I received notice last week that Stare in the Darkness: The Limits of Hip-hop and Black Politics was selected as the National Conference of Black Political Scientists' Du Bois Award given for the best book published on black politics within a two year period. I was blessed to be in a position to be on hand to receive the award personally. A few years ago I was this close to leaving the discipline, and not looking back. Now? I'm in a different place. 

A couple of years ago I was on a panel with Michael Eric Dyson, Melissa Harris Perry, and Sherillyn Ifill, about Manning Marable's biopgraphy of Malcolm X. I thought the book was deeply flawed, and in fact think it is even MORE flawed now. However in my remarks I attempted to unpack what I called "the black box of cultural production". We tend to think that works of intellectual production come full blown from the mind of the people responsible for them. The reality is a bit more complex. Before we even take Marable's ideological flaws into account, we have to wrestle with the fact that he wrote substantial portions of the book on one lung, carrying a breathing machine around with him for the last several months of his life. 

Stare in the Darkness wasn't produced under that type of duress. But it WAS produced under duress. 

I think we should do more to unpack the stuff that goes into producing work, NOT in order to give more props to the people who produce them. Rather, we should do so to further democratize the process. I don't know how many people have attempted to write, to draw, to create, but stopped after hitting the wall…thinking that because they hit the wall they "obviously" didn't have what it took. I don't know how many people have attempted to write, to draw, to create, only to stop after losing the thread of what they were trying to say. 

When the reality is that I don't know a single worker in this field who hasn't hit that wall. I don't know a single worker who hasn't lost the thread of their argument. The first substantive chapter of Stare got away from me so many times I lost count. And even now I kick myself that I called Russell Simmons' Hip-Hop Summit Action Network, the Hip-Hop SOCIAL Action Network more than once. 

You aren't alone.

We don't say that enough in our political struggles, we don't say that enough in our personal struggles, we don't say that enough in our productive struggles. But that's the reality. There aren't as many of us as we'd like, but there are more of us than we realize.

Onward.

I had a chance to check out Nelson George's Brooklyn Boheme (BB) last week at Baltimore's Creative Alliance Theater. I'd urge everyone interested in the concept of the creative class, in black late twentieth century artistic life, and Brooklyn to go check it out.1 Long before Richard Florida popularized the idea that cities could be revitalized through attracting "the creative class" black men and women have believed that black artists had both a particular responsibility and a particular opportunity to uplift the race, to create new ideas of what blackness could be, to create new ideas of what blackness should be. With BB, George is arguing that the artistic production of folks like Saul Williams, Spike Lee, Branford Marsalis, Chris Rock, Jessica Care Moore2, Touré, Vernon Reid, Rosie Perez, Russell Simmons, Lisa Jones et al, are comparable to the Harlem Renaissance and represented the beginnings of what we'd call the modern black aesthetic. And he's arguing that Fort Greene (and Brooklyn in general) was the hub of this movement. And he's arguing that movement/moment is gone.

It's hard to argue with him. We don't have modern black cinema without Spike Lee and She's Gotta Have It. We don't have Jazz at Lincoln Center and the modern jazz movement without the Marsalis brothers, we don't have modern black comedy without Def Comedy Jam and Chris Rock, we don't have the black alternative music scene without Living Color, we don't have the slam poetry movement without folks like Saul Williams and Jessica Care Moore, we do have alternative hip-hop without Talib Kweli and Mos Def but arguably it wouldn't have lasted as long without them. Further, it's clear that there was something particularly unique about Fort Greene as a neighborhood. Bill Stephney (record executive and Fort Greene resident) tells the story of Spike biking his Do The Right Thing script up ten blocks to him so he could get PE to do part of the soundtrack (Fight the Power was the result). Mike Thompson, owner of the Brooklyn Moon, talked about creating a spoken word night as a way to make money and then seeing it become something much more powerful.3 And it's clear that this generation of black artists were both assured of their blackness–they had none of the double consciousness psychoses some associate with black folk, and none of the fears of not being able to be successful in their art because of racism. Chris Rock might have worried about whether his comedy was good enough, but he never seemingly worried about whether audiences and comedy execs would ignore him because of his race.   

