AMIRI BARAKA

- LUNCH POEMS

Revolutionary poet, playwright, and activist Amiri Baraka is recognized as the founder of the Black Arts Movement, a literary period that began in Harlem in the 1960s and forever changed the look, sound, and feel of American poetry. Baraka (formerly LeRoi Jones) helped to empower African American artists to establish publishing houses, journals, and university ethnic studies programs. His books continue to spark intense political and aesthetic controversy while receiving tremendous critical acclaim.

__________________________

Amiri Baraka's

"Something In The Way

Of Things (In Town)"

a visual adaptation of Baraka's scathing and foreboding social commentary (music by The Roots.) Shot on three different types of film and two different types of video over three months with at least fifty actors/extras in about twenty-five locations in the West Philly area by one guy. (Bryan Green, 22, senior film & video major at Drexel University)

Tales Of The Out And The Gone (review)

By D. Scot Miller for The San Francisco Weekly

 

Fans of Afro-surrealism and black futurism have cause to celebrate Amiri Baraka's new book, Tales of the Out and the Gone, a collection of short fiction written between the early 1970s and 2003. The author, essayist, former New Jersey Poet Laureate, and playwright's contribution to avant-garde black art is unparalleled, as is his place at the forefront of the Black Arts Movement. The artist formerly known as LeRoi Jones began as a Beat poet in the 1950s, and he still uses North Beach slang to subvert expectations. "In specific contexts, anything can be Out!" he writes in the book's introduction. "Out of the ordinary. Just as we call some artist, like Thelonious Monk or Vincent Smith, or John Coltrane, Out! Because they were just not where most other people were. So that is aesthetic and social, often both at the same time." Equally well known for his plays (The Dutchman) as he is for his poetry (Somebody Blew Up America, Preface to a Twenty Volume Suicide Note) and his essays on music and culture (Blues People), Baraka is also a profound storyteller whose fiction transcends a single genre, moving among science fiction, protest, surreal polemic, and black chant.

Most of the out-and-gone tales have never been published; they reflect the remarkable progression of one of America's most prolific literary antiheroes and a living master of black radical letters.

 

About the Prize

The SI Leeds Literary Prize is a new prize for unpublished fiction by Black and Asian women resident in the UK aged 18 years and over.

The prize aims to act as a loudspeaker for Black and Asian women’s voices, enabling fresh and original literary voices from a group disproportionately under-represented in mainstream literary culture to reach new audiences.

The inaugural prize will be awarded in October 2012, and will consist of:

• £2,000 to the winner
• £750 to the runner-up
• £250 as a third prize

In addition to the cash awards Peepal Tree Press will offer the winning, runner-up and third placed authors two 1:1 consultancy sessions in professional development support through its Inscribe programme. With the winner’s consent, the winning manuscript will be given serious consideration for publication by Peepal Tree Press.  In addition, the winner, 2nd and 3rd prize winners will be invited to read short extracts from their work at the 2012 Ilkley Literature Festival.

The distinguished Chair of Judges is Margaret Busby OBE, who has served as judge for many literary awards including the Caine Prize for African Writing, the Orange Prize, the Independent Prize for Foreign Fiction and the OCM Bocas Prize for Caribbean Literature. A writer, editor, consultant, reviewer and broadcaster, Margaret became the UK’s youngest and first Black woman publisher when she co-founded Allison & Busby Ltd, of which she was Editorial Director for 20 years.

The Prize is an initiative of Soroptimist International of Leeds, an organisation dedicated to the development and support of women.  Soroptimist International works globally to help women achieve their potential and have an equal voice, and these principles are embedded in the SI Leeds Literary Prize.  To develop and deliver the prize, SI Leeds is working in partnership with two well established and respected Yorkshire-based literature organisations, Ilkley Literature Festival and Peepal Tree Press.  These two organisations have an enviable track record in literature development, and bring significant experience and skills to the Prize team.  Both organisations have a strong reputation for their work in promoting and developing black and minority ethnic writers.

