoke the words of God).

I'm about to say something a wee bit partisan but factual, in my own observations (that I could prove if pushed to waste a fair amount of time). The big lies are easily more numerous and virulent on one side than the other, in spite of being on both sides and also with those whose only interest is in their own self-enrichment.

I understand that Facebook is grappling with a "fake-news"  sickness onsite, but I don't expect to see a cure, or even much of a symptom treatment from such a bastion of self-enrichment. The green stuff will win, in the end, IMO.

I have tried to address this in my own small way by fact checking some of the more outrageous posts my friends and family put up. I even confronted people on my side of the political spectrum. I had some success with the latter, but absolutely none with the former. They didn't care if it conformed with the facts or not, they didn't even care when I was able to show them that the facts were entirely different. (The Pope endorsed Donald Trump for President? Really now, you can't be that dumb or naive.)

Thus, this became time-consuming and mostly fruitless work and I finally gave it up in despair. One caveat, I do admit to posting at least twice during this election season without being sure of my source or facts. I was called on them by a fellow progressive in one instance, and a conservative friend in another. In both I did a mea culpa. However, afterwards, I checked into the item my conservative friend called me on and found that it was, in fact, quite accurate, other than a slightly misleading headline. Oh, well. She was impressed by the mea culpa, not so much with the post script I used to follow up.

Another friend grandly informed me on FB that I KNEW certain things (that he was saying were true). I refrained from replying, because I couldn't find a reply that was not angry and/or insulting, and I do like the man. Social media can be hell sometimes, when a person you like and respect in many ways shows their hidden arrogance. Being unable to accept that another person has a sincere belief that differs with you own is the giveaway. I am sometimes stunned when other people of my acquaintance vocalize wild tales accepted without a handful of salty scepticism, never mind grains of salt, but I do try to respect their honesty and sincerity, unless I know them to be liars or nut-balls.I can't quite wrap my mind around that level of disrespect to me from a person I respect and like, in spite of our diametrically opposed views.

I guess I am just moaning and whining, for lack of any concrete ideas for a cure for this sickness, and I do think it is sickness. All I can do is complain and confront (when not too weary of the fruitless arguments and sad disrespect) and pray for guidance and strength. Hope y'all out there are stronger and better equipped than I, or better prayers than I. Peace.
CWhttp://firstname.lastname@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-7433774648935521507.post-15696386973316892002016-09-27T12:05:00.001-05:002016-09-27T20:53:11.413-05:00Trump has won me over . . . to Hillary

Hillary, OMG. I have disliked Hillary nearly forever. At least since Bill was running the first time, when I first became aware of her. I've never made a secret of it, but didn't talk about it much until she ran against Obama.

I find it strange that I am now so committed to voting for her, but even stranger, I find a lot of sympathy for her as Trump tries to bully her, lies about her (even to her face), calls her ugly names and just generally acts like the little boy in the 3rd grade who loved to throw sand in everyone's face.

He's the little rich kid who bragged to everyone about what he had that they didn't, who tore up and threw away the things he had that others would have cherished and cared for, who cheated at games and then bragged about winning so often. I've known people like that, and he just seems to be on a slightly grander scale, but not one whit better, just richer.

This started out being about Hillary, but now it's about Donald. I have also disliked him since I first became aware of him, and I find that I dislike him more and more the longer I have to listen to him. I even hate the little finger "tics" that he has - all the little waggling, zero-ing, pointing, raising his forefinger, his fingers are everywhere. They say the Italians speak with their hands; Trump speaks with his tiny little fingers, to help his tiny little mouth, all of which look undersized, probably because the man who regularly calls women pigs and slobs, and other disparagingly things is . . . uh . . . rather large. I might not think much about his weight and looks if he didn't call women on their weight and looks ALL THE TIME.

Hillary looks wonderful when compared to the great Donald. She looked great last night and left the Donald sniffling - he really needed a tissue (make that a box of tissues). Nothing like repeating over and over that another person has no stamina, sniff, sniff, really, no stamina, sniff, snort, sniff. I'd be sorry to make fun of someone for having a cold or allergies if he hadn't spent so much time ranting about Hillary's health. Serves him right.

Last night she was in control and he was just low-energy. Last night and every day and night, he makes her look so good, I'm beginning to see a paragon of virtue! I remember why I disliked her (the Iraq war, the Patriot Act), but then I listen to the Donald's word salad and invective, weigh it out and there's no doubt in my mind.

And to those people who are going off about how "smug" she looked at the first debate - you are so blinded by your prejudice against her that you can't see it for what it is. If someone lied about you to your face, made fun of you, insulted you and called you ugly names, would you slap or punch them, have a hissy fit or laugh it off? Your reaction would say something about you and your character, and I liked what her reaction said about Hillary's character last night.

If you hate what I said and hate Hillary, try to stop and get past the visceral joy you have at getting back at the establishment, and make sure you're not hurting yourself instead of the establishment you hate. I understand that joy, in a way, but I'm trying to give up self-destructive fun.

Unfortunately, this reminds me of my son who was failing 4th grade for not doing his assignments. When I went to the school for a meeting with his teacher, we talked and then she took me to his desk to look at what was in the storage space. Lo and behold, there was all his work, done but not turned in. We were both shocked - this is not what she thought she was going to show me. When I questioned him, he told me how bad the teacher was, how mean, and how much he disliked her. He seemed to think he was getting at her (and in a self-defeating way, he was), but all the real harm he was doing was to himself. She was annoyed, he was failing.

Be careful that your dislike of someone's personality doesn't persuade you to harm not only yourself, but also your country. Vote your conscience, and if your conscience is telling you the opposite of what mine is telling me, then so be it, just don't sit on your butt and let it happen around you.

Lastly, if he wins and you have buyer's regret, I'll probably be here to say "I told you so." I'm not too big a person for it.

Get out there and vote (and own it if you screw it up)!

CWhttp://firstname.lastname@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-7433774648935521507.post-51774135443209525262014-06-25T12:21:00.000-05:002014-06-26T09:53:14.026-05:00Tea Party Discharges Weapon Into Own Foot

AP

And the weapon was....the Chris McDaniels campaign.

Is is just me, or does last night's squeaker appear to have been tipped just enough to go over the edge by all the loud complaining and railing by the Tea Party camp about "watching" for Democrats crossing over to vote for Cochran, and their threatening (and yes, that was the tone) to send Poll Watchers to cut off any Democrats they could "see"?

From where I sit, it looked a lot like the Tea Party played Pogo and said "We have met the enemy... and he is us". After the massive amounts of money spent by filthy-rich industrialist elitists (most born with that silver spoon in their mouths and intent on keeping it there) and the influx of populist outside rabble-rousers (bankrolled by the above-mentioned filthy rich) like Sarah Palin, Rick Santorum and even the pitiful Chuck Woolery (of long-past Gong Show infamy), they still couldn't pull if off because the face behind the mask began to show through at the end.

Black folks were pretty easy to spot at the polls, and for some reason resented having someone watch for them and threaten to confront them as they tried to vote. I don't think the significance of this year being the 50th anniversary of Freedom Summer has escaped anyone's attention, except maybe the Tea Party faithful, and there could be a reason for that. I'll leave you to decide.

Wikimedia

Cochran supporters got a little complacent last time, but even the numbers of Thad's supporters who didn't turn out last time were not enough to help him over the TP enthusiasm hump or the he's-too-old-and-too-DC hump, and he made the smart move and called for reinforcements. I wonder if the establishment Republican party has the sense to pay heed and actually invite and welcome minorities into their party (and not just make polite but weak noises in that direction)? Looks like they might have a little gratitude for the people who saved their bacon in the primary, if not the general election (which is still well in the clouds, aka in the air).

Ah, the joys of a Mississippi summer (during election season)!

Update June 26, 2014: Signs of paying heed from the GOP. At last, a reasoned and reasonable response.

CWhttp://email@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-7433774648935521507.post-6476028300395499922014-06-16T13:52:00.001-05:002014-06-16T14:05:11.070-05:00Stonekettle Station: Absolutely NothingAwesome blog, awesome blogger. Better said than I could have done, with a background of experiences I've never had. the most SOMETHING in a blog entitled "Absolutely Nothing"

I have a simple question, (his version of the same question is better and much more nuanced), but mine is simply - if Brits are all over Tony Blair, why are Americans not all over Bush/Cheney et al? Every bit of the profanity he put in this blog post is well-placed and well-deserved; I probably would have thought some of it and kept it to myself, but I'm glad he didn't.

Stonekettle Station: Absolutely Nothing: Tragically, all we've fought for in Iraq, all that 4,500 American lives were shed to gain, is on the cusp, potentially, of vanishing. - Mit...CWhttp://firstname.lastname@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-7433774648935521507.post-67178414082545382162014-03-09T12:52:00.005-05:002014-03-09T12:52:51.206-05:00Poem Honoring Chokwe Lumumba
"Free the Land Man (For Chokwe Lumumba)"

by C. Liegh McInnis

Just like a river that knows where it's going,

your feet have kept you like the Wise Men

headed for the North star.

There was no fat cat with pockets full enough.

There was no pot hole deep enough.

There was no curve, bend, or speed bump in the road

to keep you from arriving at your destination.

You are a steamroller grinding angry asphalt into smooth street,

making rough roads ready for revolution to ride to town.

You are the cement foundation upon which we build our freedom house.

You are the forest of fruit from which we may find

nourishment from the fangs of poverty.

You are the fortified fortress that protects us from the vandals of industry.

You are the ocean of hope in which we swim to safety.

A Detroit demolition man destroying the dragons of self-hate so

that self-determination can fertilize the community into a bouquet of spring flowers.

Better than Superman,

you be Free-the-Land Man.

Able to leap skyscrapers of injustice in a single bound

and slam dunk the lies about us through the hoop of truth.

Able to slay slimy Judges with a lightning rod of litigation

Faster than a speeding bullet,

you erased the "t" from can't, making us a city of can.

And stronger than a locomotive,

you broke through the barriers

that have kept us herded like cattle,

unshackling our dreams from the dungeon of Dixicrats

A liberation lawyer willing to lumberjack the liars

who attempt to lay waste to the lives of rainbow children.

More than a mouthpiece for a moment,

You welded words into stainless steel

to slash the noose of oppression from the wretched of the earth.

Even when bad times became storm clouds blocking the sun,

you were a lighthouse leading people to the land of liberty.

Whether it's planting proper seeds into your sons

so that they can sprout into life-giving trees,

or being an architect for your daughter

giving her the blueprint of properly engineered manhood,

you are a brick wall that protects all families

from the wolves, thieves, and pimps

that lurk like fungus in the pit of the night.

One of the Chief Captains of the Justice League of Super Negroes—

more amazing than Spiderman, you be Anansi the word weaver

spinning webs to stop the wicked from stampeding our sanity,

more fantastic than the four,

our shining Dark Knight of Democracy

freeing the land from monstrous mercantile Magnetos.

When my mild mannered mayor removed his suit there was

MXG on his chest and instead of a Batsignal

when we needed him we simply shined NAPO in the sky

but the feet-washer that he was kept him Assembled among the People

our own Afro-American Robin Hood

who was more Daring than those Mississippi Devils

Now that your spirit finally became too big for your body,

you are a pulsar that will forever illuminate our path to justice.
CWhttp://firstname.lastname@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-7433774648935521507.post-33960573218653328262013-06-03T12:01:00.003-05:002013-06-03T12:06:28.570-05:00Uncensored Eudora Welty

 The Clarion <s>Liar</s>…err…the Clarion Ledger (my bad—old habits die hard.) has printed the uncensored version of Eudora Welty's "Where Is the Voice Coming From?," which is Welty's reaction to the assassination of Medgar Evers, and y'all can read it at the Clarion Ledger. I've been aware of both versions of Welty's "Where Is the Voice Coming From?" for years. It's a good story, but not my favorite by Welty. My favorite Welty story is "A Worn Path." However, "Where Is the Voice Coming From?" excellently captures the rage and neurosis of Byron De La Beckwith, but I have always felt that the story also makes Beckwith's actions too singular or individual. So, on the one hand "Where Is the Voice Coming From?" is another example of Welty's brilliance with language. ("Why I Live at the PO" is another story that showcases her wonderful use of the vernacular.) Yet, by focusing so much on Beckwith's singular or individual rage, Welty seems to pardon institutional racism. Ultimately, even the title of the story, "Where Is the Voice Coming From?" has an air of what James Baldwin called "selective naiveté" in that it almost completely makes Beckwith's attack a singular or individual act rather than showing Beckwith's action as a symbol of the legal and institutionalized racism that gripped Mississippi, the South, and America. We know that Beckwith's actions were coordinated, to a degree, with help from information gathered by the White Citizens Council and the Sovereignty Commission and that Beckwith understood, because of the manner that white supremacy permeated every aspect of Mississippi, that there was no jury in 1963 that would convict him. So while I like the story for Welty's ability to expose the raw rage and neurosis of Beckwith, especially through her wonderful troping of his language, I've always felt that the story also seems to shift the responsibility of the crimes against African Americans from the states and nation to individual loose cannons, which was not the case, unless we agree that the vast majority of white Southerners and white Americans were a collection of loose Jim Crow cannons. Of course others have countered that Welty is making Beckwith an allegorical figure for the raging flame of Mississippi racism, and while I don't see/read him being presented entirely that way, I give her credit for being willing to have the conversation in 1963. And what's even more ironic or hypocritical is that the New Yorker—the bastion of white liberalism—forced her to change the names of places and people so as not to offend and enflame white southern and white American sensibilities. Once, again, the truth of white supremacy, even in poetic or fictionalized form, is deemed too radical or too militant to publish. That's…just…funny… If you have never read either version, here is a chance, and feel free to tell me what you think. Take care.
CWhttp://email@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-7433774648935521507.post-77845717288704195652013-04-10T09:16:00.001-05:002013-04-11T09:35:01.553-05:00A Brief Review of Brad Paisley's "Accidental Racist" (featuring LL Cool J)

by C. Liegh McInnis

Brad Paisley's song "Accidental Racist" is some of the most racist/hypocritical crap I've ever heard. I guess he doesn't realize that being a proud "Rebel son" is being proud of the history of racism. "The red flag on my chest is like an elephant…" Yes, it is. It says that you support what was done in the name of that flag, especially since the Confederate Flag has only ever represented white supremacy. So, what about that is there to be proud? Is Paisley actually writing a song to justify the racism of the South and his racist tendencies? Now, Paisley does say, "I'm proud of where I'm from but not of everything we've done," but follows that with the lame, patronizing line, "It ain't like you and me can rewrite history." So, African people should just "get over it" and ignore that Paisley's pride in the Confederate Flag symbolizes his pride of the Confederate agenda? With lyrics like these, I don't know if Paisley is myopic, hypocritical, schizophrenic, or he just thinks that African people are stupid. In either case, it is interesting that Paisley is trying to rewrite or re-spin history in the same way of former Mississippi Governor Haley Barbour's assertion of the White Citizens Council as a strictly non-violent, economic entity. Really? Well, if you believe either Paisley's or Barbour's historical notions of Southern history, I've got some oil-rich land in my backyard I'd like to sell to you.