It's also hard to argue with the argument that that particular moment is gone in part due to gentrification. In the beginning of the documentary George traces the neighborhood's working class feral (after dark) nature through discussions with Spike Lee (and his brother David), Vernon Reid, and Rosie Perez. Ground on the new Brooklyn Nets arena had just been broken as Nelson George began filming. And there's no way non-established artists could buy into that neighborhood now. In talking about the neighborhood Branford Marsalis argued that it was full of black and Latino artists who were "upwardly mobile in their thinking, but not their wallets." 

But the reason the documentary was shown in Baltimore was because the Creative Alliance and other entities in Baltimore and cities like it are interested in replicating that type of success. In fact after the documentary there was a panel discussion (featuring Baltimore artists and moderated by Don Palmer4, who lived in Fort Greene during the movement but is now an adopted Baltimore son) on the subject of replication.

And the fact is that what happened in Fort Greene simply can't be replicated in Baltimore. For two reasons, both related to the larger political economy.

One reason, brought up by Palmer, was that the specific real estate shifts that made Brooklyn attractive to artists couldn't really happen in the same way in Baltimore in part because Brooklyn is a dense island, whereas Baltimore is much more spead out and less dense.

The second reason, brought up by me, is that the capital of the music industry, the film industry, the publishing industry, and the art industry, is NYC. The artists didn't just come to Fort Greene because it was affordable, and then later on attractive. They came because it allowed them to be close to the movers and shakers in their industry–Spike only had to ride his bike a few blocks to get a record executive to cut a deal. Chris Rock only had to take a subway to tape Saturday Night Live. 

George doesn't address either of these dynamics in the documentary. He also ignores the role the artists themselves played in the gentrification process. We're led to believe that gentrification occurs when the white wealthy move in. But Spike is one of the first Fort Greene residents to get seven figures for his place (spurring the dynamic he then critiques in the doc in a hilarious moment George captures perfectly). Furthermore all of the artists were not only "upwardly mobile in their thinking" suggesting a certain social class, they all had enough money (made off of their art) to purchase homes in the neighborhood. Chris Rock talks about getting to a point where he could buy his residence with one gig. That may not sound like gentrification largely because the people are black, Latino, and have some working class affinities. But it sure looks like it.  

While the literature on the creative class grows by leaps and bounds, even as empirical evidence suggesting its affect on cities appears weaker and weaker, the literature on the black creative class is more or less non-existent. I consider Brooklyn Boheme one of the first "texts" to address this class. It's flawed yes, but flawed in the same way the concept itself is flawed.  

(oh. one more thing. for reasons mired in ideology the harlem renaissance is viewed as the single most important artistic moment in african american history. it was not. a far better comparison would've been to the Black Arts Movement–a movement that was far more productive had a broader geographic reach and had a far greater impact on black life.)

Today Michael Jordan turns 50.

In thinking through what this means I read a piece by Wright Thompson who wrote the best article about Michael Jordan and aging I believe I've ever read. 

I also turned to Foucault–whose work I've been teaching in my class Race and the Neoliberal Turn. 

Social scientists really haven't examined Jordan in any depth. But Thomas Holt deals with Jordan a bit in The Problem of Race in the 21st Century. Writing about the work race performed in the pre-Fordist, Fordist, and post-Fordist eras, he notes that Jordan's rise coincides (and perhaps brings into being) a new relationship between race, production, and consumption. Whereas black bodies were means of production in the pre-Fordist era as enslaved Africans, and in the Fordist-era as strike breakers and then manufacturing plant workers, Holt argued that black bodies were vehicles of consumption in the post-Fordist era.