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Am I eligible to enter?

The Award is open to published and unpublished women writers, over the age of 18, of Black or Asian descent who are resident in the UK. Ethnicity will be self-defined by entrants. As a guideline, Black or Asian descent in the context of the Award signifies any Black background, including:-

• Black African
• Black Caribbean
• any other Black background

any Asian background, including

• Bangladeshi
• Indian
• Pakistani
• Thai
• Malay
• Philippine
• Vietnamese
• Chinese
• Japanese
• countries in the Middle East
• any other Asian background

any mixed background, including

• Asian and White
• Black and White
• Any other background from more than one ethnic group.

The Award is open to unpublished novels and/or collections of short stories of any genre ofno less than 30,000 words.  Manuscripts that have been previously published will not be eligible. However, whilst the main body of the novel or collection of short stories should comprise unpublished work, submissions will be accepted where no more than 25% of the work has been previously published.  Manuscripts currently available for sale online, either in full or in significant proportion (i.e. more than 50% of the total manuscript) will be ineligible.  Manuscripts either partially or wholly available online for no charge will be eligible.

Memoirs, biographies and autobiographies are not eligible.

Entries must be in English.

Full terms and conditions of the prize are available here.  All entrants must complete anentry form and cover sheet.

 

Making an entry

All entrants must complete an entry form and cover sheet to accompany their submission, together with a cheque for £15 payable to SI Leeds.

The closing date for submissions is Friday 1 June 2012.

Please read the terms and conditions of the prize carefully before making your submission – if you have any queries about the prize, or how to enter, please contact us and we will be happy to help.

 

Rules

1.         THE AWARDS

1.1       All entries will be read to create a long list of 12 titles for the judges. The best entries will be forwarded to the judges who will compile a shortlist of 6 outstanding works of fiction submitted for the SI Leeds Literary Prize 2012 (“the Award”), from which they will select a winner, a runner-up and a third placed entry.

1.2       The winning award is £2,000 and this will be presented to the author of the best eligible novel or collection of short stories in the opinion of the judges.

1.3       There will be a runner-up award of £750 for the second placed novel or collection of short stories.

1.4       There will be a third place award of £250 for the remaining shortlisted novel or collection of short stories.

1.5       In addition to the cash awards Peepal Tree Press will offer the winning, runner-up and third placed authors 2 one-to-one consultancy sessions in professional development support through its Inscribe programme. With the winner’s consent, the winning manuscript will be given serious consideration for publication by Peepal Tree Press.

1.6       In addition the winner, 2nd and 3rd prize winners will be invited to read short extracts from their work at the 2012 Ilkley Literature Festival.

2.         ELIGIBILITY

2.1       The Award is open to published and unpublished women writers, over the age of 18, of Black or Asian descent who are resident in the UK. Ethnicity will be self-defined by entrants. As a guideline, Black or Asian descent in the context of the Award signifies

- any Black background, including Black African, Black Caribbean, any other Black background

- any Asian background, including Bangladeshi, Indian, Pakistani, Thai, Malay, Philippine, Vietnamese, Chinese, Japanese, countries in the Middle East, any other Asian background

- any mixed background, including Asian and White, Black and White, any other background from more than one ethnic group.

Under the terms of Positive Action in the Equality Act 2010, these eligibility criteria are justified on the following grounds:

• That the Award Partners reasonably think that Black and Asian women writers suffer a disadvantage linked to their race and gender, and have a disproportionately low level of participation in theUKwriting industry and bestseller lists
• That the action taken by the Award Partners encourages this group to overcome this disadvantage and encourages participation
• That the prize is a proportionate response to the issue.

2.2       The Award is open to unpublished* novels and/or collections of short stories of any genre of no less than 30,000 words.