"Our generation didn't start this nation. We'll still picking up the pieces, walking over eggshells, fighting over yesterday. Caught between southern pride and southern blame." Allow me to remind Paisley of one of his white ancestors, William Faulkner, who stated that "The past is never dead; it's not even past." And to that, I'll add a quote from the film Magnolia (1999): "We might be through with the past, but the past ain't through with us." In short, Paisley's lyrics cause him to appear like a whiny racist who wants to celebrate the good ole boy days of when African people were three-fifths of a person while being miffed that African Americans are offended that he would find such joy in the Confederate past. Yet probably the most subtle but powerfully racist line is "They called it Reconstruction, but we're still sifting through the rubble after a hundred and fifty years." What makes this line so powerfully racist is that Reconstruction has long been the flashpoint for white southern anger that they have used as an example that African Americans do not have leadership qualities when in fact it was southern white militia groups that slaughtered thousands of African Americans to end Reconstruction, which, by the way, created America's public school system, allowing poor whites to be educated. So, if America is still sifting through the rubble, it is rubble created by white terror. But, of course, Paisley never mentions that in his song of southern pride.

Now, LL Cool J's rap is pretty well-crafted. However, the one flaw in Cool J's rap is that he makes the mistake of falling into the trap or allowing Paisley to frame the conversation so that Cool J states "If you don't judge my doo rag, I won't judge your red flag." The problem with Cool J's analogy is that the doo rag began as an instrument for hair care a hundred years before it became a symbol of gang activity whereas the Confederate Flag has never symbolized anything but racial oppression. So, again, to be proud of the Confederate Flag is to be proud of racial oppression because that is all the flag has ever symbolized. A doo rag, on the other hand, may represent gang activity, but it also may represent the self-hatred of permed hair or just tacky taste. Then, slipping into the ridiculous, Cool J states "If you don't judge my gold chains, I'll forgive the iron chains?" What the hell? We are now equating the vanity of adornment with the enslavement of an entire race? I don't think that this is Cool J's goal, but this is what happens when one has a discourse on somebody else's terms.

Paisley ends by stating "I'm a son of the new South, and I just want to make things right." And in the background Cool J affirms, "The past is the past baby." While the conversation between Paisley and Cool J obviously falls well short of the conversation between James Baldwin and Margaret Mead's Rap on Race (1973), I am inclined to give Paisley and Cool J some credit for engaging in the discourse. No matter how much I think Paisley is trying to rewrite or re-spin history, there can be no progress if people are not free to be honest about how they perceive history and what they feel. And, I'm sure that the "post-racial America" Negroes will want to canonize both Paisley and Cool J for their efforts. I, on the other hand, am happy that Paisley tells me that he is proud of Confederate history so that I can be sure to avoid him and his Rebel desires to make me think that Gone with the Wind should be mandatory viewing for accurate Southern knowledge. Yet, when Cool J asserts "…let bygones be bygones," he seems not to realize that there can be no real forgiveness and reconciliation as long as we refuse to tell the truth. Furthermore, just when I was ready to give Cool J a pass, he ends with "RIP to Robert E. Lee, and I've got to thank Abraham Lincoln for freeing me." He can't be that damn ignorant of history. We can debate the notion of whether or not Lincoln was a racist who asserted that the African race is inferior to whites and whether or not the "Emancipation Proclamation" was meant to free the slaves or was a military strategy to cripple the South economically by removing its free labor, but please don't write to debate me on those two topics if your only source is Spielberg's Lincoln. Nevertheless, there can be no debate that Robert E. Lee was one of the most racist men America has ever produced, and Cool J is giving him a "shout out." Really? That CSI money must be some really good money because I just refuse to believe that Cool J is that historically inept. So, for now, I'll give this song a "D+" for effort and an "F" for truth. I actually want to give it a grade of "C," just for having the conversation, but it is so historically flawed that I can't.

*C. Liegh McInnis is the author of seven books and the publisher/editor of Black Magnolias Literary Journal. He can be contacted through his website, www.psychedelicliterature.com.

Comment from editor:

Actually, I think both of them may be just about that ignorant of history, as I think a majority of folks may still be. We were taught lies in school and most people accept the lies, although his thing about still picking up the pieces out of the rubble is something I'd like to think refers to the sorrow the southern people have put themselves thru by refusing to see the truth, accept it, right it and get past it (although I'm sure it's not). Coming to terms with something shameful is more liberating than trying to bury it - you can't really put yourself past it until you face it or it's a little worm gnawing away inside, making a person defensive (as Mr. Paisley obviously is). I feel a little reluctant sorrow for him, and for LL Cool J for different reasons.

The white southern fight against truth has harmed us all, black and white, in ways many people have not yet realized or thought through. In trying to fight against black folks having the same rights whites have, white folks have done themselves and the generations after them unbelievable harm and they don't even know it - they think they're fighting black folks, but they're really fighting themselves and their own futures as well.

It's hard for me to believe that I once accepted most of the bulls*t, but I know that I did, which gives me the opinion that anyone who hasn't actively read and researched source history, particularly the Civil War era, is probably as ignorant of it as they sound.

 I have a confession, I never read the articles of secession before I got on the internet and started being jumped by those damned neo-confederates. I have to give them props for forcing me to go to the sources to see if they knew what they were talking about (not) instead of relying on the garbage I was taught in American History in Tennessee, where I grew up (and God only knows what they were teaching my generation down here in Mississippi). I don't know when (or if) they've quit that and where, much less the things we were taught by our parents, who really BELIEVED. I truly thought that there were other important issues to the Civil War that impacted on it, even though I had gotten far enough away from the lies to say that it had to be mostly slavery. Duh, the Mississippi articles of secession make it clear over and over and over that slavery was the only real and important issue and anyone who doesn't believe me can easily look those articles up online and see for themselves straight from the ancestral horse's mouth.

I still bought at least some of the revisionist reconstruction history until about 15years ago when I read Litwack's "Been in the Storm So Long", which relies on and quotes verbatim source material from the era. I'm still amazed that my eyes had been sewn so neatly shut by the faux history I learned at school and at home. Paisley and Cool J probably neither realize what reconstruction was really like and who was REALLY left picking up the pieces out of the rubble (what small pieces they were allowed to pick up) when they weren't part of the dead and buried rubble. Never underestimate the power of mis-education.

The truth just has to be brought forth time and again until more people pay attention and realize how little they really know about our past or the impact it has on their present and their future lives. People are beginning to wake up here and there, due to people like you who continue to persevere.

--C.W. Roberson

CWhttp://email@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-7433774648935521507.post-29119879699113268512012-12-31T14:02:00.001-06:002012-12-31T14:05:05.152-06:00
"Don't Miss What's Truly Important because of the Smoke and Mirrors:

Brief Comments on Django Unchained"

by C. Liegh McInnis, Contributing Author

Django Unchained is a very good, possibly great, Western, if one can stomach Quinton Tarantino's highly sexualized and gory style. My issue with Tarantino is that most of his films seem to be rooted in or use the white fascination for the exotic and violent black as a trope or backdrop for the sexuality and violence of his movies. However, in this case, Tarantino's hypersexual and ultraviolent style is a perfectly suited vehicle to show the horrors of slavery, especially the degradation of human beings into chattel for the economic gain and perverse pleasure of white supremacy. That being said, while being a visually moving, if not often grotesque, film, rooted in sex and violence, Django Unchained exposes well the complex classes of slaves, the complex relationships between slaves, and the complex relationships between slaves and whites within the "peculiar institution". Yet, contrary to Ben Daite's assertion in his review "Django Unchained – The Black, The Beautiful & Ev'thing Ugly," Django Unchanged is not the first or best film to do this. So, when Daite asserts,

It's a black hero movie of some sort, a well crafted emancipation epic of a black man and shames the myriad emancipation organisms we have been hitherto inundated with in movies like the coveted Sweet Sweetbacks Badasssss Song by many a black film academics. Who said a black film cannot be bold, hot, intelligent, packed, disturbing and soothing at the same time? No film, like Django Unchained, has ever drawn the moral and physical color line so inadvertently, (2012)

I can only cringe from the fact that Daite allows his desire to love and defend Django Unchained to show just how clueless he is regarding the history of African American films. First, while lacking the budget needed to make it as well-polished cinematically as Django Unchained, Sweet Sweetback's Badasssss Song (1971) is a very good film. In fact, its style is quite revolutionary. The film's fast-paced montages and jump-cuts were unique features in American cinema at the time and a precursor to the action-packed style for which Daite applauds Django Unchained. Also, the manner in which Sweetback is forced to use his penis constantly as a bargaining tool comments on American fixation with the black penis (as Tarantino eventually does in the later stage of Django Unchained) and on the notion that far too many African American men fall into the trap of allowing their penis to become a major aspect of their identity. Furthermore, I should not be forced to remind Daite of Sidney Poitier and Harry Belafonte's Buck and the Preacher (1972), which not only addresses the conflict between African Americans and whites but also addresses the problem of all people of color (in this case African Americans and Native Americas) navigating their issues with each other while engaging their common issues with whites. And, if we understand that Death Wish and the Dirty Harry series are, essentially, urban Westerns because they are driven by the same white supremacist notions of conquering the savages, then we understand that Shaft (1971) also refutes Daite's historically misinformed assertion. Additionally, Django Unchained does not come close to discussing or drawing "the moral and physical color line" that is drawn, deconstructed, mocked, refashioned, and obliterated in the manner of Blazing Saddles (1974), written by Mel Brooks and Richard Pryor.

Of course, maybe Daite's assertion of Django Unchained's superiority to other African American films is rooted in it being "hot" or "hotter" than other African American films that address race, but someone should remind Mr. Daite that "hotness" is relative and, often, judged on differing generational criteria. With that said, I seem to remember that most women found Richard Roundtree to be "hot" in his portrayal of John Shaft, and the same is true of Mario Van Peebles' portrayal of Jesse Lee in Posse, Denzel Washington's portrayal of Trip in Glory, and, if my memory serves me correctly, more than a few women were brought to a swoon over John Amos' portrayal in Roots of the African warrior, Kunta Kinte, whose unbreakable desire for freedom and courage to obtain it are the heart and soul of the narrative. But, in fairness to Daite, when he says "hot," I know that he also means the stylistic production and presentation of the film. Again, to this I respond that "hotness" is relative and often based on generational criteria as well as what the current technology allows a film to do. Remember, we all have fashion moments in our past for which we hope no one finds those pictures. The same is true of film. Often, the current marvel of fashion and high-tech production, especially special effects, in movies often appears inferior (lame and dated) just ten years later. But, the reviews of that time tell us just how "hot" and stylish those effects were then. Still, in any era a film's "hotness" is directly related to its production budget. Therefore, Django Unchained's "hotness" may be more a tribute to the manner in which white filmmakers are regularly given larger budgets and creative control than African American filmmakers. Let's not forget that Spike Lee was forced to go with his hat in his hand to African American funders to finish Malcolm X because the studio's budget wouldn't produce the epic that Lee sought to make. And even Robert Townsend had to fight with the studio for more money because, as he says, "The amount of the budget determines whether there are five hundred screaming fans after a Five Heartbeat's concert or if there are just five people in an empty alley." So, the style or hotness of the film is not so much about Tarantino as it is about the types of limited budgets African American filmmakers are given even after they have proven themselves to be excellent.