…the Jordan phenomenon…is thoroughly embedded in and reflective of the post-Fordist economy. Notwithstanding the incredible basketball skills, competitive character, and magnetic personality Jordan brings to the mix, his professional success is ultimately built on two powerful multinational capital enterprises–the National Basketball Association and Nike. (And in recent years they, of course, have been built largely on him.) Through the marriage of new communications technology, aggressive capitalist expansion, and image, both of these enterprises flourished in the late twentieth century.1

The primary components of the National Basketball Association were already in place by the time the Chicago Bulls draft Jordan.2 However he transformed the NBA making it a global brand synonymous with athletic excellence.Nike represents a different case. While we can look at the NBA in hindsight and say it had all the ingredients necessary to make it a global brand, there's absolutely nothing in Nike's history to suggest it would dwarf Adidas without Jordan. Jordan was a primary factor in making both entities multi-billion dollar transnational corporations. 

I think Holt's account is spot-on with one exception. He doesn't quite get what made Jordan JORDAN. It's clear Holt recognizes Jordan's stature. But why Jordan? Why not Clyde Drexler (who was as athletic, arguably as charismatic)? Although I'd argue that place plays an important role here–Portland (where Drexler played much of his career) isn't Chicago by any stretch of the imagination–I don't think Holt recognizes the important role of human capital here.

Which brings me to Foucault.

In the mid-to-late seventies Michel Foucault delivered a series of lectures on the relationship between power, knowledge, and subjectivity. Whereas the mainstream view of power approached it as either domination or as implicit coercion, with one group on "top" and other groups on "the bottom" Foucault took a more complex approach arguing that power was much more diffuse and located to an extent in the act of knowledge formation itself. In his 1979 lecture The Birth of Biopolitics, he expands on these ideas by examining the rise of neoliberalism as a specific governmentality.3 

One of the theoretical ideas that distinguish neoliberal governmentality from other forms is the theory of human capital–an innovation proposed by a Chicago School economist. Up until the innovation of human capital, economists put physical capital, labor, and land at the center of economies–with labor being defined very very narrowly as a simple and somewhat static measure of the work people performed. The idea of human capital transforms the concept of labor by acknowledging that individuals have the capacity to grow and develop in wonderful ways, not only increasing their capacity to perform labor, but also increasing their capacity to develop new ideas and institutions and increasing their capacity to in turn have children and families with a certain level of human capital that will in turn be developed by them. 

Twenty eight years ago I started my first job at Wendy's making 3.35 an hour. I'm now a professor making…more than that. As a result of my decision to go on to college (aided by my parents) and then my decision to go on to grad school (aided by the University of Michigan who paid my way).  The idea of human capital put people and their ability to engage in this process at the center of the economy. A person who becomes educated can do more for him or herself as well as a society than a person who is undereducated. Education here becomes an act of investment. What distinguishes societies along these lines is not just their physical capital, their land, and their labor. Successful societies invest in their people or better yet create the structures that allow their people to make the proper decisions to invest in themselves.

And this fits neatly into the notion that individuals should act like enterprises, like entrepreneurs, like businesses–the central principle of neoliberalism. Under neoliberalism individuals are to treat themselves as enterprises, as entrepreneurs of themselves. They are expected to develop their human capital, to make decisions based on the desire to develop their human capital. And what they do to develop their capital will allow them to make a return on their investment. The role of government is to create the legal framework that makes this type of rational activity possible and likely. Every attempt to create a social safety net DAMAGES the human capital formation process. When we for example tell a poor single mother that she doesn't have to go out and find a job, doesn't have to go out and get educated, but rather can stay at home and care for her children, we are damaging her ability to grow her human capital…because we're making it far harder for her to say "I need to go out, get a job, and get educated."  

I've used this quote a number of times, and will use it again: I'm not a businessman, I'm a BUSINESS, man.

Now how do we get from here to Jordan?

Back to Holt.

Notwithstanding the incredible basketball skills, competitive character, and magnetic personality Jordan brings to the mix, his professional success is ultimately built on two powerful multinational capital enterprises–the National Basketball Association and Nike. (And in recent years they, of course, have been built largely on him.)4 (italics mine)

Here Holt takes "the incredible basketball skills, competitive character, and magnetic personality" as well as Jordan's own role in building the NBA and Nike for granted. For understandable reasons–he's interested in articulating the role the black body plays in the post-Fordist economy and for him the most important thing is the labor that black body performs.

