He Found My Letters, and Read Each One Out Loud…

“Strumming my pain with his fingers/

Singing my life with his words/

Killing me softly with his song/

Telling My Whole Life, With His Words/

Killing me softly/

With his song…”

-Killing Me Softly, The Fugees

Touré’s Who’s Afraid of Post-Blackness: What It Means to Be Black Now is simply amazing. Not in a fireworks-exploding blinding way, but in a post-coital, languorously intimate way. Having been out of graduate school for fifteen years, I don’t find it necessary nowadays to highlight when I read, or to take notes in order to remember salient passages. When I turned the first pages of Post-Blackness, though, I started highlighting and note-taking with a passion.

Growing up upper-middle class, in a lifestyle which allowed my parents to send me to private schools for most of my educational career, I found the lives and paths depicted in Toure’s work to be echoes of my own experience and experiences. I also found him trying to answer questions and address feelings that I’d never (or rarely with only trusted friends) shared out loud:

 

• “The fight for equality is not over but that shift from living amid segregation and civil war to integration and affirmative action and multiculturalism – and also glass ceilings, racial profiling, stereotype threat, microaggression, redlining, predatory lending, and other forms of modern racism – has led many to a very different perspective on Blackness than the previous generations had.”  (p. 50)

 

 “Black America’s Greatest Generation: those who fought in the streets and the courts to desegregate and force America to give Blacks greater access to the American dream. Because of their struggles and successes my generation had new opportunities as well as a certain survivor’s guilt: We wanted to fight but there were no longer battles as fierce and overt as those they’d already confronted.” (p. 119)

Growing up, I often felt an internal struggle to maintain “the struggle” that my parents fought, that my grandparents fought out of necessity. But when we can sit at the front of the bus the responsibility to live up to those opportunities (while not having obvious racism and discrimination to fight) is real for those of us who grew up on stories of “what it was like.”

This book spoke to me in whispers.

Even with it’s underlying thesis that “Post-Black means we are like Obama: rooted in but not restricted by Blackness”, it reflected a definition of blackness that allows me to be at peace with not having existed in the world that O’Shea Jackson, Eric Wright, André Young and others painted as the reality of young, Black men growing up through the nineties.

In literally dozens of places I had to stop, feeling like Touré had been a fly on the wall listening to conversations I’d had growing up, and then written them down.

I recommend this book because it is an opening line in the much-needed conversation about race that the United States desperately needs. I recommend this book because it poses questions and posits theses that I have asked myself for forty years. I recommend this book because, while I haven’t done the power of its questions, its solicitations, its depictions and definitions of blackness justice, I have awakened the possibility that it will move you, too.

Education By Example

As a teacher, I have often wondered how best to involve parents in the education of their children.  In my school experience, I’ve often heard that children learn from what we do, as well as what we say.  And a couple of recent experiences in my own home, with my own children, have shown me exactly how important it is to be actively teaching my children, as my parents did for me, by being the type of involved parent in their curricular and extracurricular education: I need to educate them by my example.

A few days ago, in conjunction with the national observance of Columbus Day, my children were exposed to what I felt was a one-sided, celebratory portrayal of Colón. For reasons too numerous to mention here, it was important to me to address the presentation with the person who spoke, and to speak with and teach my own children that evening.  I talked to them both about what was missing from the presentation they witnessed, and about my speaking up and meeting with the presenter.

The lessons I hoped to impart were at least two-fold: first, that Columbus was an explorer who brought knowledge of the new continents back to Europe at a time when they could exploit that information, and then took slavery, disease and oppression back with him on his second journey to colonize in the name of Christianity; second, and more important, is that I taught them how to speak up, even to people who have authority over them, when they believe that something is wrong, or someone is wrong.

I’ve written before about the importance of teaching children that they can change the world only if they speak up, and that they have a moral responsibility to make the world a better place by speaking truth to power when necessary.  As a parent, it’s imperative that I make this lesson clear by acting in the same way I expect them to act.

