Category Archives: american history
BlackLash Event No. 4: Blackness/Pan-Africanism and Chadwick Boseman
Newark In The Spotlight: “Policing The Police” From 2016–And The 2020 Sequel
And for an activist success story, read this book excerpt by Lawerence Hamm and Annette Alston, courtesy of Jared Ball’s imixwhatilike.org.
BlackLash Report No. 4 (Please Read Before Wednesday’s Event)
Chadwick Boseman, Howard University, and Linkages
Why these Carr-Hunter discussions are growing in popularity. Look how Dr. Carr links Chadwick to: a) Black playwrights, b) Black bookstores, c) Black protest, d) to Black cultural development. And then e) THOTH!
BlackLash Forum No. 3, Report No. 3
My Latest Book Review, Eddie Glaude’s Serious Meditation on James Baldwin…..
“Why Are Your Reviews/Comments So Harsh?!?”
I thought it was important to put my thoughts on the record here since I unofficially now have a LOT of reviews online:
I see my “job” as a cultural critic to hold up a clean glass and a dirty glass and evaluate whatever it is I’m reviewing at to where it fits on that scale. I strive for fairness and proper perspective. If I was reviewing, say, Battle of the Planets: The Complete Series, I wouldn’t compare it to The Smurfs. Different glasses, different classes of merriment. The wand (the perspective to review from, which comes from the topic) chooses the wizard (the review).
My “issue” is that too many Black intellects want to play in radical waters and not risk drowning. So I call them on that. Every time. As hard as possible. Because there’s too much ancestral blood in that water to play. So if Black scholars want to be Black Power smoothies rather than Integrationist Oreos because the rewards are relatively remarkable, I’ll call them smoothies. But smoothies are not examples of clear water.
5 Really, Really, Really Late Thoughts About “Hamilton”
Like most of planet Earth, I saw Hamilton on Disney+ this weekend. Twice. Is this just an updated, sophisticated Schoolhouse Rock presentation, or something deeper? Some scattershot thoughts:
1) Once upon a time, a great New York non-white artist tried through multiple meanings to find America. As a result, he becomes one of the most popular artists in the world. So this is a 21st-century remix. Hamilton is amazing in its constant past-present tensions, its constant double-meanings. Some/here around the fifth time I watch it, I will put the captions on to catch everything.
2) I reserve Lin-Manuel Miranda’s right to have a favorite white writer–one who took his pen and created his persona and shook an elite world in which he gained entry. I definitely do. But I would not write a glowing tribute to his racism and/or create sympathy for his society’s application of it. (Having Thomas Jefferson, the enslaver and rapist of Sally Hemmings, look and act like Prince’s and Morris Day’s love child was genius!) How much more politically powerful this would have been if that silent ensemble had been enslaved Africans, commenting on them! But then it would have made America uncomfortable, see, so….
3) There’s no way this musical would not be loved by any national media personality, artist, writer, thinker of any type. Who would ever hate (on) a pre-written story about a young underdog who by grit and talent moves to New York City, re-invents him/herself and becomes a star and then a legend? We now know it’s not just a post-World-War-II Great American Novel thang, but a popular fantasy that pre-dates the establishment of the nation itself! Hamilton might as well used this song in the prologue or during intermission.
4) It’s still hard for me to worry about who lives, who dies who tells your story while the enslaved Africans’ saga still awaits. Frederick Douglass, Daveed? Daveed? Hello? Hello? Are you gonna make me a fan of (Broadway/Hollywood) biting? And you’re playing him already? Hmm……
5) My simplistic ideological comment has been my favorite since the beginning of the Hamilton phenomenon: If Dick Cheney likes your musical, you’ve written the wrong musical. While I still hold that position while bowing down to Hamilton’s pop-a-ganda greatness, I truly hope that a future Miranda–And I believed it too/And *I* know who *you are*—will grow past this American-fan-service phase into rubbing his subdued anger about the state of his American colony in America’s face, a la the Paul who is no longer Revere-d. 🙂 As I sing along, I truly hope for and look forward to America’s future disappointment in you.