But taking a human capital approach allows us to do two things–it allows us to trace the way disciplinary power works under the neoliberal turn, and it also allows us to examine the dark side of the human capital formation process, even for people who've experienced the type of success Jordan have.

What do I mean here?

The theory of human capital formation relies upon the idea that individuals have the capacity to learn and to teach themselves. They have the ability to diagnose where they are, decide where they want to be, and then decide what skills they have to develop to get there. This is disciplinary power at work. When I decided I wasn't "productive enough" to get tenure I read Robert Boice's Advice for Assistant Faculty Members and put myself on a writing program. I, in effect, told myself what to do. Note how power works in this case. There IS someone above me saying "if you don't do X, you won't get tenure, and if you don't get tenure, you're going to have to find another way to take care of your family." But it's really ME doing the work on ME, using expert advice. 

Every time we engage in a weight loss program, every time we read yet another self-help book, every time we decide that we're going to play our babies Mozart in order to make them smarter (and to increase our own parenting skills) we're doing the same thing. We are disciplining ourselves, according to expert knowledge. And punishing ourselves when we fail. This isn't power as domination. This isn't power as coercion necessarily. This is a different form of power.

And one that Michael Jordan mastered. 

It was clear from the moment Jordan stepped on the court that he could score almost at will, through a combination of mid-range jumpers, and acrobatic moves to the rim. 

Click here to view the embedded video.

The line on Jordan at this time was that if you kept him from getting to the rim, making him shoot from further out (or even worse for him, getting his teammates involved) he'd do damage, but he'd be contained. The Detroit Pistons deployed this strategy (The Jordan Rules) to success, standing in the way of Jordan and the Finals in 88 5, in 89 6, and in 907.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Jordan made a few key decisions that helped the Bulls get passed the Pistons. He embraced the Triangle Offense8 and in doing that learned to trust his teammates (particularly Scottie Pippen who went on to become one of the leagues top twenty all-time players). He improved his shooting range and his defensive prowess to increase his offensive efficiency (making him offensively deadly from more than a few spots on the court) and his ability to stop the player he was guarding9. But more importantly, Jordan was the first player in the history of the game to use expert nutritional information and expert workout guidance, hiring Tim Glover. Glover and Jordan worked together to create the breakfast club as well as a scientific workout plan that would keep Jordan functioning at a high level throughout his career.10 This decision gave him the increased body strength and stamina to withstand the Pistons' punches, and gave his teammates (Pippen most importantly) the strength and the confidence they needed. 

Now here's the $1million question. Why did Jordan do this? Up until this point, no one had considered using scientific training methods to develop their games. Basketball players had begun to lift weights by this time, but no one had trainers (and personal cooks). 

Jordan was arguably one of the top five ruthless competitors in the NBA.11 Writing about Jordan's second retirement, Michael Wilbon wrote the following:

"I can remember this time in, I think, 1990 when Scottie decided to challenge Michael one day in practice," Hodges said. "Michael kind of backed up for a half-second. Then he proceeded, literally, to score on Scottie at will. It was incredible. I mean, Scottie Pippen even then was one of the best players in the league and Michael just rained points on him. Scottie had to step back and say, 'Slow up, man.' "

That's what it's like to be Michael Jordan, to feel compelled to win every duel in every dusty street, to turn back every challenge both real and perceived. One night in Chicago, Jordan asked whom I had come to write about. It was an opposing player with Washington ties who was averaging 20-plus points a game, having a great season. "Well, what are you going to write when he gets no points tonight?" Jordan asked. "I'm telling you right now, your boy is getting nothing." When Jordan and the Chicago starters went to the bench toward the end of a blowout two hours later, the player I went to write about had three points and Jordan had made him nuts.12