Yet, what's really flawed about Daite's review is that he spends so much time trying to convince readers that Tarantino is a bold and revolutionary director just for making Django Unchained that he never fully discusses the most important aspect of the film, which is the juxtaposition and exploration of the various ideologies of slaves, namely the ideological positions of Stephen (Samuel L. Jackson) and Django (Jamie Foxx) as well as Broomhilda (Kerry Washington) when one considers that she is an example of the manner in which various slave classes/ideologies were often created based on the ideology of the plantation where a slave was born or purchased as an infant. (Check the history of Phillis Wheatley.) So if Mr. Daite could remove his head from Tarantino's ass long enough and stop making jabs at Lee long enough, he might find the time to write an analysis of the film that shows us how Django Unchained succeeds rather than spending the entire review stroking Tarantino's…err…ego while giving the middle finger to the history of African American cinema. Thus, the saddest part of Mr. Daite's analysis is that he becomes guilty of the same flaw of which he accuses Lee. For some reason Daite seems to think that he can only celebrate Django Unchained by denouncing the history of African American cinema. To be clear, when Samuel Jackson responded to Tarantino's questioning of if he would have a problem playing Stephen by stating, "You mean do I have a problem playing the most hated black man in the history of American cinema?," one wonders if the general public will understand the depths of what Jackson was saying. What makes Django Unchained a good, possibly great film, is, again, the layering of the complexity of African American characters. Stephen is not just a flat, stereotypical house nigger or sellout or Uncle Tom or handkerchief head. Stephen is the example of the calculating, critical thinking slave who learns/masters the plantation system/culture and manipulates it to his good fortune regardless of whom he must hurt. To his credit, even Tarantino correctly identifies Stephen as the traditional Greek and Shakespearean figure, such as Iago, who has the ear of the King and manipulates his position for his own good often at the demise of others. But even more, Stephen is proof that the slaves both intellectually (administratively) and physically maintained the plantation during slavery and much of the South after slavery. As a digression, watching The Jack Benny Program, I often wondered if the white writers purposefully crafted Rochester, Benny's valet and chauffeur, as being more intelligent and moral than Jack Benny or if it was simply a Freudian slip of white supremacist schizophrenia. Moreover, drawing a chronological line from Rochester to Stephen and plotting that line with a host of African American servants and slaves, one realizes that African Americans not only built America, but they also maintained it administratively. Yet, I wonder how many people will not realize that the library scene between Stephen and his master, Calvin Candie (Leonardo Dicaprio), is not fantasy but a fictionalized retelling of the manner in which African American slaves and their offspring have been and have remained counselors for whites in leadership positions. How many African Americans had the ideas, but whites obtained the patents or job promotions based on African American intellect and work? Stephen is not a heroic character, but he is not a mindless boob either. Stephen is an example of one of the various ways that African Americans were forced or chose to analyze, navigate, and manipulate the schizophrenia of white supremacy for survival and profit.

An African American whom I have known since high school once said to me in 2010, "C. Liegh, your problem is that you spend too much time with niggers. Niggers ain't got no money, no power, nor the sense to use either if and when they get 'em. That's why I hang out with white folks." This person works as a highly paid consultant in his field with very lucrative contracts from major white firms. One person may view this person as a modern day Stephen, and another person may view this person as somebody just taking life as it is. The real question is what is informing how one may perceive this person because the real problem is that the African American community is not taking seriously the need to produce enough critical thinkers to engage and evaluate artistic portrayal of and real-life issues in a manner that allows the mass of African Americans to understand what is being said about us in all forms of media and what is being done to us in every way possible, even when it is being done by us. Furthermore, a key to understanding all of this is understanding the complex history of African people. So, again, I wonder how many people will really understand what is occurring in the library scene between Stephen and Candie. If there is real brilliance to Django Unchained, it is Tarantino's writing of and Jackson's portrayal of Stephen and Dicaprio's ability to portray Candie's schizophrenic dependence upon Stephen in a manner that exposes Stephen's plantation magnitude. Then, add to this Django's ability to analyze various circumstances and navigate them accordingly along with Tarantino's crafting and positioning of other slaves to complete the complex three-dimensional portrayal of multifaceted human beings all reacting to slavery in the manner that best suits their understanding, personality, and benefit, and Django Unchained does become a film worthy of most of the praise that Daite gives it, and one does not need to marginalize the history of African American cinema to celebrate the artistic (creative and critical) successes of Django Unchained, unless one is positioning oneself to be a literary neo-Stephen.CWhttp://firstname.lastname@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-7433774648935521507.post-41776031747130288682012-11-25T17:45:00.000-06:002012-11-25T17:48:00.513-06:00
 My Father's Retirement: For Work Well Done

by C. Liegh McInnis

"My father always told us 'you don't get any credit for what you do for yourself but for what you do for others.'" Kalamu ya Salaam

 After forty-one years as a juvenile youth court counselor, my father retired in December 2011. Unlike many whose civil rights engagement led them into politics and grassroots organizations, my father's work around voting as a way to influence the appointment of judges and to improve schools led him to work with troubled youth. (Clearly, I did not inherit that trait of working with troubled youth, but I digress.) On paper, his most significant accomplishment as a youth court counselor has been the institution of parenting programs for parents whose children have been removed from the home or whose children have been adjudicated as delinquent for serious juvenile offences. This small change took him more than twenty years to institute because, as usual, the "higher ups" are mostly concerned with criminalizing youth for sensational headlines and the so-called "advocacy groups" are more concerned with issues of race and other sensational headlines rather than objective critical thinking that asks simple questions: Why is a youth perpetually in trouble? And what role do parents, teachers, and other community leaders play in the perpetual trouble?

 I have participated in a couple of those parenting sessions and workshops, and I was called into duty to transfer the VHS tapes used for the parenting classes to DVDs. It's one of the very few technological things that I do well because all I must do is press one button. But, watching all those tapes and watching my father lead those parenting workshops gave me an insight and respect for his work that I did not develop when I was the wayward child of the super parent. I wasn't criminally bad, but I was a bad child. I'm sure that is not surprising to most of you. Some of my family members used to call me the black Dennis the Menace, and I really can't refute that claim. As a parent, my father never overreacted to my shenanigans and was a master at using the Socratic mode of questioning to make me see the foolishness of my behavior or choices. And, he used the same method with the parenting classes. He understood and attacked the fact that many parents are ineffective because they have never received proper parenting themselves. He was never clouded by the myth that human parenting is instinctual, but, rather, it is a learned skill, and, like all skills, it is even more difficult to teach the proper way to parent if one has spent one's entire life being exposed to poor or ineffective parenting techniques. So, with a room of angry adults, pissed off because they are forced to participate in something that, for them, defines them as a failed human, he went to work by teaching a skill rather than indicting people for being failures. And as with most skills, he began by having them assess themselves, discussing their current techniques and having them to judge and grade themselves, which included having them set their own benchmarks that can be measured against the benchmarks established by the program/court. So, he began by giving them control and ownership of their ability to parent and then proceeded to act like a coach whose job it is to help them clarify what it means to be an effective parent and then to help them accomplish this goal. No, it's not rocket science, but clearly far too many parents are "missing the mark" as poor parenting has ultimately replaced racism as the major issue in the African American community. (Send your angry emails to me, not my pop, because that is my position not his.) Thus, the numbers seem to prove that parenting classes work as the recidivism rate of juvenile offenders whose parents enter the parenting program drops dramatically—close to fifty percent—over those whose parents do not enter the program.

 Yet, while the parenting program will be his on-paper accomplishment or testament of his contribution to society, there are two other accomplishments of his youth court legacy that mean more to me. One, by the age of twelve, grown men and women regularly approached me and stated: "Your father was the best juvy officer I had." Even at twelve it struck me to think: "Just how many counselors have you had that you can compare them? How bad a child were you that you needed multiple counselors?" Of course, I never had the courage to say this aloud because of my fear of the common hoodlum (male and female) and because I knew that my father would backhand me across the street. (Actually, he wouldn't backhand me. My mother was the disciplinarian parent. My father could make me cry by using the Socratic method of forcing me to realize how my wayward and selfish ways negatively affected others and disappointed the people who loved me. My mother, on the other hand, often said: "Boy, I ain't got time for all that psychological crap of your daddy. If you want to keep your teeth, I suggest that you straighten up and fly right.") So, I was continuously amazed that these strangers could cite real/tangible ways in which my father had helped them by citing real/tangible ways in which their lives had changed as result of my father's involvement. Yet, when these adults or their parents attempted to thank my father, he always gave them the credit. "No, ma'am, I didn't save your child. I gave your child some options, explained the consequences of each choice, and allowed your child to make a decision. You and your son changed his life. All I did was offer some services and resources that allowed y'all to accomplish the goal." Then, he would stroll off into the sunset like a real black cowboy. I'm sure this is why I don't take credit for my students that earn A's and B's and attend graduate school. They do the work. All I do is offer some tips on how to accomplish the goal.

 Still, with all of the above, the most important accomplishment of my father as a juvenile youth court counselor occurred when I was fifteen. It was the summer of 1985, I was visiting my father for the summer, and I was finally old enough to stay home alone while he spent a few hours with friends. That was great for me because my father still has one of the best home stereo systems I've ever seen, which means that I would have three to four hours of full reign with my father's system, all of his albums, and a few Prince records. If you have never heard Jimi Hendrix, Stevie Wonder, War, Parliament/Funkadelic, and Prince cranked up to ten on a top notch system, then you've never lived. Around 9:30 p.m., the light flashes on the telephone. I lower the music, answer the phone, and hear the low gravelly voice of a grown man.

"Say, youngblood, is Mac There?"

"No sir," I respond, "he's not in at the moment. Is there a message?"

There is a long pause. The silence begins to startle me. Finally, after ten seconds or so, he continues, "Say, youngblood, your father was my juvy counselor when I was a kid, and my head was never wrapped to tight. The way he got me through it all was that he always told me to call him whenever I was about to do something crazy."

At this moment I realized that this call just took a turn, making it way above my pay grade. "Yes, sir," I meekly replied.

There is another ten to twelve second pause, and then he states "I just came home and caught my ole lady with this nigger in my crib. I know it's been 'bout ten years since he's been my counselor, but I need your old man to tell me why I shouldn't shoot the shit outta they asses."

His voice was monotone, concrete steady, and ice cold, not wavering nor yelling. The preciseness of his tone scared me. And, y'all must remember. This is 1985. There is no caller ID and no three-way calling. I've got to get this dude's number and convince him not to do anything until I have my father return his call. Allow me also to add that I don't have any street cred, I'm not looking to obtain any street cred, and at fifteen I didn't even know what street cred was. Yet, I knew what my father would want me to do. "Sir, I know exactly where my father is. I can call him and have him return your call in less than thirty minutes."

"Youngblood, I ain't got that long."

"You said that my father helped you. You called him because you knew he would help you. Let me make this call, sir, so he can help you."

"Alright, youngblood, you got thirty minutes. But, I ain't giving you the number. Tell yo' old man that I'll call him back in exactly thirty minutes." Great, I got a gun waving hoodlum who's punctual.

Luckily—not by design, I always knew where my father was. I had the number and made the call. When I stated the man's name, my father abruptly stated, "I'm on my way to the crib," arriving home in less than fifteen minutes. After a few more minutes, I began to worry, but my father simply stated, "All we can do is wait for a call son." When that phone rang, both terror and relief began to tango in my heart. My father answered the phone before the first ring had stopped. The conversation probably lasted all of forty minutes. There was not a lot of emotional appeal from my father. He used the same technique that he always used. "How you want this to play out?" "What you gon' gain by shooting them?" "Are you a fool for being a good man, or is she a fool for not realizing that she just fucked up a good thing with a real man?" The conversation between my father and the man was back and forth, like a championship tennis match between heavy hitters, point for point, return and volley until my father made the winning shot with a great cross court smash that hit the edge of the back corner line: "Everything you have worked for will be gone if you pull that trigger. You calling her a bitch ass 'ho. If you pull that trigger, then you will be allowing a bitch ass 'ho to ruin your life." After that, the tone in the conversation changed, making it clear that the man was not going to shoot them. Then, during the last two minutes, there was another debate or negotiation that I didn't quite understand. All I could hear was my father saying, "But what is that gon' prove if you don't give it to them?" "But you done already made your point?" "Okay, alright, do it your way, just let them go." "Yes, yes, I'm on my way." As my father hung up the phone, he shook his head and said, "Well, he's not going to shoot them, but I couldn't convince him to allow them to put on their clothes before he puts them out the house." Then, he paused, thought about it for a minute, and stated, "Well, they may be walking the streets naked, but at least they walking out the house and not being carried out. Gotta go son; I told him I'd be there in fifteen minutes."

 The story is not amazing or fascinating to me because my father kept a man who caught his wife cheating on him from shooting her and her lover. I am amazed that the man called my father even though they hadn't had regular contact in ten years. That night, all I could think was what impact had my father had on his life as a child that as a man he still felt a need to call him at that moment. That is my father's legacy. I don't mean to upset people, but I care very little about his work in the Democratic party or even serving on the Hinds County Democratic Executive Committee. His fighting for parenting classes in the youth court and that summer night in 1985 are all I need to say to him, "Well done, pops, well done."CWhttp://email@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-7433774648935521507.post-59420566591539232992012-10-17T14:28:00.000-05:002012-10-19T21:52:09.994-05:00WAY TO GO MITT! You not only managed to insult the President of these United States, to his face, and right in front of the whole country, but you totally disrespected and insulted single parents at the same time. What an accomplishment!

This is a good article off Reuters about Mitt losing ground to women in this latest debate, but I think they missed a few blobs of egg on Mitt's face last night:

Romney hit back by saying that he would help women, and all Americans, by improving the sputtering economy. But the Republican offered fewer specifics on women's issues than Obama and at times seemed to stumble.

