Traveling African Art Exhibit Visits Gateway
 |
| Initiation—Liberia, by Lois Mailou Jones, 1983. Collection of the artist. by Tom Jenkins, Dallas Museum of Art. |
An exhibit showcasing the art of 20th century African American artists is currently on display at the Covington Campus of Gateway Community and Technical College. Gateway arranged for the exhibit as part of its observance of Black History Month.
“Black Art—Ancestral Legacy: The African Impulse in African American Art” is a traveling display based on a major exhibition organized by the Dallas Museum of Art and produced by Humanities Texas, the state affiliate of the National Endowment for the Humanities.
The photographic exhibition addresses the question posed by African American poet Countee Cullen in 1926: “What is Africa to me?” These works draw heavily on African influence, while simultaneously reinterpreting it for a different time and place. The exhibition surveys the work of 45 artists, some trained and some untrained, including unknown Africans and Haitians, through photographs, posters, and concise texts. The result is a lively and vibrant mix of artworks.
The exhibition will be on display for the public until March 7. Currently located at the Covington Campus at Gateway Community College, 1025 Amsterdam Road, it will move Feb. 24 to the college’s Edgewood Campus at 790 Thomas More Parkway. The show was displayed at the Boone Campus and Urban Center earlier this month.
For more information contact Kathy Driggers at 859-442-1628 or kathleen.driggers@kctcs.edu.
For more information contact Kathy Driggers at 859-442-1628 or kathleen.driggers@kctcs.edu.
Let’s make black male collegians the norm
In 2007, then-presidential candidate Barack Obama told supporters at a rally in Harlem that he did not “want to wake up four years from now and discover that we still have more young black men in prison than in college.”
Although university researchers and education reporters cautioned that the statistics Obama was using did not paint the whole picture of this phenomenon, he repeated the numbers to standing-room-only crowds.
Obama was unintentionally reinforcing an enduring negative stereotype: Black males as a group are missing in higher education and failing to graduate because of the pathologies in black culture. And make no mistake, cultural and racial stereotypes, whether true or false or incomplete, assume stubborn lives of their own.
The black male stereotype has done just that. Many people, including many blacks, university presidents, professors, counselors, students, journalists and politicians picture black males as prison inmates before picturing them as college students.
Black males are branded before ever attempting to enroll in a school. Nothing good is in this.
I felt the personal sting of this stereotype in 1963, when I first went to college. Because I am dark-skinned and came from a migrant farming family in Florida, I automatically was placed in remedial English — without being tested. I had been labeled on sight as one doomed to fail.
I never bought into the stereotype, never for a moment thinking I would fail. After two weeks, my English professor agreed and transferred me to a regular English class.
I was sustained by four caring professors, a handful of overachieving classmates, a work-study job in our campus library, my obsession to study and support from my mother and grandparents. Although I graduated in four years as summa cum laude and won a fellowship to the University of Chicago, no one ever asked me how I did it. But a lot of people predicted that I would fail.
During my more than 20 years as a college professor, I have taught many black men who beat the odds, who graduate and lead productive lives. How do they overcome the stereotype?
I currently have a black student, Shaquille Malik, in my writing class at St. Petersburg College, where I am an adjunct professor. Malik is a 40-year-old ex-convict who is beating the odds. He is one of my best students. He sits up front, participates in discussions, volunteers to read his essays aloud and eagerly accepts constructive criticism.
A father of three, he told me he is determined to graduate with at least a bachelor's degree. I am certain he will succeed and become a role model. I will monitor his progress and do all I can to assist him. I am already telling other students about him, how he is exploding the stereotype.
Having Malik as a student prompted me to read a new report by Shaun R. Harper, associate professor and director of the Center for the Study of Race and Equity in Education at the University of Pennsylvania, focused on 219 black male students who have succeeded. The professor studied students at 42 colleges and universities in 20 states.
Disregarding the old stereotype, Harper wanted to know what distinguishes these achievers. He found a mix of external factors that seemed to give the students a sense that they not only could but must attend college.
Among those factors: committed parents who expected a lot from them; at least one teacher in K-12 who wanted them to succeed academically; and money to pay for college. Another significant factor was a transition to college that included high expectations from administrators and faculty and from successful black male juniors and seniors on campus who motivated them.
"The most surprising finding was also the most disappointing finding," Harper said. "Nearly every student we interviewed said it was the first time that someone had sat him down and asked how he had successfully navigated his way to and through higher education, what compelled him to be engaged and what he learned that could help improve achievement and engagement among black male collegians."
Although the report is complex, Harper has a simple and reachable goal. He wants college and university leaders to commit themselves to finding black men on their campuses like those in the report and learn how they achieved.
Harper wants black male student success to become institutionalized. He wants to erase the ugly stereotype of failure that hurts black males and society at large.
Old barriers gone, new ones rising?
By GINA SMITH
gnsmith@thestate.com
Sen. John Matthews has been a member of the South Carolina Legislature longer than any other African American, starting his political career in the SC House in 1975.
- Gerry Melendez /gmelendez@thestate.com
Sen. John Matthews Jr.
The state senator from District 39, which includes parts of Bamberg, Colleton, Dorchester, Hampton and Orangeburg counties
Age: 71
Career: Retired former elementary school principal and cable company executive
Hometown: Bowman
Education: Graduate, South Carolina State
When state Sen. John Matthews first became a member of the S.C. House of Representatives in 1975, segregation still was rampant.