Allegedly, Jordan grew up believing his parents liked his older brother Larry more than they liked him. And in response took every opportunity he could to prove them wrong.  This thing, this habit of proving his parents wrong, bled over into other arenas of competition. It bled over into his development as a high school player–Jordan's best friend Larry Smith was picked to play varsity over Jordan and he never forgot it. In the story linked above, Wilbon noted that Jordan not only created slights, in some cases he invented slights out of whole cloth. The Smith story is one of them. Jordan transformed it from "Jordan's best friend picked to play varsity over Jordan" to "Jordan cut from high school team". It was this "thing" that Jordan used to develop the skill of persistence, of working through adversity, playing through pain, of getting up seven times after getting knocked down six.

Jordan isn't Jordan without that. Perhaps because of his genetic gifts he goes on to play basketball at the college level. Perhaps he becomes a decent pro. But he doesn't become a brand. 

Holt's telling a short story about the work that race does in the post-Fordist era and perhaps for that reason he misses this in his analysis of Jordan. But I'd argue it's difficult to understand the turn towards what Holt calls post-Fordism but is really neoliberalism, without examining human capital.

For instance he isn't able to see why neoconservative arguments so neatly work within neoliberalism. 

Click here to view the embedded video.

And while it's clear that he understands that people like Jordan are in some ways, cogs in a machine, he doesn't quite understand how processes of human capital formation often end up imprisoning the people that use them.

For me this is the money quote of the Thompson article I link above.

There's no way to measure these things, but there's a strong case to be made that Jordan is the most intense competitor on the planet. He's in the conversation, at the very least, and now he has been reduced to grasping for outlets for this competitive rage. He's in the middle of an epic game of Bejeweled on his iPad, and he's moved past level 100, where he won the title Bejeweled Demigod. He mastered sudoku and won $500 beating Portnoy at it. In the Bahamas, he sent someone down to the Atlantis hotel's gift shop to buy a book of word-search puzzles. In the hotel room, he raced Portnoy and Polk, his lawyer, beating them both. He can see all the words at once, as he used to see a basketball court. "I can't help myself," he says. "It's an addiction. You ask for this special power to achieve these heights, and now you got it and you want to give it back, but you can't. If I could, then I could breathe."

Click here to view the embedded video.

Here's Jordan's Hall of Fame Acceptance Speech…the speech where by all rights he should be most at peace. Do you see peace here? There are two types of disciplinary power–there's the type of power used on people and populations who we don't think are able to properly govern themselves, and then there's the type of disciplinary power we deploy on populations able to do so. On ourselves. Jordan has in effect imprisoned himself. As I think on Michael Jordan turning 50, I'm not sure there's anything more tragic about this moment. Jordan paid a price for greatness, a terrible price. One, given the turn, it is likely impossible for us to fully escape.

Yesterday I attended the funeral of Vernon Nathaniel Dobson, longtime pastor of Union Baptist Church, associate and fellow traveler of Martin Luther King jr., and a member of Baltimore's Goon Squad. 

(yes. Goon Squad. more on that later.)

I am in Baltimore because of Reverend Dobson. His daughter, Kim Sydnor, brought me to Morgan to study health disparities in 20041 

I knew that Kim Sydnor had politics–she wouldn't have brought me to Baltimore otherwise. I knew she had deep Baltimore roots. And I think she told me about her father–I knew he was King's contemporary. But over the years, particularly through my work with Marc Steiner, I'd come to realize how seminal a figure he was in Baltimore's history. Reverend Dobson helped found the Juvenile Court System. Union Baptist Church was the home of the Poor People's Campaign. Reverend Dobson helped start the Maryland Food Bank and the Nehemiah Housing Project. Reverend Dobson formed one of the first Head Start programs in Maryland.

And it was Reverend Dobson who helped found Baltimoreans United in Leadership Development (BUILD).