2.3       *Manuscripts that have been previously published will not be eligible. However, whilst the main body of the novel or collection of short stories should comprise unpublished work, submissions will be accepted where no more than 25% of the work has been previously published.  Manuscripts currently available for sale online, either in full or in significant proportion (i.e. more than 50% of the total manuscript) will be ineligible.  Manuscripts either partially or wholly available online for no charge will be eligible.

2.4       Entrants must warrant that the entry is a complete original work of fiction and is entirely the author’s own work; that it does not infringe any existing copyright, moral or other rights of any third party, contains nothing obscene, libellous, unlawful or defamatory of any living person or corporate body.

2.5       Memoirs, biographies and autobiographies are not eligible.

2.6       Entries must be in English.

2.7       Authors may submit more than one novel or collection of stories. An additional entry fee for each submission is required (see HOW TO ENTER below).

2.8       The Award is not open to employees of Peepal Tree Press, Ilkley Literature Festival and members of SI Leeds (the Award Partners) or anyone connected with the Award or their direct family members.

2.9       Entries that are submitted posthumously will not be eligible for the Award.

3.         COPYRIGHT AND TERMS OF USE

3.1       By submitting a novel or collection of short stories to the Award the entrant acknowledges and agrees that excerpts (chosen by the Award Partners) of the winning, or other short-listed, novel or collection of stories may be read out or reproduced as part of the Award Partners’ promotion and documentation of the Award, including Award Partners’ marketing and publicity literature, events, and websites and as a feature of the 2012 Ilkley Literature Festival free of any fees or royalty payments.

3.2       The Award Partners undertake to ensure that copyright of all manuscripts entered for the Award is protected. Non short-listed manuscripts will be shredded.

4.         JUDGING

4.1       The SI Leeds Literary Prize will be looking for the most original and engaging writing and will consider all entries on the basis of quality of prose and narrative voice. The Award aims to support and award excellence, creativity and originality.

4.2       Manuscripts will be judged anonymously, i.e. without knowledge of the author’s name, age or background. (Please see HOW TO ENTER below)

4.3       Judging of the Award will be as follows:

Stage 1:             All entries will be read by a team of readers and will be sifted in accordance with the Award criteria. A long list of no more than 12 novels/collections of short stories will be put forward to the judging panel.

Stage 2:             The judging panel will read all long-listed entries and will select a Short List of 6 outstanding novels/collections of short stories submitted for the Award.

Stage 3:             The judging panel will further discuss and agree the winning, runner-up and third placed entries.

4.4       Shortlisted authors will be contacted personally by email or telephone.

4.5       The Judges’ decision is final and no correspondence can be entered into.

4.6       The judging will be fair and independent. The judging panel will be appointed by the Award Partners and will include a distinguished and experienced  literary professional as its chair.

4.7       Any permitted reference to the Award by the shortlisted writers will be advised by the Award Partners.

5.         HOW TO ENTER

5.1       Manuscripts must be sent by post together with the completed entry forms andentry fee. Manuscripts arriving by post without the completed entry forms or entry fee will not be eligible.

5.2       Manuscripts should be sent in their entirety, i.e. as a finished novel or a finished collection of short stories. Incomplete works are not eligible. Authors may not add to or alter their manuscript after it has been entered for the Award.

5.3       Manuscripts must be submitted printed in double-spaced lines of 12 point font on single-sided A4 paper. Pages must be numbered.

5.4       The author’s name should not appear on the manuscript. Use the form provided to enter your name, title of novel or collection of short stories and contact details. Your manuscript will be logged against your name but will be judged anonymously.

5.5       Manuscripts will not be returned. Authors requiring an acknowledgement of receipt of their manuscript should enclose a stamped addressed envelope marked SI Leeds Literary Prize Acknowledgement. Proof of sending is not proof of receipt.