“Back then, it was racism in your face,” said Matthews, D-Orangeburg. “But there was a willingness to deal with legislation that could help African-Americans and the poor in this state.
“People wanted to change things.”
Thirty-seven years later, Matthews — the longest-serving African-American lawmaker in the state — says that willingness to change is eroding.
“Most statutory impediments that hurt African-Americans are gone,” said Matthews, a retired school principal. “But you find that, in the past four or five years, Republicans have begun to introduce new impediments to limit people.”
A GOP-backed law to require voters to present a photo ID at the polls is weighing heavy on the minds of black lawmakers this month, which is Black History Month.
That law is being challenged in court. But another Republican-backed bill — to require groups that conduct voter-registration drives to register with the state Elections Commission — is working its way through the State House now.
Backers say the measures will protect the state’s voting process from fraud, citing a claim, disputed by election officials, that more than 950 dead people cast votes in recent elections.
Matthews and others, however, see the measures as unnecessary overkill.
Voter fraud is a non-issue in South Carolina, says state Sen. John Land, the Clarendon Democrat and Senate minority leader who, like Matthews, was elected to the House in 1975. “It is simply a wedge issue that the national Republicans created.”
But, Matthews says, the Republican legislative majority has no reason to care about what most of the state’s African-American voters think.
Redistricting — the redrawing of legislative districts that happens every 10 years — increasingly has resulted in majority-black districts, controlled by Democrats, and majority-white districts, controlled by Republicans, who control the S.C. House and Senate without ever winning any black votes, Matthews says. “We have insulated white Republicans from any black political influence so they’re not paying black South Carolina any attention because there is no consequence.”
Republican disagree, pointing to U.S. Rep. Tim Scott, an African-American Republican from Charleston, and Gov. Nikki Haley, the state’s first non-white governor, as proof the GOP is increasingly diverse. They also say their legislative priorities — lowering taxes and bringing jobs to South Carolina — help all residents, regardless of color.
Matthews is unconvinced. But he says he’ll keep fighting.
He plans to roll out a bill that would give school districts more flexibility to experiment with different models, including extended hours for students and year-round schools.
He also is looking for a way to pass a bill, vetoed by Haley last year, to encourage economic development in the impoverished counties along the Interstate 95 corridor.
“The governor said it was growing government,” Matthew said. “To me, either that or grow poverty.”
Reach Smith at (803) 771-8658.
White Teacher Sues for All-Important
Right to Use Racial Slur
A white teacher in Chicago was suspended for using the n-word in class. Now he's suing, claiming he was teaching an important lesson. But the school's principal has a different memory of what went on.
The Chicago Sun-Times reports that teacher Lincoln Brown used the word after he saw it on a note the student was passing. Here's how he describes the incident in legal documents:
[A]t the beginning of a grammar exercise in his sixth grade class, Lincoln Brown saw that his students were unsettled and arguing about the passage of a note which contained lyrics of a rap song. Lincoln Brown then conducted a discussion about how upsetting such language can be, attempted to give his own denunciation of the use of such language, and discussed how even such books as "Huckleberry Finn" were being criticized for the use of the "N-word."
Brown says he was having an important discussion on the problems of racism, that students were "engaged" and "excited" and that "if we can't discuss these issues, we'll never be able to resolve them." He added that he would "never, ever use such a hurtful word" except as a way to help students think about and combat racism. However, principal Gregory Mason, who walked in during the discussion, remembers things differently. He says Brown asked, "can anyone explain to me why blacks can call each other a n*****, and not get mad, but when whites do it, blacks get angry?" He also describes a bizarre-sounding conversation in which Brown asked "have you ever thought about why blacks are killed in movies first?" Then he allegedly "began to explain ‘how I've seen many movies where whites were killed first'" and "continued by stating that, ‘if you believe in this you are no better than the media's portrayal of blacks.'"
It's hard to tell what Brown's point was with the above, but it certainly doesn't sound good. Mason responded by suspending him for five days for "using verbally abusive language to or in front of students" and "cruel, immoral, negligent or criminal conduct or communication to a student, that causes psychological or physical harm." Now Brown is suing the Chicago Board of Education in federal court (somewhat ironically, his case is called Brown v. Board of Education). His legal complaint states,
The actions of defendants have unjustly and illegally punished the plaintiff for speaking on a matter of public concern, i.e, race relations and appropriate words. Not only was plaintiff speaking on a matter of public concern, he was attempting to teach his class of students an important lesson in vocabulary, civility, and race relations.
He's seeking compensatory and punitive damages, and says, "This cannot be a part of who I am. My character has been assassinated." This seems like an exaggeration. Even if that part about being "no better than the media's portrayal of blacks" was a misquote, Brown overstepped — he didn't need to use the n-word repeatedly in order to teach his students about racism. Hearing that word from a white authority figure is always going to be hurtful to some kids, even if he didn't mean it as an abusive way. And there are plenty of ways to discuss issues of race without actually using racial slurs. A five-day suspension seems like an eminently reasonable way to drive this point home, and is far from a character assassination. Frank Shuftan, spokesperson for the Chicago Public Schools, said in a statement, "The teacher has received sufficient due process. In our opinion, his federal lawsuit is without merit."
No comments:
Post a Comment