The second event was a sixth-grade science project which landed (to my surprise) on our dining room table late the night before it was due. Tired as I and my wife both were, we both realized that this was an assignment that our son would need our assistance to complete, a truth that was confirmed by the title of the assignment, “The Family MythBusting Project”.

Knowing nothing about the project (my wife had a little more information that I did), I had to read the directions and help him navigate his academic work. By working with him – running to get supplies, asking him questions to see what he had learned, having him teach me what he knew, letting him stay up a little past his bedtime to finish and staying up with him working – we showed him that his education, that his work was important. While the veracity of Power Balance Bracelets isn’t life-changing (he determined that they don’t really work), the memory and impression of his parents spending the time with him, challenging and learning with him, supporting him as he educated himself will.

I started this blogpost by saying that I am a teacher.  Todos los padres son maestros.  All parents are teachers.  We teach children by our example what is important, what they should focus on, how they should interact with each other and others, and how they impact and affect the world.

If we complain about teachers, but don’t speak to the teachers themselves, then we are teaching them cowardice. If we have issues with their schools, and we take those issues to the schools, we are teaching them to be assertive and have an impact. If we speak Spanish at home but make sure they learn English, we are teaching them to have more tools in their toolbox. By speaking up for bilingual education in schools, for smaller class sizes, for qualified teachers, for equitable distribution of education resources and attention from local and national governments, for Mexican American Studies Departments and Curriculum, for Indigenous People Day and whole host of other issues, we are teaching our children that they have value, that their education has value, and they should raise their voices to secure their birthrights.

When we do that, that is the moment they learn. Es el momento en el cual entienden. We are educating them by example.

Related articles

• Toronto Schools Promote Multicultural Teaching and Learning (indiancountrytodaymedianetwork.com)
• Barack Obama on Education (education.com)

Fear of a [Not White] Planet

Image via Wikipedia

A principal in Massachusetts is being attacked and disparaged because she had the audacity to acknowledge more than a single story. Far from the “e pluribus unum” approach she wants to take toward celebrations of Columbus over Indigenous People Day, or her aversion to celebrating ghouls and goblins instead of  All Hallow’s Eve at school, her detractors have no response or ideas except to simply hurl insults at her womanhood, intellect, citizenship and person.
They fear a not-white planet.
One of the comments on the article even proposes a “Hate White Male Europeans Day”, sarcastically offering that only that group is responsible for any and all advancements in the United States since they first set foot on it some five hundred plus years ago.
Sorry, it is a Not White planet.
Apologies, there is more than one story.
The reality check is that far from being “politically correct” (when did that become an epithet?) this principal is adhering to the most basic of American Ideals – that we are a nation of millions, multitudes of different hues and cultures, but out of the many, we are one.

Related articles

• The Single Story of Christopher Columbus (powerfulbeyondmeasure.wordpress.com)
• All Hallows’ Eve (theonlinephotographer.typepad.com)
• Indigenous People’s Day at OccupyMN (redantliberationarmy.wordpress.com)
• Indigenous Peoples’ Day (fulcrumbookblog.com)

The Single Story of Christopher Columbus

“What’s so great about discovery? It’s a painful, penetrative act. What you call discovery I call the rape of the natural world.”

–Dr. Ian Malcolm, Jurassic Park

Sitting in a presentation the other day, listening to the speaker extol the virtues of Columbus to students, it struck me that his presentation was exactly what Chimamanda Adichie calls “The Danger of A Single Story”. He talked about the bravery, the fortitude and the moxie of Columbus in setting out into unknown waters and the benefits that his journey [to the Americas] had for Europe. He gave what Europeans and white Americans have hailed for centuries as THE story of Columbus, overriding consideration of how it would play out for the students with indigenous heritages, or the students with African heritages, whose ancestors and families have been living with the burden of Columbus’s “discovery” for five centuries, whose ancestors were “honored” with disease, with murder, with chains…

He told a single story which instilled pride, and lied by omission.