"Any ground that Mitt Romney gained over the last week or week and a half, he lost tonight," said Jennifer Lawless, director of the Women and Politics Institute at American University.
"Barack Obama was incredibly strong on appealing to women and casting doubt on Mitt Romney's statements."

Romney's comments sounded like "they were from 50 years ago," said Christine Williams, a nurse practitioner from Shaker Heights, Ohio, who watched the debate at a viewing party in the crucial swing state.

In contrast, she said, "When Obama talks about that, it makes my soul sing."

Obama scored points by talking about his working mother and grandmother, and his children. "I've got two daughters and I want to make sure that they have the same opportunities that anybody's sons have," he said.

However, I think a much more decisive moment for women was when, in front of the President who had earlier spoken up for single mothers and related how his single mother made sacrifices while raising her children, Romney answered a question on assault weapons by tying violence to single parent families, and he did it in a bumbling, totally insulting way. He tried to backstep that, but it was very awkward, not to mention that it made him sound like the soulless ass that he is.

Totally aside from women's issues, did no one notice he claimed that "automatic weapons" were already against the law? Gun owners and his NRA contributors will know that he doesn't have a clue about guns and that even assault weapons (much less automatic weapons" are not against federal law since the federal assault weapon ban has EXPIRED. How does he not know that, considering the number of recent tragedies involving such weapons?CWhttp://firstname.lastname@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-7433774648935521507.post-62954730407619952252012-10-17T14:12:00.003-05:002012-10-19T21:51:05.150-05:00I was wrong about Mitt last night!

As soon as Mitt come out with the story about asking for women and getting binders full last night, I told my son, "I bet this is a lie, but he's rolled out one that can't be fact-checked, so he'll get away with it."

Thanks to this article from David Bernstein in the Boston Phoenix, I was shown up as totally wrong!

. . . in 2002 -- prior to the election, not even knowing yet whether it would be a Republican or Democratic administration -- a bipartisan group of women in Massachusetts formed MassGAP to address the problem of few women in senior leadership positions in state government. There were more than 40 organizations involved with the Massachusetts Women's Political Caucus (also bipartisan) as the lead sponsor.

They did the research and put together the binder full of women qualified for all the different cabinet positions, agency heads, and authorities and commissions. They presented this binder to Governor Romney when he was elected.

I have written about this before, in various contexts; tonight I've checked with several people directly involved in the MassGAP effort who confirm that this history as I've just presented it is correct -- and that Romney's claim tonight, that he asked for such a study, is false.

. . . according to MassGAP and MWPC, Romney did appoint 14 women out of his first 33 senior-level appointments, which is a reasonably impressive 42 percent. However, . . . those were almost all to head departments and agencies that he didn't care about -- and in some cases, that he quite specifically wanted to not really do anything. None of the senior positions Romney cared about -- budget, business development, etc. -- went to women.

Secondly, a UMass-Boston study found that the percentage of senior-level appointed positions held by women actually declined throughout the Romney administration, from 30.0% prior to his taking office, to 29.7% in July 2004, to 27.6% near the end of his term in November 2006.

. . .

Third, note that in Romney's story as he tells it, this man who had led and consulted for businesses for 25 years didn't know any qualified women, or know where to find any qualified women. So what does that say?

Thank you, David. I don't always enjoy being shown up, but when I do, I love humble pie, and I'm finding this one very delicious, indeed. Finger-lickin' good, as we say down here in the South.

CWhttp://firstname.lastname@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-7433774648935521507.post-6488105461700820172012-10-08T23:36:00.000-05:002012-10-08T23:36:00.710-05:00Witches, Bitches, and Niggers: What Happens When Society Does not Realize the Innate Socio-Political Nature of Art

by C. Liegh McInnis, Guest Blogger

Watching a recent Geico commercial, it just dawned on me that a witch riding a broom is one of the most heinously sexist icons of human history. Not only does it present the notion of the bitter old hag, but her mode of transportation is a cleaning instrument. Thus, the fear of the old hag is that she has somehow liberated herself from the rigid confines of her womanly or wifely duties, and, even worse, she has liberated herself by turning the tables on gender roles by using an instrument of her enslavement as an instrument of liberation and terror. Of course, there is also the phallic symbolism of the old hag straddling the broom handle, which makes her a succubus, which is the nightmare of male-dominated societies. And while the succubus appears to men as a beautiful female, her goal is to seduce and cause the male harm, so the witch is presented as how the succubus actually looks to warn and convince men against the evil powers of women. Ironically, what became known as witches were originally the sage women of the earliest times of human history.

…sage women that learned the value of healing herbs, and other types of homeopathic treatments. These women were actually very wise when it came to their knowledge of herbal remedies. Many people received aid and were helped by the homemade remedies made by these wise women. These astute women, skilled in the art of natural medicine, also sometimes functioned as midwives and assisted in the delivery of babies, using various plant-based medicines to ease the pain and suffering experienced during childbirth. ("The History of Witches").

Yet, the spread of Christianity across Europe changed how these women were perceived.

Little was understood about healing and medicine in those ancient days, and as Christianity spread across Europe, many clergy from the church felt very upset by the existence of learned women who were healing others with medicine and other remedies. As far as the church was concerned, all healing should be done strictly through men in the church. There were many others who felt that if a person was sick or ill that it was God's punishment for some sin committed and the suffering that came from it was just something that must be dealt with by the afflicted person. Over time, the healers began to be associated and accused of various things including heresy, being anti-Christian, and eventually many were accused of devil worship ("The History of Witches").

And while many of these sages were not Christian, how most of the world feels about witches or understands what witches are, or rather were, is based not on biblical scripture but on the fear of men and their need to dominate women, which caused them to pervert biblical scripture as a means to demonize and marginalize sage women into the current global notion of witches. Thus, it cannot be surprising that most intelligent and assertive women are viewed negatively in most male dominated societies with the witch being just one of the many ways that art is used to subjugate women.

Of course, most will argue, "Man, it just ain't that deep." But, humanity must remember that the greatest trick of both the Devil and the CIA is to convince people that they never existed. Or to put it another way, for approximately 6,700 years or until the European Renaissance, all art was the essential part of tribal or cultural rituals or emanated from some religious (teaching) purpose. However, once the Age of Industrialization gave mankind what it never had before, leisure time, art was removed or separated from ritual and became a use of leisure time, and worse, art for art's sake. Over time, the notion of the innate socio-political nature of all art became unknown to the masses. Let me be clear. Art never stopped being an innately socio-political creation, but as art became gradually more concerned about leisure and, later, a vehicle to earn large amounts of money, it becomes less politicized, mostly due to the owners of companies (books, records, films) who realize that it is easier to sell art that provides the fantasy of mental and emotional release (often foolishness), which soon becomes mindlessness and later perversion. This is the natural progression of art without ritual (purpose or teaching). This is not to say that prior to the 1700s that the commoners, peasants, and, even, slaves of all civilizations did not have their own, often, bawdy art, but that art usually made commentary on the ruling class; it was not mindless spectacle, such as much of today's reality television, the epitome and precursor being The Jerry Springer Show, for spectacle is the only thing that can occur when art is removed from ritual (or when the purpose of educating is removed from the production of art). And for even more clarity, art never stopped being propaganda. To paraphrase W. E. B. DuBois, all art is propaganda because all art, by its very nature of being celebratory or educational, either supports of denounces something. So, the fact that so many people living after the 1700s do not realize that all art is propaganda does not stop art from being propaganda. (Just becomes one doesn't believe that fat meat is greasy doesn't mean that it won't give one hypertension.) People's misunderstanding of art's innately socio-political nature simply causes them to be more vulnerable to the powers of art. (Because the angels didn't know that Satan is a pimp, their lack of knowledge allowed him to more easily pimp them, in the same way that Jacksonians didn't know that former Mayor Frank Melton was a pimp, and we see how that worked for the city.) By not realizing that the thing to which people are allowing themselves to be exposed is actually affecting how they understand and engage life makes it easier for that thing, especially art, to affect and influence them. So, any negative portrayal of women or people of color, no matter how minor or playful, negatively affects women and people of color because making people familiar with those negative portrayals eventually causes people to be accepting of those portrayals. Accordingly, the regular practice of calling women "bitches" and "whores" or the regular portrayal of the person of color as the criminal or the mindless physical specimen makes people more accepting of these notions, which, then, can be used to justify the types of socio-political policies created by a society, especially a society based on white male dominance. And of course the extreme of this is "justifiable" or "legitimate" rape of women and the murder of young African American boys because they adhere to the white supremacist notion of criminal, especially when wearing a hoodie, or a white t-shirt, or baggy jeans. Furthermore, these constant negative portrayals of women and people of color can eventually cause those groups to accept those notions about themselves and perpetuate their own second-class citizenship and demise, such as the manner in which African American women attacked Gabby Douglass' hair.

Again, this is all possible because most people living after the 1700s do not realize the innate political nature of all art. The poem, "Riverscape," by JQ Zheng, who is a quality poet and solid editor, opens with an epigraph from Robert Carpenter: "You don't really need a reason to spend time on a river, do you?" Zheng's point of using Carpenter's quote is not just to present art for the sake of art but to make the case that poetry is somehow above or separate from the pondering of man's socio-political issues. The problem with Zheng's premise is that the correct answer to Carpenter's question is a resounding "yes!" As Wordsworth, Emerson, and Thoreau have all shown, spending time on a river is an innately socio-political act because the countryside or the riverbank symbolizes the metaphysical or the spiritual for most humans as a contrast to the urban clang of so-called human progress, which Tolstoy, Eliot, Natasha Trethewey, and others have shown to be a corruption of the divinity of nature. So, spending time on a river is an innately socio-political activity, and writing a poem, story, or song or painting a portrait about the river are all socio-political activities where one is either juxtaposing the rural and the urban or forthrightly celebrating the rural over the urban. And not to understand this is to allow those that do understand this to maintain the power to use art to control the masses. Whether it is Akhenaten using his poem, "The Hymn to the Aton," to seize complete and unquestioned political power or whether it is President George W. Bush quoting "Psalm 23" to galvanize America in support of a war based on a lie, when people do not understand the innate socio-political nature of art, it leaves them vulnerable to those who do understand art's socio-political power. Thus, it is critical to the development of healthy civilizations to ensure that more individuals are able to analyze the ingrained or imbedded sensibilities of a group or society as presented in the art that they create to understand who they are and what they believe, especially in regards to their notions of marginalizing or demonizing (othering) certain groups of people, namely women and foreigners (people not of their tribe or group). Understanding the history and meaning of witches allows humanity to understand the history and struggles of women. And while Geico's portrayal is "all in good fun," a play on words, per se, it can also speak to or communicate the types of latent sensibilities of marginalizing certain groups of people that societies can mindlessly perpetuate because that same society does a poor job of developing a mass of critical thinkers.

Works Cited

DuBois, W. E. B. "The Criteria of Negro Art." The Norton Anthology of African American

Literature. Eds. Henry Louis Gates and Nellie Y. McKay. New York: W. W. Norton and Co., 1997.

"The History of Witches and Witchcraft." HalloweenExpress.com. October 7, 2012. October 7,
 2012. http://www.halloweenexpress.<wbr></wbr>com/history-of-witches-and-<wbr></wbr>witchcraft.php.CWhttp://firstname.lastname@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-7433774648935521507.post-70801307692744946142012-08-11T13:32:00.001-05:002012-08-15T18:30:15.545-05:00The Day The Music Died

[UPDATED 8/14/12]
Clarksdale, Mississippi, August 10, 2012, The Sunflower River Blues and Gospel Festival. Or as I can't help thinking of it now, the Day the Music Died. I've been going to the Sunflower for years, and it's never been anything but a source of joy until yesterday, and yesterday it brought tears to my eyes for what was and will likely never be again.

But I knew I was out of luck
The day the music died

Let me say ahead of my complaints, that I know there are people who have worked hard for this for little reward over the years, and that it has been a struggle to keep it free. I salute them, but being free is not worth it if everyone is separated into well-to-do mostly white and others (with a fence between). Shades of Hunger Games. Look at that big bare space in front of the stage!

This year, the VIP area ate up most of the festival area. There was a fence around the whole festival, and since security seemed to be a problem, even though it was irritating not being able to park in places that used to be parking, and not being able to move as freely to outside businesses such as Ground Zero, Sarah's Kitchen, Cathead, etc., it is probably necessary. I concede that. Fencing off the whole area in front of the stage for a block back, though.....that's just crazy. Have we all forgotten what the blues has always been about? Hint...it's the complaint of the disenfranchised, the have-nots making something from nothing.

One of the most attractive things about blues festivals in general, and this one in particular, is the ambiance, the air of unification among people from all classes, races, ethnicities, countries, wealth level. That was all gone at the Sunflower this year. I wish I hadn't been so bothered and repelled that I didn't think to take a photo of the whole thing, but this to the right is just back from the stage, and hits only about 1/2 of the fenced off area beyond. Someone had written on the fence "1%" with an arrow pointing in. That about said it all.

I met a girl who sang the blues
And I asked her for some happy news
But she just smiled and turned away

I don't mind paying to get in a blues festival, and I don't mind (too much) a slice right at the front of the stage for VIP's, but all of the area in front of the stage for a block back? You gotta be kidding me! A large area in front of the stage was empty, there there were tables all the way back. To the left side (facing the stage) were tents and chairs. The free part was confined to the right side from the platform on the side of the museum back, and in the very far back behind the VIP area; there was a little space people could stand between that and the small vendor's area confined to what used to be a parking lot along (I think) Yazoo.