Now he didn't do it alone. At the leadership level "the Goon Squad"2 loomed large. Comprised of Dobson, Homer Favor, Gus Adair, Joe Howard, Parren Mitchell, Harold Dobson (his brother), Wendell Phillips, Pat Scott, Lalit Gadhia, and Madeline Murphy (according to the obituary the one unofficial female member), the Goon Squad was a group of elite Race Men (and one Race Woman) who were influential in developing Baltimore's civil rights agenda. And of course there were other organizations doing work in the city–I know Baltimore had an active SNCC chapter for example. Through their work they made it possible for blacks interested in public office to run, and win. They arguably made it possible for blacks to serve in the police department. They made it possible for blacks to get city and state contracts.

I know that Reverend Dobson expressed dismay that we were adrift in important ways.

Attending the funeral I think he's right. The services started probably an hour or so after they were supposed to, largely because the line of those wishing to pay their respects extended so long. They kept coming.

Kept. Coming.

Kept. Coming.

But with that said, the service revealed a threefold gap to me.

The first is the gap between the “apolitical political elite” and the rest of us. There were a few pastors that I would've expected to be there that were absent. A few politicians (though Kurt Schmoke and Kweisi Mfume were there as was Jill Carter and Frank Conaway, neither the Mayor, her predecessor were nor many of Baltimore's City Council) as well but many more were absent. Reverend Alfred Vaughn delivered the (powerful) eulogy and talked about the difference between his generation of black pastors and the current generation. Whereas his generation was politically involved and spiritually committed powerfully using the story of Christ to organize black men and women for the cause of social justice…this generation is more invested in the prosperity gospel.

We can easily take this argument and apply it outward to black politicians, businessmen, school teachers, and the like.

I don't buy it. The largest black Baptist organization in the country fought against the Civil Rights Movement tooth and nail. For every black church with a social justice mission there were several churches against that mission. They offered social services, yes, but social justice? No. The first black church was a radical institution–radical in that its worshippers believed black people had as much of a right to God as any people did, radical in that its worshippers believed black people had a God given right to citizenship. But "the black church" is no more "naturally" radical than the Constitution itself is. The current generation of prosperity gospel pimps pastors has as much of a right to declare itself the "natural" home of "the black church" than the pastors with my (correct) politics do.

Last week I wrote a piece about using black churches as a hub of foreclosure activism. I did so not believing in "the black church" as much as I did believing in black people's capacity for activism. That's an important difference. With that said though there are black people who believe strongly in social justice and black people who'd rather simply benefit from the past.

The second gap is an age gap–I know a few members of Leaders of a Beautiful Struggle who wanted to be there but couldn't make it, but I assume that most of the people I've worked with don't know Reverend Dobson and his legacy and don't know the longer legacy of struggle in Baltimore. There were very very few people in that large audience under forty. I do not believe this to be the fault of the younger generation of activists, although it may be their responsibility to somehow fix. But I do believe that many of the people who fought long and hard for Baltimore to be open for black folk fought long and hard against a very specific form of race and class subjugation. A form that doesn't really exist anymore.

We don't live in an era of Jim Crow, new or otherwise.

Rather we live in an era of explicit hyper-segregation, an age in which it is possible for a black man to drive without a license, without a photo id of ANY kind, in a car he didn't own (couldn't even say the owner's name with ANY accuracy), with one headlight, and not get a ticket…provided he's a tenure-track professor at a top-tier university.3 In this age middle income black people still bear the costs of racism–when the economy tanks they're the hardest hit, they can't get that much value from their homes, they are a bit sicker than their white counterparts, and it's much harder to maintain their class status over more than a generation or two because they have no wealth to speak of. But our lower income breathren are much more likely to bear the brunt of it (from black hands no less). 

A few weeks ago activists won an important victory when Governor O'Malley pulled back the funding for a proposed jail for "youth charged as adults". Given attitudes about black youth, I wouldn't be surprised if at least some of Dobson's generation didn't support that youth jail because of fear.