I sat there quiet, struck dumb and mute by the fact that Columbia, British Columbia, the District of Columbia and Columbus, Ohio all bear the name of a man whose acts led directly and indirectly to the murder and massacre of millions. Where was that part of his legacy discussed?

It was not.

I felt trapped. This is the dilemma people of color face daily. “Do I disrupt this huge assembly? Do I have to educate the adults and children, publicly pointing out “their innocent ignorance”? Do I take this chance, risk what I’ve gained, to stand up, be heard and seen, to fight against being silently trampled?”

Sitting in a predominantly white audience, I saw my story omitted in favor of Columbus. The stories of my indigenous and African ancestors were erased in order to “honor” the architect of their degradation and demise. (Much like, upon reflection, my forebears were when the Nina, the Pinta and the Santa Maria landed). What did my black and brown children see and hear? Did they feel themselves negated from the sacristy in the plainspoken words of a thoughtful man who sought to educate, but only succeeded in elevating because he told a single story? What did the white kids get out of the presentation? That the glory of Columbus is the THE story…

I grow tired of experiencing privilege from the under-side.

I grow tired of seeking the company of people who understand there is more than one story.

I grow tired of being the voice of balance, of cultural democracy, of inclusion simply because it is so easy for the inheritors of white privilege to travel on the path built on my back rather than to stop, look around, and notice there are other travelers, too.

I realize that Columbus introduced Europe to a land full of less-technological people, of abundant natural resources, and that that introduction is a source of pride and sustenance. That story is true.

However, for too long that has been the single story told of Columbus – no mention of theft from his own crew; no mention of rape and pillage which occurred when his ships set aground; no mention of infection and disease he and his unwashed brought with them from Europe; no mention of the millions who died immediately and in the years following when Europe “opened up” the Americas after “discovery”.

Those stories muddy the reflection of Columbus, chip away at the pedestal on which he stands even today. Those stories force a reevaluation of cultural values that is uncomfortable for those who benefit from his cultural legacies. But when those stories are told, they include me, and those like me, in the inheritance. Those stories allow all of us to assess the positive along with the negative. Those stories make all who hear them more inclusive, more understanding, more mature.

I’ll tell those stories in my classroom. There are no single stories there. But that’s not as powerful, which is perhaps my true frustration, as telling those stories out loud, giving them the power of the microphone, including them in the fabric of our schools and nation the way Columbus was that day.

That’s the discovery I’m working for.

Chimamanda Adichie: The danger of a single story

Reconsider Columbus Day

Rebelde Poetry Showcase: @rscspokenword and His “Indigenous People Day Poem”

Testimony: young African-Americans on self-discovery and Black identity (“White Friends by Jennifer L. Vest”, p. 137)

Related articles

• Twitter Users Send Ironic Columbus Day Wishes (huffingtonpost.com)
• Columbus Day 2011 (andrewconard.com)
• Columbus Day (davidscommonplacebook.wordpress.com)
• Think You Know The Real Christopher Columbus? (npr.org)

It’s the media…the social media, that is.

UPDATE: It seems fitting that this is the post I wrote yesterday, the day before the passing of Steve Jobs. While I avoided the terms iPhone, iPod and iPad, Job’s visionary genius and Apple’s leadership in terms of technology are the foundation and infrastructure upon which these social media tools depend, and are the hardware students are using and will be using for years to come to access the universe we all inhabit. While the company will continue, and his spirit of creativity is no doubt imbued into the philosophy and plans for the future, his creative vision will be missed. Thank you, Steve.

“Social Media” conjures up a variety of thoughts and images: kids hunched over their smartphones in groups, not speaking to each other but laughing about the text they are sharing; teenagers or college students snapping pictures of each other, posed and unposed, and uploading them to Facebook for consumption by that website’s “more than 800 million active users”; people wasting time in front of screens, mobile and desktop, instead of talking to each other or appreciating nature and athletics. All of these pictures portray a negative, narcissistic environment doomed to collapse under the weight of it’s own self-indulgence. But what if they’re wrong?

