Black Power Soundtrack

If you were to create a soundtrack for a Black Power class, what would you include?  I’ve talked about my Black Power Fantasies course, and as it stands we’re going to have three layers (readings, videos, and music).  I’ve got a handle on the first...

Black Power Fantasies 2007

I am co-teaching a course entitled Black Power Fantasies with Stanford Carpenter an anthropologist who was recently hired at the Art Institute of Chicago. What we are interested in mining are the politics of black cultural production. To the degree we can think of an...

Death, Blogging, and the New Year

A little over two months ago, I got into a car accident.  Leaving the office at about 2:30am my Grand Caravan was hit by a kid driving an out-of-control White Jeep Cherokee.  The kid groggily got out of the car and quickly fled the scene on foot.  Come to find out...

Taxes are good for you

I’m combining two posts that are related. Rachel is talking about the recent election of Deval Patrick in Massachusetts. Someone asked a group of Asians, Latinos, Whites, and African Americans to name their biggest concerns. Education, crime, jobs, and...

Democracy and Hip-hop, a Manifesto

I don’t know if they’d call it a manifesto, but what the folks at Democracy and Hip-hop have laid down certainly reads like one. Let me say at the outset that this is the type of critical work that we need to be creating and fighting about. This is the...