It felt so wrong, most of the joy was wrung out the festival, at least for me. I felt sorry for the performers - there was no one in front of the stage for most of their shows - and until late, the VIP area was very very sparsely populated by people who merely sat. The dancing and clapping was mostly off to the side (where us po' folks were) and the audience feedback must have felt very cold and sparse to the performers.

Major props to OB Buchana, who asked that everyone be allowed in front of the stage (where there were no tables, no chairs, no people, no dancing, no fun). Security let in some people and let them stay til OB got thru, then hustled them out. Not blaming them, they were only doing their job. It was pitiful, though.

Won't be any photo album from the Sunflower Blues Festival this year, but if you're interested, click Photo Albums in the right column for a lot of past blues events, including several Sunflower Blues Festivals. I was so far from the stage and at such an angle, there aren't enough even semi-lousy photos, but that's not such a big thing (as I am not a talented photographer, nor do I have a great camera with a great lens). These two are the best of the lot, as poor as they are The other ramifications of the reason for the distance and the angle are another matter, though.

All my petty complaints aside, I'm very sad to see the passing of the great blues festivals, and I think that's what I saw the real beginning of last night. The writing has been on the wall for some time, but it's no longer fuzzy and hard to read. Some folks say that the blues was really born in Clarksdale, MS, so maybe it's fitting that Clarksdale is where it begins it's final days. I hope that I am wrong, and I hope that things change for the better there.

I'm not there today and I won't be there for Robert Plant (as much as I had looked forward to that). I couldn't bear to witness what happens to the parade from the train station stage to the main stage with the Rising Star Fife and Drum, and the inevitable separation of the hoi polloi from uptown folks while the blues became, once again (at least partially) about black and white, and totally about the haves and have-nots. No point in any t-shirts saying "No Black, No White, Jes' The Blues.

Speaking of separating the sheep from the goats, I look forward to the Turner Family Annual Goat BBQ on August 31, 2012 at 985 OB McClinton Rd., Senatobia, MS, where I have no doubt there will be something real and everybody hollering GOAT!

I know I'm going to get a lot of people mad with these comments, but lot more who saw it firsthand are going to agree with me (at least on one side of the fence). I asked a lot of people what they thought last night, and it was so overwhelmingly negative, I think that's valid, in spite of my bias in the matter. Of course, I only asked on one side of the fence. There's that to be considered. And those were the people who really mattered, right?

UPDATE: Great post on this from a musician's perspective at: My Southern Life.

CWhttp://firstname.lastname@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-7433774648935521507.post-31561579141152429842012-05-22T10:36:00.001-05:002012-05-23T09:48:25.766-05:00Bad Parenting not Same-Sex Marriage Is the Central Issue for African-American Voters

by *C. Liegh McInnis/Guest Author

They tells me that the pastor of New Jerusalem, Rev. Pastor Dwayne Pickett, along with a few more Negro men of the cloth, namely the Coalition of African American Pastors (CAAP), are telling their congregations not to vote for President Obama because he is supporting gay marriage. I have a few reasons not to vote for President Obama, including his initial reduction of funding to HBCUs as one of his first acts as President, but not to vote for him because he supports legalized unions for gay people—which is the core of this issue—is just damn stupid. First, let me say this. Gay people who want the right to be married are dumb as hell. Man, y'all are home free. Why would you want to open the door to problems that y'all don't have, such as interfering in-laws, sorry ass relatives that leave their children at your house, and losing half of your stuff in a divorce settlement. Trust me, as a man who has dated and been married to the same woman for eighteen years (damn!), we remain married because for me it is cheaper to keep her and for her because I am actually worth more to her dead than alive, and she wants to be around to cash the lotto ticket when I finally die. That is why I never walk down the steps before her. So for all you gays clamoring to get married, you should know that not only is the grass not always greener on the other side, when it comes to marriage, fifty-two percent of the time the grass is brown and brittle enough to spark a forest fire.

One question that remains unanswered is why are these African-American minstrels, err I mean ministers, so worried about keeping gays from getting married while they do very little to keep heterosexuals married. According the 2011 U. S. Census, "only 45% of African American households contain a married couple, compared to 80% for Whites, and 70% among Hispanics. In 1890, 80% of African-American households were comprised of two parents.One hundred years later, only 40% of African-American children live in married-couple households." What is more interesting is that the divorce rate, especially for African Americans, is higher in the so-called Bible Belt. Furthermore, an increasingly higher number of African Americans who identify themselves as heterosexual are choosing not to marry. According to the 2002 U. S. Census, "Forty-two percent of black adults have never been married, compared with just 26 percent of all American adults." Where is the pulpit outrage for these issues? Where is the lobbying of President Obama to do something about African Americans not getting married or not remaining married? These minstrels, err I mean ministers, are spending so much time working to keep gays from being married that they are neglecting the work of educating heterosexuals about the rewards of developing and maintaining healthy marriages.

So now that the Negro reverends want their flocks not to vote for President Obama, what is the alternative—Mitt Romney? Telling African Americans not to vote for President Obama and to vote for Romney is like telling the hens to vote against the rooster and for the chicken hawk. The rooster may be too ingratiating to the farmer, but he ain't trying to eat the hens. Okay, so you agree with Romney on the issue of gay marriage—and let's throw in abortion for good measure—but what about issues, such as proper funding of education for public schools, Romney's desire to deregulate America to a time when food, buildings, and working conditions were not safe for the average citizens, his promise to limit quality to health care to certain citizens, issues of racial profiling and police brutality, the republican war on unions, and the republican fight to repeal various civil rights laws and advances, such as the 1965 Voting Rights Act and measures that protect people of color and women from employment discrimination? Are these not important issues? And to be clear about abortion, I find it interesting, if not hypocritical, that these Negro minstrels, err I mean ministers, that are so anti-abortion do very little to aid in the parenting of poor black children. Most teenage crimes and deviant behavior occur between the hours of 3:00 p.m. and 7:00 p.m. when parents and guardians are not at home. Additionally, the vast majority of poor African-American children must pass a locked church on their way from school to an unsupervised or unsafe home. So, is it not myopic, if not hypocritical, for Negro minstrels, err I mean ministers, to bemoan the issue of abortion yet do very little to break the cycle of babies having babies by providing nurturing safe havens for them? I guess the doors of the church are open, unless you are a poor black child with no safe place to be during the hours of 3:00 p.m. to 7:00 p.m. Monday through Friday. So the fact that these Negro minstrels, err I mean ministers, are opposing President Obama on a moral issue is laughable. That is, I must laugh to keep from being sickened by their highbrow stupidity. In full disclosure, I do not think it is my responsibility to house or care for children born to terrible ass parents. This is why I am all for abortion. Can I really force someone to have a child that they do not want when I know that I do not plan to help them raise the child? Since I do not plan to help feed you or your child, I do not have the right to force you to have it. Yet, this is the type of hypocrisy promoted by Romney and these Negro minstrels, err I mean ministers. They want to force people to have babies and simultaneously cut funding or deny access and support to help these poor parents. Understand, the only reason I want every child properly educated is because I know that every properly educated child is one more person less likely to rob or assault me. However, the republicans and these Negro minstrels, err I mean ministers, want to force unwilling people to be parents and then bemoan the high poverty and crime rate as if they are too stupid to realize the connection.

Thus, my anger and amazement is not just about the waste of time and money spent to keep gays from being married. My anger is caused by the notion that the Negro minstrels, err I mean ministers, are missing the bigger picture. I say to hell with them gays. I'm concerned with a more essential issue facing the African-American community. What we gon' do 'bout these terrible-ass Negro parents who continue to have children they don't want and can't feed? Gay people don't hurt the education system or the economy. In fact, gay people—through the arts, cooking, and fashion—actually help education and the economy. Think of all of the excellent musicals, fine cuisine, and colorful clothing created by the gays. And let's not forget that most Negro churches would be boring as hell if not for the gay organist, choir director, and lead soloist. Aw come on now, don't act like y'all didn't know that. So, it seems quite hypocritical that we can turn a blind eye or be forgiving as long as the gay dude is supplyin' the grooves to the 11:00 a.m. service, but let one of 'em want to gain equal protection under the law—which, again, is the crux of this issue—then all hell breaks loose. I mean, seriously, can we really say that gay people do more harm to the African-American community than these terrible-ass first and the fifteenth, WIC, welfare parents who place the burden of raising their children on everyone else? Man, y'all be trippin'!

So I say that rather than fighting against their legal right to be miserable and get divorced like the rest of us we should have a national day of prayer for the gays to help them turn from their sinful and oh so flamboyant ways and a national day of "whip ass" for these terrible parents, petitioning President Obama to pass an executive order, making it legal to whip the ass of any parent that is not properly caring for one's child. Even if the Negro minstrels, err I mean ministers, are able to keep gays from being married, that still will not have addressed the high crime rate, poverty, and hopelessness that exist in many African-American communities due to the millions of children being raised by parents who do not want them or cannot afford them. So, leave the flamboyant organist alone and start preparing some sermons on poor parenting because that is the most essential issue destroying the African-American community.

*C. Liegh McInnis is the author of seven books, the editor of Black Magnolias Literary Journal, and can be contacted through www.psychedelicliterature.com.

UPDATE: C. Liegh McInnis has been awarded First Runner-Up for the 2012 North Carolina State A&T Sonia Sanchez-Amiri Baraka Poetry Prize, which is a national competition sponsored by the Creative Writing Program at NC State A&T.
 CWhttp://email@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-7433774648935521507.post-27182877622821389112012-04-12T20:30:00.000-05:002012-04-12T20:30:25.174-05:00JSU MWA CAF, JSU Gibbs Green Memorial, Yellow Scarf, and More

by C. Leigh McInnis

Hey Y'all,

 This is the first newsletter sent to the entire listserv in over a year. Many of you have emailed, asking what has been happening or if you've been removed from the list. No one has been removed, but, with so much occurring, it has been difficult maintaining the listserv. In fact, this may be one of the final emails you all receive as part of the Psychedelic Literature Listserv. Before I get to the upcoming events, allow me to provide brief history and current status.

 This listserv originally grew from the Mississippi Vibes Open Mic Poetry events. Of course, as a way to build a following and keep people informed of what was happening, the listserv became an ideal format for many organizations, which is now being replaced by social media formats. While poetry was the primary emphasis of Mississippi Vibes, which grew from Southern Vibes, we were always a multidimensional network of writers, musicians, painters, singers, actors, and community activists. In fact, the entire purpose of the artistic collective was to use the arts to affect socio-political change. And from 1997 – 2002 there was a whirlwind of activity throughout the Jackson-Metro area, and we were proud to be in the eye of that storm. After 2002, Mississippi Vibes officially ended, though we held special readings and events until the death of one of the co-founders David Brian Williams in 2006. After that, I continued the listserv mostly because whenever I went a couple of weeks without posting anything I received emails from folks wanting to know what was happening. So, I continued regularly posting events through the listserv until 2010 or so. Around 2010 I realized that my own writing duties, teaching, and the growth of Black Magnolias Literary Journal made it impossible for me to continue the listserv in its original format. There was just too much happening, which is a good thing for the city, but it was simply too much for me to cover. So, in a difficult but necessary decision, I decided to post only literary events to save myself time and energy, and that decision also coincided with my ten-year transition/return to my original love of publishing. Many of you first met me through my work with Mississippi Vibes, but prior to that, seven years prior to that, I was exclusively interested in and pursing print publication, especially in literary journals, and was dragged lovingly to the stage by Jolivette Anderson and David Brian Williams. So, my return of emphasis to all things literary, particularly publishing, means that I have little time to coordinate the listserv, which is why there have been so few emails over the past year.

However, I want to thank each of your for continuing to support the local arts, especially those of you who have been members of this listserv since 1997. Wow, y'all are old, especially those of y'all who were old when we first started! I don't know how many more posts will appear though I am sure I will continue to post very special events like the ones below. I have started a smaller listserv that concentrates mostly, almost exclusively, on literature and publishing with a few additional items, but not many. This allows me to concentrate on my primary love and engagement without having to struggle to find time to post about every artistic event in the city. Believe me, I would love to promote each artistic and socio-political event in the Jackson-Metro area, but I am no longer able to do so. With that, I thank each of you, again, for the love and support that you have given to me, Mississippi Vibes, Psychedelic Literature, Black Magnolias, and all of the local artists. As I have been saying since 1997, support your local artists because all national artists were once local artists. Take care.

C. Liegh McInnis

www.psychedelicliterature.com

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The Nameless Open Mic still meets the first and third Saturdays at Suite 106 (106 Wilmington Street), and they also have a writing workshop. For more information, contact Herb Brown at firstname.lastname@example.com or Nathan Harper at firstname.lastname@example.com.

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On April 13 – 14 the Jackson State University Margaret Walker Alexander Center will hold its annual Creative Arts Festival. The festival will feature presentations from students and faculty with a keynote address by Jackson native and award winning actress Dr. Tonea Stewart. Presentations will also be made by noted storyteller Diane Williams, poet/playwright/essayist Charlie Braxton, and poet/short story writer C. Liegh McInnis. Below is a brief sketch of the schedule of events.