5.6       The Entry Fee for each manuscript submitted is £15.00 payable by cheque to SI Leeds.

5.7       Entries must arrive by Friday 1^st June 2012. Late entries will not be eligible.

5.8       The Award Partners reserve the right to cancel the Award at any stage, if deemed necessary in its opinion, or if circumstances arise outside of its control. If cancelled, the entry fee would be refunded.

5.9       The Award Partners reserve the right to refuse entry to the Award for any reason at its absolute discretion.

5.10     By submitting a manuscript the entrant agrees to attend the Award ceremony in the event of being shortlisted for the Award and also, in the event of winning the Award, to undertake a mutually acceptable limited programme of activities to promote the Award. Entrants are responsible for all reasonable costs associated with attending the Award ceremony.

5.11     The entrant agrees that she will contribute where possible to press and publicity activities for the Award and hereby grant the Award Partners all necessary rights in her contribution for press/publicity activities for the Award for all media in perpetuity.

5.12     Entrants will be deemed to have read and accepted these rules and to have agreed to be bound by them when entering the competition.

5.13     These rules and the entry submitted in accordance with them shall constitute a contract governed by the exclusive jurisdiction of the courts of England and Wales.

 

 

What is the Nickelodeon Writing Program?

Developed to broaden Nickelodeon’s outreach efforts, the Nickelodeon Writing Program is designed to attract, develop and staff writers with diverse backgrounds and experiences on Nickelodeon Network productions.

Operating in a three-phased structure, the Program provides a salaried position for up to one year and offers hands-on experience writing spec scripts and pitching story ideas in both live action and animation television.

This three-phased structure allows writers an opportunity to nurture relationships with creators, network executives, line producers, head writers, show runners and story editors.

As part of their script writing, each writer will be assigned to an Executive in Charge of Production and have an opportunity to write a spec script for an on-air Nickelodeon show.

In addition, all writers are integrated into the activities of both the development and production departments. This allows the writers an opportunity to attend storyboard pitches, notes meetings, records, table reads, show pitches and show tapings; all while being exposed to top creators and key production crews.

 

IMPORTANT DATES

For consideration in the 2012 – 2013 Program, materials must be submitted together between January 2, 2012 and February 28, 2012. Please review the Submission Guidelines for additional requirements.

You are not required to send your submission through registered or overnight mail. However, to ensure proof of mailing, you may wish to use these services since we will not confirm receipt of your application package.

• Semi-finalists will be notified by the end of August, 2012
• Finalists will be notified by the beginning of September 2012
• Chosen writers will be notified by the end of September 2012
• All others will be notified, by mail, by the end of October 2012
• Please note: Notification dates are subject to change.

SUBMISSION GUIDELINES & PROCEDURES

 

• You must be 18 years or older to participate
• You must possess and present evidence of identity and United States employment eligibility (valid for the duration of the Program)

If you have previously applied to the Program and have not been selected, you are welcomed and encouraged to apply again. However you are required to submit a different spec script for each new submission period.

Application materials should be clipped to the front of the writing sample and not bound within material.

Appropriate spec scripts must be:

• Comedic
• Live Action or Animation
• Based on a half-hour television series
• Currently on-air and being produced for primetime network or cable
• Typed in standard script format
• In black ink
• In 12pt courier style font
• On 8-1/2 x 11, 3-hole punched white paper
• With only two brass fasteners (top & bottom)

All spec scripts must include a cover page listing the show name and show title, along with your name, address, and telephone number (please do not put your name on every page).

The following materials will NOT be considered: feature-length screenplays, hour-long dramas, reality-based comedies or dramas, pilots, treatments, outlines, plays, short stories, books, graphics, magazine/newspaper articles, poems, headshots, audio/video tapes, digital media, loose-leaf pages or scripts bound in 3-ring binders.

Please note: Submissions that do not adhere to these guidelines will not be considered.

 

APPLICATION

There is no application fee.