Mobile computing, social media, smartphones and iPads are toys that adults are turning into tools (or tools masquerading as toys) that have the power to transform education as we know it. Latinos are already the largest ethnic group of users on Twitter and Facebook. Rather than fear this fact, muttering to ourselves in Spanglish about how children are spending too much time playing on their phones, we need to encourage them to put those tools to work, creating a revolution inside the classroom, inside the schools in this country, inside our minds to empower our children.

The power of social media played out earlier this week when thousands of people, Latinos and others, logged in to Ustream to participate in a town hall on the state of education in the Hispanic community with US Secretary of Education Arne Duncan. What was notable was the immediate access and interaction granted the citizens of the United States via Twitter, allowing real time interaction with the man responsible for shepherding education policy in the United States. We got to ask questions, from the philosophical to the financial, and get some answers. It will play out again when people from across the country gather in Chicago next month for the LATISM National Conference. Imagine if we shared that power to learn and interact with our students.

Teachers are already finding that student success is increasing using technology and social media across the country. It simply takes a shift in thinking to understand that what our kids are using for fun can be used to teach them both the content and skills, that the same apps and sites they’re using to KIT (keep in touch) can be used to create songs, films, podcasts that speak to who they are and share their gifts and talents with a larger world.

In doing this, using new technology and social media to interact with their own education, they will learn that the power to transform the world rests in their hands; the tools they need to impact their school, their neighborhood, their city, their state, their country can be used inside the classroom as well as with their homies.

And there is definitely an app for that.

Originally posted 10/03/11 at Latinos In Social Media for Edu-Wednesday.

Related articles

• Time to Vote for LATISM’s BEST of 2011 (juliorvarela.com)
• Word Cloud: How Social Media Remembered Steve Jobs (socialtimes.com)
• Social media is for telling your Story.. not for distributing your CV !! (mysocialadventures.wordpress.com)

Party Before Country

Regardless of party, the reality is that the debt ceiling needs to be raised and it is the responsibility of the Congress, both the House and the Senate, to write and pass a bill both houses can agree upon.  That bill is then sent to the President for his signature, which makes the bill become a law.

The Republican elected officials in the House of Representatives refuse to do their job, instead finger-pointing at the President and telling spurious lies, in the hopes that they will create an atmosphere in which The People blame the President, and make him “a one-term president.”

The plan of the GOP simply refuses to take into account the needs of the American populace. In opposing the President’s stimulus package, they ignored unemployment; in opposing “entitlement programs”, they ignore the elderly and the infirm; in opposing an increase in the debt ceiling, they ignore the full faith and credit of the United States and the economic recession their previous budgets and spending led to.

The more people like Allen West and Joe Walsh bring a number-crunching prioritization to the government of the United States, coupled with an intense partisan loyalty which super-cedes their patriotic, civic and employment responsibilities (since governance is their job), the more we fall into the trap prophesied by President George Washington in his farewell address,

“In contemplating the causes which may disturb our Union, it occurs as matter of serious concern that any ground should have been furnished for characterizing parties…”

Senator Mitch McConnell famously said that his number one priority is to make President Barack Obama a “one-term president.”  His number one priority should be, if I may be so bold, helping the 99 other senators and 435 representatives in the House write and pass laws which benefit the country.

The Republican Party, 2011, is simply a self-sustaining organization which happens to participate in politics.  It is no longer a group of people who agree on certain principles about how the government should be run.  It is awash in social and economic theories, many different from each other and all bastardizing the label “conservative.”  And these are the people who have managed to lie their way into office, spouting untruths without responsibility for their words, like Speaker of the House John Boehner did in his response to the President on July 25th.