April 13: 2:00 p.m. to 3:30 p.m. Arts and Activism at the JSU College of Science, Engineering, and Technology Auditorium

April 13: 6:00 p.m. to 8:00 p.m. Reception and Poetry Reading at the Margaret Walker Center in JSU Ayer Hall

April 14: Panels (Panels will run concurrently. So at each time slot there will be at least three panels. I have noted the literary panels for each time frame.)

 10:15 a.m. to 11:30 a.m. Poetry Panel in the JSU Student Center Room 3213

 1:45 p.m. to 3:00 p.m. Black Literature/Racial Identity Panel in the JSU Student Center Room 3210

 3:15 p.m. to 4:30 p.m. General Literature Panel in the JSU Student Center Room 3210

 4:45 p.m. to 6:00 p.m. Closing Address: Dr. Tonea Stewart in the JSU Student Center Theater

For more information, contact the Margaret Walker Center at email@example.com.

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On April 19 – 20 the Jackson State University will hold its 42nd Annual Gibbs Green Memorial Conference which will feature national and local scholars and artistic presentations to study and remember the 1970 shooting at JSU when the Mississippi State Highway Patrol, the Jackson Police Department, and the Mississippi National Guard surrounded the campus and fired over 200 rounds at JSC students, killing two, Phillip Gibbs and James Green. For more information about panels and speakers, contact Jean Frazier at firstname.lastname@example.com.

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International Jazz Icon and Grammy Award-winning artist Cassandra Wilson has opened an elegant and state of the art listening room, Yellow Scarf (741 Harris Street, Suite E). Essentially, Yellow Scarf is the finest in jazz/soul/blue live music experience in the Jackson-Metro area and will feature Wilson and her renowned band, the wonderful vocals and songs and Rhonda Richmond, the soulful experience of Twanna Shante, the legendary Andy Hardwick, and much more! And true to her roots in the Jackson, Mississippi, arts world, Yellow Scarf has already coupled the listening pleasure with visual arts. In short, Yellow Scarf is the classiest, hippest, and most dynamic live music experience that Mississippi has to offer. For more information, contact Thabi Moyo at firstname.lastname@example.com or firstname.lastname@example.com.

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On Saturday, April 14, in Hattiesburg, Mississippi, DeAnna Tisdale will give her vocal recital at part of her requirement to complete her Masters in vocal performance at the University of Southern Mississippi. The recital will be held at Westminster Presbyterian Church, 115 N. 25th Ave., Hattiesburg, MS, which is near the USM camp. DeAnna is the child of noted newspaper publishers Charles and Alice Tisdale, but she has worked as a journalist and singer in her own right, publishing articles and performing globally. For more information contact Alice Tisdale at firstname.lastname@example.com.

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Black Magnolias Literary Journal has just published its spring (6.1) issue, and it features local, US, and international writers, such as co-coordinator of the Nameless Open Mic Herb Brown, Nigerian poet Kufre Udeme, Dr. Agnieszka Lobodziec—English Professor at the University of Zielona Gora (Poland), Alabama fiction writer Tom Lawrence, poet Neli Moody who is also an English Professor at San Jose State University, and JSU graduate and literary theorist Paula Wingard who is teaching and pursing her PhD at the University of Arkansas.CWhttp://firstname.lastname@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-7433774648935521507.post-62053269984792057722012-03-11T12:45:00.001-05:002012-03-11T13:00:02.675-05:00Sign 'O' the Times 25 Year Anniversary

by C. Liegh McInnis

Hey Y'all,

 Today began early this morning at 8:00 a.m. with me attending the Hinds County Democratic Caucus as a drafted/forced delegate from my precinct. I only agreed to do it because my father informed me that this would be his last act as Chair of the Hinds County Democratic Executive Committee, and he would like me to represent my precinct because Clinton does not have as many active democrats as other districts. After those morning duties I graded midterm papers and read submissions for Black Magnolias. While I usually get a lot of work done when Monica is gone, she emailed from the Gulf Coast with the grandnieces and grandson to tell me that while checking her emails, she read that today is the twenty-five year anniversary release of Sign "O" the Times with the added note, "Twenty-five years! Good Lawd! You old playa!!!"

 As I smiled at her email, I began to calculate. Purple Rain (1984) is twenty-eight years old. Dirty Mind (1980), the record that made me a Prince fan, is thirty-two years old. Dirty Mind has special memory for me because it was the awakening of what music could be as it is an intersection or a seamless amalgamation of soul, funk, and rock and the socio-political mantra of the individual: Eff the arbitrary indoctrination of this world filled with mindless cowards, revolution of the individual, now let's funk and roll! It is also much of the material Prince was performing when he opened for Rick James as someone in their infinite wisdom thought it would be a good idea for me, a ten-year old, to attend that show. Whether it was a good idea or not, I've been an individual funkateer since that night. "Reproduction of the New Breed…" And in 1987, Sign "O" the Times presented my favorite Prince, angry Prince, proving to the world that he could still funk, rock, and soul better than anyone. Sign "O" the Times followed two very metaphysical and eclectic albums, Around the World in a Day (1985) and Parade (1986), which, of course, heightened Prince's mad genius, pop/rock icon status, but also worked to lessen his popularity in the 'hood. I, for one, didn't care about his lessened popularity in the 'hood, especially when I heard all the bull that was supposed to be more streetwise than Prince now was. I was enjoying the lyrical metaphysical ride with a kaleidoscope of sounds. Yet, at seventeen it did become a bit annoying to hear, "Man, Prince done sold out; he ain't bringin' it like he used to.." So when he dropped Sign "O" the Times, and it crushed the competition, I walked around with a silly smirk on my face at all the fake b-boys who thought they were funky. (Okay, in truth, some of those dudes were on the school bus, amazed that Prince had come that "hard" and that "real" talking about gangs and drug use. Of course, my response to them was, "Prince has always been that hard and real, but some people are just not analytical enough to get it. Yeah, teachers have been writing 'does not play well with others' on my report card my entire life.) But more importantly, Sign "O" the Times reminded me of the vastness of Black music. It was all that had come before with more possibility of what could be. It is James Brown as the sweat and funk of "Housequake," especially the live version. It is Marvin Gaye and Curtis Mayfield in the message of "Sign 'O' the Times". It is the funky horns and grooves of Brown and Parliament/Funkadelic in "It's Gonna Be a Beautiful Night." It is Al Green and Luther Vandross showing that soul music is rooted in gospel as "Adore." It is Jimi Hendrix's physical questioning and metaphysical answers in "I Could Never Take the Place of Your Man" and "The Cross." It is the nasty cafés and juke joints of "It." It is the great poetry of Smokey Robinson in "Forever in my Life" and even more well-crafted poetry in "The Ballad of Dorothy Parker" with a groove that would inspire a new generation of neo-soul folk like D'Angelo and Angie Stone. It is the Saturday night slow grind groove of "Slow Love." It is the experimental form of digitized soul with jazz sensibility in "Hot Thang" and even more experimental sounds laced with poetry that celebrates the beauty and power of positive self-esteem in "Star Fish and Coffee." It is Prince's Stevie Wonder, Gaye, and Mayfield ability to craft poetry and sound that reflect the dichotomy of being flesh and spirit in "Strange Relationship." And, it is the funky simmer of "If I Was Your Girlfriend" with the unapologetic metaphysical thinker/poet who didn't really care if most radio listeners aren't analytical enough to follow subtly or irony. Plainly put, while many critics assert that it is Around the World in a Day with its psychedelic funk and roll and daringness to be released after Purple Rain that elevates Prince to icon status, it is Sign "O" the Times that made him a legend. And for my mind and ears, it fulfills two needs. It provides a plethora of sound while boldly asserting, as most of his albums, that physical problems are merely symptoms of or results of metaphysical problems, and as long as we try to solve metaphysical problems with physical solutions—drugs, sex, money, and status—we will continue to travel the road of chaos and destruction. Thus, it was only appropriate that the album following Sign "O" the Times is the third greatest concept record of all time (after Stevie Wonder's Secret Life of Plants and Marvin Gaye's Here My Dear) Lovesexy, which is the apex of the metaphysical journey until the much later Rainbow Children (2001).

 Prince cancelled the US leg of the Sign "O" the Times tour, opting to use the concert movie as an alternative. The cancelling of the US tour and the releasing of "If I Was Your Girlfriend" all but killed the momentum that the album had been building. As former road manger Allen Leeds stated, "Sometimes, Prince could be too smart or daring for his own good." Radio wants an uncomplicated jam, not a lyrical puzzle that questions how gender perceptions affect the relationships between men and women, with an easily misunderstood title that causes most males to think they now have affirmation of Prince's sexuality. While few Americans saw the film, Ricky Graham (my closest non-family friend) and I saw Sign "O" the Times sixty times in thirty days at the old dollar movie just off J. R. Lynch Street. There was a 7:00 p.m. and 9:00 p.m. showing, and we would pay a dollar and stay for both showings. But, in truth, the theatre manager stopped charging us after the first week, and even gave us a bag of the stale dollar movie popcorn and flat sodas for free. The first night he offered this, the look on my face prompted him to say, "Purple people gotta stick together. We are surrounded by fools that either don't kno' the funk or be tryin' to fake da funk." With that, we took our stale popcorn and flat sodas and enjoyed a month-long run of one of the greatest concert films made. And twenty-five years later, the album and film still crush most of what can be put beside them. Peace and be funky, no matter how old you are.

C. Liegh McInnis
CWhttp://email@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-7433774648935521507.post-34170233421379342332011-10-26T10:05:00.002-05:002011-10-26T10:13:22.139-05:00Mississippi Innocence Project, Joe York, Radley BalkoI went to a screening of Joe York's Mississippi Innocence Project film last night, and I was moved nearly to tears, even though I have been following Radley Balko's coverage of the cases covered in this film, as well as other cases in Mississippi and Louisiana involving former Mississippi medical examiner Steve Haynes and proported "bite-mark expert" Michael West.

As a former medical secretary who worked in two different hospital pathology departments, even having been in this admittedly peripheral position, I could recognize some areas of suspension of normal protocols (at least they would have been in the Memphis hospitals in which I worked). And more astonishing, I have not worked in that field since 1973, when one would expect things to have been in a more rudimentary and less professional phase than now. Apparently not in the state of Mississippi.

I had kept up on these cases and hadn't yet gone to see the film, but I'm glad that I finally did (drawn by the chance to hear Balko in person). A few things had slipped by my mind without sticking, and this was a chance to have it graphically glued to my admittedly "holey" memory; plus there were a few tidbits served up that I don't remember hearing before. For those of you who are not familiar with these cases or the Mississippi Innocence Project, I highly recommend that you view this film. You will be touched, outraged, and frightened by what you will see - although true, it is a horror story to beat anything presented by Stephen King or John Carpenter.

That old thing about a picture being worth a thousand words is as true now as it was centuries ago. Seeing these two innocent men, Levon Brooks and Kennedy Brewer and what they went thru because of our fractured criminal justice system, and having it brought home that these miscarriages of justice do not simply affect the wrongly accused and their families, but also allow the real criminals to continue to roam free and carry out further crimes at will, was powerful, frightening and disturbing. Hats off to Tucker Carrington and the other folks at the Mississippi Innocence project for getting out there and doing the hard work of holding our criminal justice system accountable, from law enforcement to pathologists to judiciary, and to Joe York and his team for the marvelous presentation and the incisive presentation of the facts in his documentaries.

Pondering the fact that one little girl is no longer with us, because the criminal justice system broke down and allowed her rapist and murderer to stay free and do the same thing to her that he had done to the first little girl is deeply sad and disheartening.

Thank God for those like Mr. Balko (journalist), Joe York (filmmaker) and Tucker Carrington (of the Mississippi Innocence Project) and all those others who helped make this documentary and these groundbreaking investigations possible (folks like John Grisham, Barry Schenck and Peter Neufeld, et al).CWhttp://firstname.lastname@example.com of Mississippi, 1848 University Cir, University, MS 38677, USA34.3639603 -89.53820759999996434.3558283 -89.551581599999963 34.372092300000006 -89.524833599999965tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7433774648935521507.post-65033012785399817772011-08-05T12:02:00.002-05:002011-08-05T12:05:25.871-05:00Unschoolers Learn What They Want, When They Want: A Response
[By guest blogger, C. Leigh McInnis. McInnis has published poetry, fiction, and essays in several journals, magazines, and newspapers, is the author of seven books, the editor and publisher of Black Magnolias Literary Journal, and he teaches creative writing and world literature at Jackson State University. He can be contacted at Psychedelic Literature or C. Leigh McInnis .]
Hey Y'all,

The following comments are my response to the article, "Unschoolers Learn What They Want, When They Want," which was sent to me a couple of days ago.

Mostly, I am not against alternative types of schooling, whether it is homeschooling or any other program that a parent thinks will induce the best from their child. And I also realize that many children do learn many different ways, so I am not quick to minimize any form of learning. However, what often bothers me when alternative forms of schooling, such as homeschooling or charter schools, are presented or celebrated is how very basic facts are omitted for the sake of showing the alternative form in a better light. For instance, "Approximately 90% of Sudbury Valley's graduates go on to college (compared with 69% of graduates from the public education system)." The problem with this statistic is that it does not consider two variables. One, parents who tend to opt for alternative schooling, such as homeschooling, charter, and private schools, tend to be more affluent with a higher level of education, which translates to their children being exposed to a more constructive or positive atmosphere regarding education as well as having a solid academic foundation developed in the home. (And this is true of most of my friends whose children attend African centered schools also.) Two, the top ten percent of public school graduates tend to perform at or equal to the same level as the top ten percent of alternative schooling graduates, and the common link is that these two groups have parents who invest the proper amount of time and effort. In contrast, then, what lowers the percentage of college enrollment for public school graduates is not the curriculum or the teaching but two very simple facts/variables. One, public schools must admit students with all types of learning and behavioral disorders whereas private and charter schools tend to have a very low number of students with learning and behavioral disorders unless they specialize in this area, and, two, public schools have a higher percentage of parents who, for whatever reason, do not invest the same time and effort with their children as the parents whose children perform in that aforementioned top ten percent. So, if we consider all factors/variables, it seems that the success of alternative schooling is not based on the curriculum or the teachers but on the types of parents who are able to enroll their children in various types of alternative schooling.