Which brings me to the third gap. This gap is a racial gap. In a standing room only service with hundreds of people I could probably count the number of whites on one hand. Senator Ben Cardin was there long enough to pay his respects. Former Senator Paul Sarbanes was there. I sat next to a white woman who received her degree with Kim. Marc Steiner was there. Jake Berzoff-Cohen (a young BUILD organizer) was as well.

And that's about it. Baltimore has a large enough population of whites who benefitted from Reverend Dobson's work AND who support the general cause of social justice that more whites should've been there. 

I've worked with Occupy Baltimore folk and many associated with the Red Emma Collective for the past couple of years…but while some of them are familiar with the legacy of black radicalism in Baltimore (AK Press published Marshall Law) and more than a few of them were deeply involved in the struggle to stop the youth prison, they have to do more work to acknowledge the seminal role black people play and do more work with black populations in transforming Baltimore. This likely means they have to make a hard choice. They can work with people of various backgrounds WITH their politics, or they can choose to engage in the lives of regular black men, women, and children, who definitely do NOT have their politics. Who DO believe in a Christian God. Who DO believe that the market isn't a bad thing. Who DO believe that Obama is the next best thing to King. This is an extension of the apolitical elite I talked about above…but the difference is that black activists routinely interact with these folk daily. They are our husbands and wives, our sons and daughters, our cousins and play-cousins, our classmates, our fraternity/sorority brothers/sisters, etc. 

Reverend Dobson was a literal and a figurative giant. Our lives have been made better by his presence. I would not consider myself an adopted son of Baltimore had it not been for the spirit he transmitted through his children. 

We would do him and ourselves a great service if we were to overcome these gaps, perhaps in the creation of a modern day Goon Squad, in order to make Baltimore a place where social justice lives. 

I'm back in the classroom for the first time in a minute (I had the fall semester off). In an attempt to save trees I'm placing the syllabus here.

First up? Blade Runner.

Imag(in)ing Cities

On Friday's Barbershop I weighed in on the "controversy" over President Obama using Lincoln's Bible and Martin Luther King jr's Bible during his swearing in ceremony1. I noted that King was dead, and if we want to make claims about racial inequality or class inequality we'd be better off focusing on the here and now and making claims about inequality rooted in the contemporary condition than in focusing on what King would've done. I then argued that Obama's choice of King–or rather the connections people make between Obama and King–fit if we look at the King of 1955 or so.

That King supported the market strongly.

That King had to be browbeaten to participate in the Montgomery  Bus Boycott. Then had to be browbeaten again to continue after it was found successful.

Several years later, that King arguably left Fannie Lou Hamer and the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party on the cutting room floor of the 1964 Democratic Convention, supporting the LBJ Compromise that gave them two symbolic seats in the convention while allowing the white supremacist Mississippi Democratic Party delegation to participate fully. 

Now on the other hand if we look at the King of 1967, we find Obama wanting. And it isn't even close.

That King spent the last days of his life supporting a workers strike.

That King was largely on the outs with the civil rights establishment because he felt the Vietnam War was immoral.

That King argued that we needed a fusion of capitalism and socialism (if not communism) to bring together the wealth creating components of capitalism with the resource sharing components of socialism. 

It's hard to see Obama in THIS King.

Now a strong argument can be made that civil rights leaders need to be incorporated into the national tapestry. That the symbolic choice of the King Bible along with the newly created King Monument in Washington D.C. help further embed the causes they fought for into the natural language we use to describe American democracy and American political values. 

However the question becomes how are they incorporated? To what ends are they used? Are they used to moor a strong argument against inequality in that same fabric? Are they used to valiantly argue for a deeply American progressive vision of what America should be? 

Or are they used to show how far we've come, to show how high we've lifted ourselves? 

Particularly because Cornel West was one of the people making this argument–a little more than four years ago Cornel West, Julianne Malveaux, and other intellectuals blasted Obama for not mentioning King's name during the speech he gave when he formally accepted the Democratic nomination for President (on the anniversary of the March on Washington)–his comments sound shaky.