Please submit the following:

• Two copies of one spec script (this applies to both individual writers and writing teams)
• One-page resume
• Half-page biography
• Completed and signed application form
• Completed and signed submission release form and Schedule A (included with application)

If you are unable to download the application, contact us at info.writing@nick.com to request one. Include your name and mailing address (including zip code). Please allow 2-3 weeks for delivery.

 

 

Download application here

It's the Inequality, Stupid

Eleven charts that explain what's wrong with America.

 

—By Dave Gilson and Carolyn Perot

| March/April 2011 Issue

 

Want more charts like these? See our charts on the secrets of the jobless recovery, the richest 1 percent of Americans, and how the superwealthy beat the IRS.

How Rich Are the Superrich?

A huge share of the nation's economic growth over the past 30 years has gone to the top one-hundredth of one percent, who now make an average of $27 million per household. The average income for the bottom 90 percent of us? $31,244.

 

Note: The 2007 data (the most current) doesn't reflect the impact of the housing market crash. In 2007, the bottom 60% of Americans had 65% of their net worth tied up in their homes. The top 1%, in contrast, had just 10%. The housing crisis has no doubt further swelled the share of total net worth held by the superrich.

Winners Take All

The superrich have grabbed the bulk of the past three decades' gains.

Download: PDF chart 1 (large) PDF chart 2 (large) | JPG chart 1 (smaller)  JPG chart 2 (smaller)

Out of Balance

A Harvard business prof and a behavioral economist recently asked more than 5,000 Americans how they thought wealth is distributed in the United States. Most thought that it’s more balanced than it actually is. Asked to choose their ideal distribution of wealth, 92% picked one that was even more equitable.

Download: PDF (large) | JPG (smaller) 

Capitol Gain

Why Washington is closer to Wall Street than Main Street.

member	max. est. net worth
Rep. Darrell Issa (R-Calif.)	$451.1 million
Rep. Jane Harman (D-Calif.)	$435.4 million
Rep. Vern Buchanan (R-Fla.)	$366.2 million
Sen. John Kerry (D-Mass.)	$294.9 million
Rep. Jared Polis (D-Colo.)	$285.1 million
Sen. Mark Warner (D-Va.)	$283.1 million
Sen. Herb Kohl (D-Wisc.)	$231.2 million
Rep. Michael McCaul (R-Texas)	$201.5 million
Sen. Jay Rockefeller (D-W.Va.)	$136.2 million
Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.)	$108.1 million
combined net worth:	$2.8 billion

Congressional data from 2009. Family net worth data from 2007. Sources: Center for Responsive Politics; US Census; Edward Wolff, Bard College.

Download: PDF (large) | JPG (smaller) 

Who's Winning?

For a healthy few, it's getting better all the time.

Download: PDF (large) | JPG (smaller)

Download: PDF (large) | JPG (smaller)

YOUR LOSS,THEIR GAIN

How much income have you given up for the top 1 percent?

 

Download: PDF (large) | JPG (smaller)

 

U.S.

The Myth of Desegregation

A recent study claims segregation has hit the lowest point in a century. Here's why it's premature to celebrate

By MICHELLE ALEXANDER | February 3, 2012

KEVORK DJANSEZIAN / GETTY IMAGES

Inmates at a state prison in Chino, Calif., exercise in the yard

 

Early this week a bit of cheery news was reported by the Manhattan Institute, a conservative think tank: black segregation has hit its lowest point in more than a century — declining in all 85 of the nation’s largest metropolitan areas. In a stunning turn of events, we are told that “ghetto neighborhoods have witnessed profound population decline, as former residents decamp for the suburbs.”

The report dutifully acknowledges that we still have a long way to go. The study’s authors, Harvard economics professor Edward Glaeser and Duke University professor Jacob Vigdor, explain that “[t]he typical urban African American lives in a housing market where more than half of the black population would need to move in order to achieve complete integration.” Nevertheless, the report is largely celebratory in tone, and it has been received in that fashion by much of the news media.

Before we break out the champagne, however, it may be wise to pause and reflect for a moment on who was excluded from the analysis.