There has been no “bipartisan support” for the debt-ceiling plan he proposed and passed through the Allen West-infested House, and it is not a serious or good-faith attempt because he knows it will not pass the Senate, let alone be signed by the President.  He has failed to put country before party.  And in telling his lies, he is following Senator McConnell in attempting to place the interests of his party, in demeaning and delegitimizing and defeating the Democrat in the White House, before the fiscal solvency of the nation that he serves, that they all serve.

Loyal opposition is one thing.  It creates the opportunity for the best ideas and values of the participants to be evaluated and included on their merits in a compromise.  Opposition for its own sake, though, is the warning that President Washington spoke of over two-hundred years ago,

 ”However combinations or associations of the above description may now and then answer popular ends, they are likely, in the course of time and things, to become potent engines, by which cunning, ambitious, and unprincipled men will be enabled to subvert the power of the people and to usurp for themselves the reins of government, destroying afterwards the very engines which have lifted them to unjust dominion.”

The cunning, ambitious, unprincipled men are now in positions of authority in our government, and are attempting “to subvert the power of the people and usurp for themselves the reins of government.”  They must be stopped.

Call Eric Cantor and let them know how you feel – 202-225-2815.

Call Speaker Boehner and tell him to focus on the nation, not his party – 202-225-6205

Related articles

• ‘The Key is McConnell’: White House Looks to GOP Senate Leader for Help (blogs.abcnews.com)
• Obama argues debt case to nation (boston.com)
• Debt ceiling impasse: How we got into this mess (cnn.com)

Clay Tablets and iPads

“if the purpose of education is not what education does for a student, but does to a student, then the goal of education is not simply information, but formation…” – Les Frost, 1999

Necesitamos cambiar como tratamos la educación, y las herramientas que usamos para educar a nuestros hijos.  Technology isn’t a toy.

It is so much more.

We need to understand, both in the larger American community and amongst Latinos, that tablet computing and social media are the next evolution in education, and we need to push our schools and our students to embrace them and prepare for the future that is here.

Technology, by definition, means “the application of scientific knowledge for practical purposes.” The advancement from clay tablets to paper, that was technology. It was a change in the manner of learning, of maintaining the historical record, of passing information, and it shaped the way people interacted. The shift from copying texts by hand to the printing press, that was technology. It changed European society, making literacy a much more common occurrence, because the price of books dropped with mass production, and with books more common, incentive to read and gain knowledge for oneself greater.  It also meant that the elite (read: wealthy) members of society no longer held exclusive sway over religious or political knowledge, because The Holy Bible or books like Machiavelli’s The Prince were readily available.  The pipeline of information was widened so that more people could access it.

Today we have fully entered the digital age.  As a nation, and a human society, we have moved from print to cyberspace.  Pero esta vez, tenemos la oportunidad de hacer este tipo de tecnología accesible a todos, no solo a aquellos con los recursos necesarios.  This technological shift, from iPads (and iPods and Galaxy Tabs) is a sociological and educational earthquake, which will break down the walls of privilege and demolish the foundations of inequality if we change how we conceive tools.

Are iPads cool?  Yes!  Are they expensive? ¡Por supuesto! Are they worth the investment in our children? ¡Solamente si queremos brindarles la oportunidad de ser exitosos! We need to understand that iPads are the next invention to change the world: paper, printing press, iPads.

Technology, in this case the tablet computer, is simply the tool we use to succeed.  The problem with Apple and the iPad is that we continue to see it as a toy, a shiny bauble that wealthy people play with and unwealthy people envy.  We see social media (Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Flickr) as time-wasting nothingness. And there are pieces of that which are true. But they can be so much more.

Facebook can be a means of connecting with students, with teachers, with parents, and school communities, sharing events and information in a central location.  Twitter in the classroom can be the voice of quieter students who are unable or unwilling to shout to be heard. YouTube allows sharing of projects and assessments with parents, grandparents, padrinos, tíos and others, validating student effort and achievements, and allowing students to share what they’ve learned. Flickr is another central location focused on the sharing of photos of class trips, student projects, etc.  All of these are accessible, along with textbooks, notes, recorded lectures, novels, video clips and student essays on the iPad our children should be carrying when they walk into school in September.