A second fallacy presented is that public school "…keeps trying to do what it can't do, which is make every child learn everything in the whole wide world. It's like heading toward a cliff." Maybe I have not attended the same type of public school, but I have never experienced this. If by saying "learn everything in the whole wide world," one means public school is designed, ideally and for the most part, to make a child a well-rounded being, then, yes, an effective education exposes a child to various aspects of life, working to show the common links in those various aspects, teaching the child how to find "hidden likenesses," to use a Jacob Bronowski term, in seemingly unlike things, which enhances the child's critical thinking ability. So, world history should coalesce with world literature or algebraic reading problems should coalesce with basic grammar, syntax, and semantic development. Again, my issue is not to minimize alternative schooling but to show the flaw in the premise that public schooling tends to expose children to needless information that they will never apply. The problem or hurdle for public school is that the focus on "high stakes" testing limits if not impairs the development of critical thinking because the emphasis is often on the answer and not how one arrives at the answer. So, many students graduate high school with some facts but limited knowledge, and knowledge is understanding how to use facts to improve one's condition or situation. Yet, this emphasis on "high stakes" testing is not something that grew organically from public education but moreso is a reactionary, political element that serves mostly to widen the gap between rich and poor students.

Third, I return to the notion that education must be seen as a joint effort between parents and teachers. "They have, and I think this is true of [Sudbury] alumni in general, an incredible sense of who they are and how they work, and confidence in their abilities," Sadofsky said. "Not that they know everything, but they know how to find what they need." It seems that Sadofsky does not realize that this "sense" of knowing oneself and having "confidence" in one's "abilities" is a trait that is planted and nurtured at home first and then affirmed through organized activities in the school. Therefore, I would argue that the reason the Sudbury alumni "in general" have "an incredible sense of who they are and how they work, and confidence in their abilities" is because, in general, they are the children in that top performing ten percent who would have had these traits developed initially by their parents regardless of attending public school or an alternative school. Accordingly, the second part of Sadofsky's statement, "they know how to find what they need" is a trait/skill mostly developed by schooling, but teachers can only be effective in developing this trait or skill if the student has a constructive attitude, focus, and understanding of the academic process, which must be developed by the parent. So, again, this "incredible sense of who they are and how they work, and confidence in their abilities" is not unique to alternative schooling but is a trait that most students develop if they have parents who make the proper time and effort investment, which allows the teachers to develop and teach the child how to use those personal characteristics in developing academic and professional characteristics.

Let me be clear. Parents have a role, and teachers have a role in the effective development of a child's academic being. However, the academic institution is being asked to fulfill the role of parent and teacher, which puts more responsibility and weight on the academic institution than it was designed to carry. Or, let me put it another way. In many inner city, high poverty areas, dilapidated housing exists for three reasons. One, the houses are old. Two, the people living in those houses are unable to afford proper maintenance. Three, which relates to this discussion, often there are more people living in the houses than the houses were designed to accommodate. A three bedroom house is not designed to accommodate seven to ten people. Those extra bodies are asking that house to do something it was not designed to do. This is the primary issue with our public schools. Yes, they are severely underfunded. I would argue that they are purposefully underfunded, but the main problem is that society is asking underpaid and overworked teachers to be parents as well. No matter how much of a great role model our favorite teacher was, that teacher was mostly affirming the values and sensibilities that the student was bringing to the classroom. If the student is not bringing certain values and sensibilities to the classroom, then the teacher is forced to spend valuable time teaching these values and sensibilities, which limits the amount of time spent exposing the student to the academics.

Finally, the four major issues for public schools are low teacher wages (which keep the schools from attracting highly qualified and invested teachers), not enough funding to decrease the classroom size as well as to add an assistant teacher to each classroom, poor funding and management of special education services for both special needs and gifted children, and an increasing number of uninvolved and uninvested parents that have negative attitudes (for various reasons) toward education, which is passed to the children, creating an adversarial relationship between parent and teacher as well as parent and child and is made worse by the employment of underpaid, overworked teachers. Even in a situation where a charter or private school states, "Give us your worst performing students from your worst areas," often three of the four variables or hurdles facing public schools are removed. Again, because private and charter schools only admit a small percentage of the students that public schools must admit, there is a smaller classroom size, which provides more effective services to identify and service gifted and special needs students. Secondly, the teachers are less stressed, which creates improved morale in the classroom and between parent and teacher. Yet, where charter schools are concerned, this is done with public funds. Oh yeah, they don't just want your children; they want the your tax dollars also. However, if one checks the statistics, one will realize that most charter schools do not achieve greater success than public schools, especially as it relates to the top ten percent of the public school students. So rather than creating these voucher systems for private and charter schools that only serve a select few students, how about cutting funding to prisons, defense, law enforcement, and the expense accounts of our elected officials and invest that money in education because every study proves that proper education not prisons decreases the crime rate. I don't want every child properly educated because I love young people. I want every child properly educated because each child properly educated is one less person likely to rob me.

C. Liegh McInnis
CWhttp://email@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-7433774648935521507.post-83585597855015658032011-07-24T13:14:00.001-05:002011-07-24T13:24:02.517-05:002nd Annual Oxford Blues Festival

Kudus to Darryl Parker for a marvelous, wonderful 2nd edition of the Oxford Blues Festival. I sadly regret that I did not have my camera on the first day and missed the opportunity to get photos of Magic Slim and the Teardrops (and they were incredible!) I did get a few photos Saturday (limited by my camera and the ambient lighting), but they'll give you an idea of what you missed, if you didn't make it.

This was my first time to hear Magic Slim in person, and another I had never heard before was Eddie Campbell, and I loved him so much.  Effie Burt is another notable - she can really belt them out, and I love her style!

One of the great things about this festival is that it's all inside, other than tonight's festivities at Foxfire Ranch, which I will sadly miss. Foxfire has blues every Sunday night, but this is a special associated with the blues festival. Any Sunday night during the surmmer, though, roll on down to Foxfire and enjoy the music, the food, and the inimitable hospitality of the Hollowell family, or book your family reunion or other gathering there! They have a schedule, but aside from that, frequent drop-ins are members of the extended Burnside and Kimbrough families (of the late, great Mississippi hill country bluesmen, R.L. Burnside and Junior Kimbrough)

Another magical thing is never knowing who is likely to drop in on a set - Mark "Muleman" Massey in particular at Soulshine Pizza - we got not only the marvelous Effie Burt, but also an electric performance from Garry Burnside, mixed in with some gritty Mississippi magic from Muleman and band.
CWhttp://email@example.com, MS, USA34.3664951 -89.51924839999998134.327938100000004 -89.56737889999998 34.4050521 -89.471117899999982tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7433774648935521507.post-69564717926336676332011-07-10T18:29:00.002-05:002011-07-10T19:53:59.260-05:00Grassroots Blues Festival in Duck Hill, MS 2011

Here are some photos (although I'm gonna gripe because there wasn't adequate stage lighting and the after dark photos pretty well suck - and these are the best of many I took and discarded). I did a little video of Little Willie Farmer and some of the women dancing during his set (even though they're dark, you still get a sense of the talent). One of these women danced most of the music all day like a play set to dance, with all the emotions and she sang along with most of the songs (even though you couldn't hear her, if you read lips, you could read hers). Her sister joined her for part of the time and another lady, none of whose names I was smart enough to get. If anyone wants to supply names, please let me know.

As usual I missed some folks I really wanted to see, but I'm getting too old to sit out in that noonday sun too long.CWhttp://firstname.lastname@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-7433774648935521507.post-7588362683066595082011-06-29T19:35:00.001-05:002011-06-29T19:53:08.314-05:00Grassroots Blues Festival in Duck Hill, MississippiJuly 9th - the Saturday after the 4th holiday. Get the blues.....

The Grassroots has their line-up online and it looks like a winner to me. It starts right before 12 with a short intro by Sade Turnipseed, so be sure and bring your umbrella, sunshades, sunscreen and a hand fan if you've got one. A chair would help, but the umbrella is more important (because that sun is HOT). Either bring lots to drink or money to buy lots of liquids to keep yourself hydrated, because you sure don't want to poop out before O.B. Buchana rocks those hills out there at 9:20 p.m. - it's going to be a blast, I can't wait!

P.S. Here's some photos from last year, and if you'd like to see some from another year or two, check my photo album (right hand column) . And remember, this blues festival is not only jamming, but it's for a good cause as well. How many things can you do that are more fun than a barrel of circus clowns and supports the area youth in education and development at the same time (sponsored by ACER, Action Communication and Education Reform)CWhttp://firstname.lastname@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-7433774648935521507.post-1867336719719690752011-06-25T17:46:00.001-05:002011-06-25T17:48:10.805-05:00North Mississippi Hill Country Blues Picnic 2011This year's NMHCBP is being held at Foxfire Ranch, just off Highway 7 north of Abbeville, MS this year (as I write). I couldn't go today, so I went straight there from work last night and it was a blast! If you're reading this and wish you could go, there's still time - get yourself out that door and down to Firefox Ranch and the blues show!

I love having it at Firefox - I hope they do it there next year also - it's not only easier to find and easier to get in and out of (especially if it rains), but I love the Hollowells and enjoy anything they have going on out there (Sunday blues at 4:00 p.m. every Sunday during the warm months - check their FB page for schedule details)

I have a few photos here:

North Mississippi Hill Country Blues Picnic 2011 (at Firefox Ranch)

CWhttp://email@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-7433774648935521507.post-72496713586815789212011-05-23T11:21:00.002-05:002011-05-23T11:27:08.548-05:00Who or What Does THE HELP Help? A brief review
[introducing guest blogger, C. Leigh McInnis. McInnis has published poetry, fiction, and essays in several journals, magazines, and newspapers, is the author of seven books, the editor and publisher of Black Magnolias Literary Journal, and he teaches creative writing and world literature at Jackson State University. He can be contacted at Psychedelic Literature or C. Leigh McInnis .]

by C. Liegh McInnis

 Okay, so I finally finished the four hundred and forty-four pages that constitute Kathryn Stockett's The Help. An older African (American) female colleague gave me this book a year ago to thank me for providing a tutorial for a program that she coordinates. I could not believe that anyone who knew anything about me would give me a book written by a white woman, telling the story of African (American) maids working during the 1960s who collaborate with an aspiring white female writer to tell their stories of working for white women, essentially using African people as backdrop or troping material for her story in the way that Tennessee Williams did more than a few times. And for eleven months it sat on my shelf, not even in its correct alphabetized-by-authors place as I keep all my books but on the end where miscellaneous books reside. Even as I heard about the book being a New York Times Bestseller and then, of course, having a movie based on it, I was never once tempted to take it down and see just how much like Gone with the Wind it could be. Yet when my wife took me to see Jumping the Broom as an apology for dragging me to see the current Madea film (I like Why Did I Get Married?, Family that Preys, and For Colored Girls, but the current one just doesn't do it for me.), one of the previews was for The Help. Often, of course, movie trailers lie well, including the best scenes or moments in the promo of a film that is a hour and a half dud. However, there are some trailers that when one sees them one knows that the studio has put all of its eggs, weight, and budget behind this film. It is obvious when a film has been given the first-class treatment. Again, a potential viewer may not be able to tell whether or not the film will be any good, but one can tell how much the studio believes in the film based on the trailer and additional promotion. It was that reality that said to me, "At some point someone who loves this book and movie will ask you about it; don't you want to have enough ammunition to dismiss it as more white fantasy with a white female protagonist bonding with African women over the brutality of men, especially African men, saving themselves from the oppression of men, especially African men?" So nine days ago, I opened to page one.
 The Help is a well-written book by a well-schooled writer, Kathryn Stockett, who has a wonderful eye for detail (historical and cultural), a flare for imagery (descriptive and symbolic), and a wit that echoes three of my favorite storytellers: Richard Pryor, Bill Cosby, and Jerry Clower, especially in the notion that a story with interesting and well-developed characters is always more rewarding than a work of fiction that is more concerned with showing the latest "new school" tricks of fiction, especially as it relates to East Coast minimalism. Further, well-crafted books are books that can be taught on two levels, and The Help achieves this. It can be used to teach the basic elements of fiction writing, and it can be used to show how creative writing is often crafted to enlighten or impact socio-political condition, proving DuBois to be right that in the final analysis "all art is propaganda" (757). The Help does not rise to the levels of James Baldwin, Toni Morrison, or James F. Cooper, but whose work does? Certainly, not mine. However, Stockett has mastered the weaving of the personal and communal narrative and the ability to paint the complexities of race rather than to pander to flat, one-dimensional ideologies and characters, which is achieved by her ability to craft characters in a storm of internal and external conflict, for the most part, on both sides of the race line. When I read any work, I am always trying to discover two elements: creative techniques that I can use and teach to students, which I have briefly discussed, and a central issue or several issues that can be used in the development of a paper. Stockett has presented at least twelve issues that can be discussed in a lit crit piece: the perpetuation of fantasy antebellum society for which whites are willing to lose their humanity to maintain (such as in Faulkner's Sound and the Fury), Christianity as a tool of white supremacy, Christianity as a linguistic battleground for Civil Rights, storytelling as socio-political activism (which includes Aibileen—a maid and co-narrator of the text—as a griot or the creative writer as shepherd and philosopher), the tragedy of an unfulfilled life due to embracing the physical over the metaphysical, African (American) maids as another "Nigger Jim" figure, a general commentary on poor and proper parenting or negligent white mothers having enough money to hide their poor parenting, white supremacy as schizophrenia passed to and manifested in African people as colorism or self-hatred, the manner in which African (American) intellect and culture has existed despite and beyond white culture and oppression as an example of African intellect and culture existing before white culture, the truth and importance of acknowledging African diversity as complex and layered beings (which speaks to their humanity as Margaret Walker does with and for the slaves in Jubilee), the struggle of good-intentioned whites to overcome their own racism, and (of course) the troping or connecting of African oppression with female oppression (allowing the book to be a manifesto on the plight of the female under male oppression). Each of these themes is well painted through intricate character development and creative plot weaving.