West is a deeply flawed vessel. He is an elitist. His vision of democratic pragmatism largely ignores the work of ACTUAL democratic activists. On more than one occasion he's turned on folk more for personal slights than for political ones2. This doesn't mean his general critique is wrong. And in the absence of louder voices, I'll take his. Gladly. 

Hanes Walton jr. passed away recently. Over the course of a 45 year career he published over 80 articles, 25 book chapters, and 25 books and edited volumes, served on 12 review boards, and received over 25 awards and grants. He was the first scholar to take Martin Luther King jr. seriously as a political philosopher. He was the first scholar to examine black conservatism as a political phenomenon. He was the first scholar to examine black third-party political participation. He was the first scholar to examine the politics of civil rights regulatory agencies. In fact almost twenty years later his book on the subject (When the Marching Stopped) as well as his book Invisible Politics remain required reading (hopefully SUNY Press will re-release Invisible Politics). He spent the majority of his career at two institutions–Savannah State College, and the University of Michigan–he was one of the only scholars to have spent significant time at a historically black college as well as a mainstream high tier research I university. 

In sum, Walton was arguably the dean of black politics, perhaps the most productive of the civil rights era generation of black political scientists. 

My first year of graduate school at Michigan happened to coincide with Hanes Walton's first year on campus. I was one of his research assistants. I graded a few of his classes. I chose him as my dissertation advisor. 

I found him to be incredibly humble. To say he was productive was an understatement–particularly given that he wrote every single book, chapter, article, and review I mention above in longhand (sending his work to an assistant in Savannah to type because she was the only one on the face of the planet who could read his handwriting!). He was an engaging lecturer–one year I happened to be the grader for both of his classes and witnessed him deliver two three-hour long lectures every Friday for an entire semester without notes. And he was open with his time–he spent every Saturday writing the dozens of recommendation letters and tenure reviews he was routinely asked to write. He was NEVER Dr. Walton or Prof. Walton to any of us–he was ALWAYS simply "Hanes."

Finally it is (fortunately or unfortunately depending on your perspective) very possible for a black professor to be simultaneously incredibly productive, an intellectual groundbreaker, and anti-political when it comes to dealing with ACTUAL black politics particularly at the micro-level. There are a number of black professors who through their scholarship make it possible for scholars to study black life without having to compromise, while at the same time looking the other way when those scholars face attack (from non-blacks and blacks alike) because they don't quite fit the grad student/scholar box. 

Hanes Walton Jr. is not one of those professors. On two occasions I know of, and given my own proclivities, probably a dozen other occasions, Hanes protected me. AND made me aware of what was going on around me. Over the past twenty years the University of Michigan has produced more black political scientists than any other institution. Almost all of those students bear his mark.

I wish I could say that there were people up to the task of filling his shoes. 

I cannot.

Hanes Walton Jr.'s CV

Working on my second book project on autonomy. It's a sequel of sorts to Stare in the Darkness, dealing with black autonomy projects and the means and logics black populations use to problem-solve black conduct. It began as an attempt to understand the neoliberalisation of black politics but has become more ambitious as I struggle with it. 

The first quote of the book comes from Nina Simone's "I Wish I Knew (How it Would Feel to be Free)":

Click here to view the embedded video.

Digging into the history of the record I got an interesting tidbit from the wikipedia entry. Turns out that since its recording in 1963 (and becoming an anthem of sorts for the Civil Rights Movement), it's been used as the theme for the Athens 2004 Olympics, and in Coca-Cola commercials. Given that I'm arguing our conception of freedom has changed, this is appropriate.

I was looking for information on Max Roach's Freedom Now Suite and I stumbled across the following brief interview with Branford Marsalis. Given Rolling Stone's recent release of their top 50 hip-hop songs of all time list I thought it appropriate. Although I don't find much use in folks comparing the best work of a given genre to the worst work of a given genre, I do appreciate Branford's simultaneous openness and his dedication to craft. 

Click here to view the embedded video.

Dale Earnhardt Jr. Jr. – We Almost Lost Detroit from Dale Earnhardt Jr. Jr. on Vimeo.