We wouldn’t deny our children paper and pens and expect them to succeed in school.

Our children need tablets, computers, iPads. The world is already moving past books and paper. As adults, we use sites like Latinos in Social Media and Latino Rebels to connect with, to encourage, to learn from, to support and to engage with gente who are working with similar goals, with similar aspirations, who have knowledge and skills and desires that complement ours.  Why do we expect our children to be different?

I make this argument not as an expert in education, though I’ve been teaching in public and private schools for sixteen years (and in schools for thirty-four); nor as a science-fiction fan who sees in the tablet the desks on which Ender Wiggin played the fantasy game.

I make this argument as a parent of two middle school-bound students, looking toward their educational future with excitement and their future careers and employment with uncertainty.  The iPad, the tablet computer, the window on the world and the universe that you can hold in your hands, is the vehicle our children will ride into the future.

First posted 6 July 2011 at Latinos in Social Media for Edu-Wednesday.

Related articles

• Computer Tablets and eReader Devices in the Classroom (crenk.com)
• Schools Embrace the iPad – Embracing the Extended Classroom (timesoftexas.com)

Books Before Pencils

Princesas para mi Princesa.

There were books in my parents’ bedroom. There were books in my parents’ office.  There were books on my nightstand with pictures in them before I could read, and books with words and pictures after I learned.  I learned to speak when Winnie the Pooh asked Christopher Robin for some honey, sounding out the words to make sense of the pictures, or the other way around (I’m not sure). And my parents read to me at night, sending me to sleep with language and pictures that I made up to see what they were reading. The input was more important than the output before I went to school.

Necesitamos poner libros en las manos de todo los ninos Latinos y Americanos y Latino Americanos, también, y temprano mas aun.  Early childhood education begins before children set foot in school, before they pick up a pencil. It is the basis for, and a strong indicator of, academic success as they get older. With “less than half [of Latino children] enrolled in any early learning program” we are sending them into schools un- and underprepared to learn, without the language to articulate their difficulties.  And, on top of this, there are other forces standing directly in their way once they arrive.

In her book, The Latino Education Crisis, Patricia Gándara examines the structural and societal obstacles to educating Latinos in the United States.  From political pogroms like Arizona’s attack on the Tucson Unified School District’s highly successful Mexican American Studies program, to the current vilification of illegal and legal immigrants (read: Latinos) in state legislatures across the country, Latino children’s educations are being thwarted with devastating impact.  “Only about half earn their high school diploma on time; [and] those who do complete high school are only half as likely as their peers to be prepared for college,” and “only 12 percent of Latino students are completing a Bachelor of Arts degree.”

The Obama Administration has begun to address the external obstacles.  The Department of Education and the White House recently coauthored a report “Winning the Future: Improving Education for the Latino Community” which identified not only the status of education amongst Latinos, but also begins to at least articulate changes in the structure of public education to benefit them as well.  And in Tucson, current Latino students are using the oldest method of expression, direct protest, to stop people interested in the demise of Latino education.

Politically, those of us in advanced years, having matriculated from educational institutions or simply left them, need to begin cultivating candidates and politicians, like President Obama, of whatever political affiliation who understand the importance of giving Latino children a Head Start, and making sure that those early childhood education programs are financially accessible.

Most importantly, though, and most immediate, is we need to get them books.  Books with pictures before they can read.  Books with pictures and words after.  Books in English and books in Spanish.  Books before pencils. The input is more important that the output before they go to school. Books.

Cross-posted at Latinos In Social Media for Edu-Wednesdays, May 4th, 2011.