 There seem to be only two flaws, and both can be considered major. The first issue is the use of faulty or flawed dialect, specifically Stockett's use of "Law" for "Lawd" as in "Lawd have mercy." I have been unable to finish a few books wherein I found flawed or inauthentic dialect, but in this case it does not seem to bother me as much, probably because there are no other glaring dialect issues. Also, I realize that I am reading a book through a white writer's eyes (even though the narrative is equally shared by two maids and a recent white female college graduate), and I can accept that to her ears she does not hear the "d" in "Lawd." Because there is not an abundance of flaws in the dialect, I am not distracted from the narrative though a few of my friends and colleagues have been too distracted to even finish chapter one. Secondly, I agree with Ishmael Reed that, in most cases, white feminists use the African male as the face of sexism. And I cannot help but wonder if this is true in The Help. While she is clear, vivid, and precise about the horrors of racism that Afro-Southerners endure in the 1960s, Stockett presents two positive adult white males (Skeeter's father and Celia's husband) and not one positive adult African male. There are two male sons of maids that are portrayed in a positive manner, but neither achieves maturity as a sovereign adult male: one dies in an accident, and one is beaten until he is blind. In fact, the one African male whom Stockett develops as more than a symbol of the Civil Rights Movement is Leroy, the husband of Minny, and he beats Minny regularly. Is there not one maid whose husband does not beat her? Is there not one average African male who is not a threat to his community? And as a well-skilled craftsman, Stockett appropriates and connects Leroy's evil with the evil of white male sexism and schizophrenia, especially when Minny and Celia, Minny's boss, are attacked by an insane, naked white man. Yet, in combining the two events to develop her theme of universal or female oppression and struggle, Stockett seemingly paints Leroy and all African men with a broader, more stereotypical stroke than white men. The insane, naked white man in Celia's backyard is never equated with all other white men. However, just before the insane, naked white man appears, Stockett has Celia showing concern for Minny's plight, even attempting to come to Minny's aid:

"Minny?" Miss Celia says, eyeing the cut again. "Are you sure you [cut your forehead] in the bathtub?" I run the water just to get some noise in the room. "I told you I did and I did. Alright?" She gives me a suspicious look and points her finger at me. "Alright, but I'm fixing you a cup of coffee and I want you to just take the day off, okay?…You know," she says kind of low, "You can talk to me about anything, Minny." (304-305).

During the attack by the insane, naked white man, Stockett connects Minny's beating from Leroy to the beating that she takes from the insane, naked white man: "It's like he knows me, Minny Jackson. He's staring with his lip curled like I deserved every bad day I've ever lived, every night I haven't slept, every blow Leroy's ever given. Deserved it and more" (305). And after Celia comes to Minny's aid, in the similar way that Skeeter, the book's white co-protagonist, comes to the aid of and provides voice to the maids, Stockett connects, once again, Minny's beating by Leroy to the beating by the insane, naked white man, but does so in a manner that can be seen as painting the majority of African males with this stereotypical brush: "'So what you gone do about it?' Aibileen asks and I know she means the eye. We don't talk about me leaving Leroy. Plenty of black men leave their families behind like trash in a dump, but it's just not something the colored women do" (310 – 311). Stockett is careful to have her character use "plenty" rather than most, but the message is received, especially since there are no white women who exist in physically abusive relationships in the novel. And because her own, childhood maid and caretaker was "married to a mean, abusive drinker," then that must be the lasting image of African men in her novel. In fact for all of the fear and potential consequence the African women face from providing stories for the book, it seems that the greatest threat comes from Leroy, as Minny states: "Look, Aibileen, I ain't gone lie. I'm scared Leroy gone kill me if he find out" (429). And when Leroy discovers that he has been fired from his job because of Minny contributing stories to the book, of course, all black savage Negro hell breaks out: "Minny panting and heaving. 'He throw the kids in the yard and lock me in the bathroom and say he gone light the house on fire with me locked inside!" (437). Thus, escaping life with Leroy, who by now has become the face of all African men, is as important as escaping white supremacy: "Still, what's important is, Minny's away from Leroy" (439). Whether Stockett knows it or not, this representation of African domestic violence is just one more use of writing as skin privilege, one more use of writing as a smokescreen to keep hidden the obscene abusive relationships that do exist in "white" marriages and partnerships. Stokett writes well, but she runs the risk of hopelessly reinforcing ideas of white supremacy, even if she does so unconsciously. Additionally, those who have profited from reading Dessa Rose, Beloved, and The Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman—works that deal with recording someone else's story—may find that Stockett has consciously or unconsciously used the African male body as a symbol or smokescreen for all evil or merely to placate the supremacy of her white readers.
 As one who has engaged countless books, I have developed the ability to take what is well-done or beneficial from a work and ignore what is poorly done or what is not effective. For instance, I continue to enjoy two hundred and twenty-one of the two hundred and forty-two pages of African (American) poet and theorist Carl Phillips' book Coin of the Realm: Essays on the Life and Art of Poetry. Not only do I not agree with the twenty-one pages that constitute the chapter "Boon and Burden: Identity in Contemporary American Poetry," in which he provides his assessment of the poetry of the Black Arts Movement, I find his attempt to couch his subjective denouncement of the poetry of the Black Arts Movement as objective theory to be thin and flimsy. However, the rest of the book is a worthwhile read. In this same manner, Stockett's painting African men in such broad strokes does not completely destroy the narrative for me. There was no way to expect a southern white writer, even one self-exiled to New York, to indict solely white men or white culture for the evils of the South. Besides, the Negro boogeyman still sells as well as sex does. For chronological and cultural context she evokes the names of Medgar Evers and Martin Luther King, Jr., even as they are moreso flat, one-dimensional symbols of the moment or the meaning of the moment, but there is no adult African male who rises to the humanity and goodness of Skeeter's father and Celia's husband. Still, what saves the narrative is her wonderful use of imagery, her ability to construct complex characters for complex times—especially the manner in which Skeeter is forced to realize and engage her own racist tendencies and sensibilities, the presentation of Aibileen and Minny as intellectual equals to Skeeter—especially their full development into storytellers, the novels biting humor, and the unflinching portrayal of the horrors endured by African people in America, showing the Klan and white southern culture to be equal to the Taliban. After completing the manuscript, Aibileen and Minny are finally able to impress on Skeeter the seriousness of their endeavor:

The room grows quiet. It's dark outside the window. The post office is already closed so I brought [the manuscript] over to show to Aibileen and Minny one last time before I mail it…"What if they find out?" Aibileen says quietly…We haven't talked about this in a while…we haven't really discussed the actual consequences besides the maids losing their jobs. For the past eight months, all we've thought about is just getting it written… "Minny, you got your kids to think about," Aibileen says…[Skeeter says] "Aibileen, do you really think they'd…hurt us? I mean, like what's in the papers?" Aibileen cocks her head at me, confused. She wrinkles her forehead like we've had a misunderstanding. "They'd beat us. They'd come out here with baseball bats. Maybe they won't kill us but…'" (365-366).

As Stockett echoes in the postlude, "Too Little, Too Late," "In The Help there is one line that I truly prize: 'Wasn't that the point of the book? For women to realize, We are just two people. Not that much separates us. Not nearly as much as I'd thought'" (451). For Stockett, The Help seems to be a commentary and celebration of the "universality" of humanity, especially the plight of women in a sexist world. And while I agree more with Langston Hughes's notion of "universality" from his seminal essay, "The Negro Artist and the Racial Mountain," that "universality" is more of a trap or ploy to create within African people an "urge within the race toward whiteness, the desire to pour racial individuality into the mold of American standardization, and to be as little Negro and as much American as possible" (1267), I can applaud Stockett for attempting to tell her truth, which is another motif of the novel, and for having her protagonist struggle with that truth in much the same manner as Baldwin does in Evidence of Things Not Seen. Skeeter struggles with her relationship with Minny who is not as placating as Aibileen, and she struggles with just how much truth she tells about her own mother's relationship with their former maid, Constantine, who was like a mother to her. Yet, what makes Skeeter heroic is not that she single-handedly saves or leads Aibileen and Minny or becomes the lone wolf against the backlash of her white community but that she continues her journey toward self-discovery as she continues her journey to learn every aspect about the community that has birth and molded her, even when the journey does not promise anything but the truth, which very well may be a truth that will disrupt the foundation of the life she knows.
 The Help is already a New York Times Bestseller and will probably be a summer block buster. And while I wonder if this same book would be loved if written by an African woman, especially considering that even at so-called liberal MFA and PhD creative writing programs and literary journals white professors and editors are careful not to allow whites to be painted as the sole antagonist in African poetry and fiction, which makes it even more interesting that Stockett does not list Richard Wright, Margaret Walker Alexander, and Ellen Douglas as noteworthy Mississippians in her postlude, there is no denying that Stockett has crafted a well-told story that receives its tension from the layering of characterization and the conflict that Stockett battled as she wrote it:

The Help is fiction, by and large. Still, as I wrote it, I wondered an awful lot what my family would think of it, and what Demetrie [the maid who helped raise her] would have thought too, even though she was long dead. I was scared, a lot of the time, that I was crossing a terrible line, writing in the voice of a black person. I was afraid I would fail to describe a relationship that was so intensely influential in my life, so loving, so grossly stereotyped in American history…Like my feelings for Mississippi, my feelings for The Help conflict greatly…I am afraid I have told too much…I am afraid I have told too little…What I am sure about is this: I don't presume to think that I know what it really felt like to be a black woman in Mississippi, especially in the 1960s. I don't think it is something any white woman on the other end of a black woman's paycheck could ever truly understand. But trying to understand is vital to our humanity (450-451).

To be clear, I am a Black Nationalist who thinks that Jackie Robinson breaking the color barrier in professional baseball only served to limit greatly the number of black-owned businesses as integration has merely meant the perpetuation of African second-class citizenship. And for those quick to identify the election of President Obama as a great achievement of American integration I assert that he was only elected because Bush II drove the American Titanic into the economic iceberg and that the emergence of the Tea Party has the same historical significance of the emergence of the Klan after the Hayes-Tilden Compromise. However, the value in Stockett's writing is that she does not settle for the falsity of "Can't we all just get along?" but seeks to present difficult questions about the struggle of personal and communal concerns, showing that we all must make difficult decisions of how best to navigate those waters to achieve what is best for oneself, one's race, and others who seem different than us. Though not nearly as dense, Stockett uses the historical novel in much the same way as Walker uses Jubilee—to forecast, make commentary, and raise timely questions that the readers will be forced to ignore or answer. But, even if those questions are ignored, Stockett has fulfilled her artistic responsibility of painting a work that raises these uncomfortable questions.

Works Cited

DuBois, W. E. B. "The Criteria of Negro Art." The Norton Anthology of African American

 Literature. Ed. Henry Louis Gates. New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 1997.

Hughes, Langston. "The Negro Artist and the Racial Mountain." The Norton Anthology of

 African American Literature. Ed. Henry Louis Gates. New York: W. W. Norton &

 Company, 1997.

Stockett, Kathryn. The Help. New York: Amy Einhorn Books, 2009.

Note: Although Margaret Walker Alexander was not a native of Mississippi, she spent thirty years writing and teaching at Jackson State University. And in the same way that Angela Ball is not a native Mississippian but is noted as an exemplary Mississippi writer, as she should be, so should Alexander be noted as an exemplary Mississippi writer.

CWhttp://email@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-7433774648935521507.post-9491111580658348172011-05-20T11:47:00.001-05:002011-05-20T11:51:44.461-05:00The Mighty MississippiThis seems rather appropriate now. I just ran across it when someone reminded me of Judy Henske and I looked for her on Youtube, and found this beautiful rendition of a song I love:

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There is a also a great version of this by Irma Thomas (the Irma Thomas caption explains what the words really signify - a warning to escaped slaves that the dogs are being sent after them and they should get in the water to throw them off the scent)

And another great version, a classic Staple Singers:

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Surprisingly, I found a Big Mama Thornton recording of this song and it was the first thing I've run across from her that I don't care for.

Prayers for all of those still in harm's (waters) way.CWhttp://firstname.lastname@example.com

subset: commoncrawl