New Latino Majority Creates New Challenges for CA Schools

Improving Latino Education to Win the Future (blog post)

Winning the Future: Improving Education In the Latino Community (report)

The Latino Education Crisis: The Consequences of Failed Social Policies

TUSD ethnic studies meeting changed to Tuesday

“Why Don’t More Latinos Graduate?”, LATINA Magazine interview with Patricia Gándara, May 2011, p. 110

Malcolm X – A Life of Reinvention

“The Autobiography of  Malcolm X was him giving a tour of his life from a boat. Manning Marable’s Malcolm X – A Life of Reinvention is Google Earth’s version.” 5 April 2011

Malcolm X is a man that many people knew, and millions more thought (or hoped or wished) they knew.  From t-shirts to slogans, his image and words have been used to market music and foment revolutions.  Yet, the truth of his life and death have been obscured by his iconic status, the simple broad strokes of bad man turned good much easier to package, market and consume than the flawed, complex, powerful human being he really was.

Manning Marable (and countless others – yes, I even read the acknowledgements) presents, in Malcolm X – A Life of Reinvention, the man and the life of Malcolm Little, who was Detroit Red, who was Malcolm X, who was Malik Shabazz, who was El Hajj Malik El-Shabazz.  Marable’s research and scholarship, though, present an individual in the context of his times: detailing the rise and fall of the Ku Klux Klan, the power of Marcus Garvey, the growth of the Nation of Islam, and then details the and elucidates the gifts which allowed him to navigate successfully, and which ultimately elevated Malcolm beyond.  Marable also gives texture to the creation of Malcolm’s political evolution, from apolitical through black separatism to Pan-African revolutionary.

Drawing on years of interviews and access to documents previously unavailable, Marable “solves for X”, raising Malcolm from the moving character at the center of his autobiography to a figure in three dimensions.  Reading this book felt like meeting an old friend that I haven’t seen in a while, and catching up with what’s been going on in his life since we last saw each other.  I was also struck with how much Malcolm there was in the book, and how much his words resonate in today’s political climate.  “United States history is that of a country that does whatever it wants to by any means necessary… but when it comes to your and my interest, then all of this means becomes limited.”

I cannot more highly recommend this book.  It is simply a masterwork, both of history and human nature, that I plan on reading several more times.  During my first read, I had to stop myself from highlighting!  There was so much history, so much context and thematic structure that I didn’t want to let slip through my mind.  Having completed my first pass, I’ve grabbed both my highlighter and my notebook, because I refuse to miss the opportunity to learn.

Related Articles

• “Manning Marable’s New Biography Investigates Conflicted Reality of the Civil Rights Leader” and related posts (newblackman.blogspot.com)
• The biographer who shattered Malcolm X myths (cnn.com)
• Malcolm X: A Life of Reinvention by Manning Marable – review (guardian.co.uk)
• You: Books of The Times: Stripping Away Myth and Finding Multiple Masks (nytimes.com)

Spreading the Word Goes Live!

Image via Wikipedia

Today is the inaugural broadcast of our internet radio show!  To listen in (and call in) click the link below.

Spreading the Word – blogtalkradio

We’ll be going live at 1pm PDT.

Today’s discussion will focus on The Myth of Race in Barack’s First Term.

In the last few weeks, the definition of race and the politics of identity have been sharply brought into focus. From the continued racial attacks on PresidentObama, to the definition of “The Other” in Arizona, to the vibrant community ofLatinos in Social Media and This Week In Blackness, the perception of self and projection of unity continue to weave their way in and out of our political and everyday lives. Does race exist? Or is it a paradigm that the historically disenfranchised have adopted to maintain a semblance of personhood and sanity? Join Reynaldo Macias and Lybroan James as they dive deep to find out.

We’ll be joined by Lybroan James, mathematician, scholar, and author of the blog for the love of math.

Here’s the Call-in number for you to join us: (818) 369-0351

Related Articles

• My Parents Are Teachers (powerfulbeyondmeasure.wordpress.com)
• Let’s uncomplicate the racism issue (mysanantonio.com)
• Who Am I Really?? (openingmymouth.wordpress.com)
• You are what you look like: biracial, multiracial, black, white, well, most of the time (heloise8.wordpress.com)