  

Alexander's book is The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness.

Our nation’s prison population has more than quintupled (soaring from 300,000 in the mid-1970s to more than 2 million today), due to a “get tough” movement and a war on drugs that has been waged almost exclusively in poor communities of color. Studies have consistently shown that people of color are no more likely to use or sell illegal drugs than whites, but a fierce drug war has been waged nonetheless, and harsh mandatory minimum sentences passed, leading to a prison-building boom unprecedented in world history. Despite this sea change, prisoners continue to be treated as nonentities in much sociological and economic analysis.

(MORE: Adam Cohen: The New Battle over Voting Rights)

In the Manhattan Institute study, prisoners are not even mentioned, despite the fact that millions of poor people — overwhelmingly people of color — are removed from their communities and held in prisons, often hundreds of miles from home. Most new prison construction has occurred in predominately white, rural communities, and thus a new and bizarre form of segregation has emerged in recent years. Ghetto youth are transferred from their decrepit, underfunded, racially segregated schools to brand new, high-tech prisons located in white rural counties.

In a sense, mass incarceration has emerged as a far more extreme form of physical and residential segregation than Jim Crow segregation. Rather than merely shunting people of color to the other side of town, people are locked in literal cages — en masse. Bars and walls keep hundreds of thousands away from mainstream society — a form of apartheid unlike the world has even seen. If all of them suddenly returned, they would not be sprinkled evenly throughout the nation’s population. Instead they would return to a relatively small number of communities defined by race and class, greatly intensifying the levels of segregation we see today. The likelihood of many escaping their ghettoized communities and landing in racially integrated, well-manicured suburbs is slim, given that people labeled criminals and felons can be legally discriminated against for the rest of their lives in employment, housing, access to education and public benefits — even denied food stamps. Although most people sent to prison are convicted of relatively minor, nonviolent crimes and drug offenses, they are treated as perpetual threats and locked in a permanent undercaste.

Those who imagine that the failure to account for prisoners can’t possibly affect the analysis would be wise to consider the distortion of unemployment figures in recent years. Because standard unemployment reports continue to exclude prisoners, we have been treated to a highly misleading picture of black unemployment. According to Harvard professor Bruce Western, standard unemployment figures underestimate the true jobless rate by as much as 24 percentage points for less educated black men. In fact, during the 1990s — the economic-boom years — noncollege black men were the only group that experienced a sharp increase in unemployment, a development directly traceable to the sudden explosion of the prison population. At the same time that unemployment rates were sinking to record low levels for the general population, the true jobless rate among noncollege black men soared to a staggering 42% (65% for black male drop outs.)

(MORE: Touré: Nostalgia: Our Favorite Cultural Cop-Out)

Prisoners do matter when analyzing the severity of racial inequality in the U.S. Yet because they are out of sight and out of mind, it is easy to imagine that we are making far more racial progress than we actually are. For now, let’s keep the cork in the bottle and pray that we will eventually awaken from our color-blind slumber to the persistent realities of race in America.

 

Alexander is a civil rights lawyer, advocate and legal scholar. The views expressed are solely her own.

 

U.S.

The Myth of Desegregation

A recent study claims segregation has hit the lowest point in a century. Here's why it's premature to celebrate

By Michelle Alexander | February 3, 2012 | 27

inShare5

Kevork Djansezian / Getty Images

Inmates at a state prison in Chino, Calif., exercise in the yard

Alexander's book is The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness.

Early this week a bit of cheery news was reported by the Manhattan Institute, a conservative think tank: black segregation has hit its lowest point in more than a century — declining in all 85 of the nation’s largest metropolitan areas. In a stunning turn of events, we are told that “ghetto neighborhoods have witnessed profound population decline, as former residents decamp for the suburbs.”

The report dutifully acknowledges that we still have a long way to go. The study’s authors, Harvard economics professor Edward Glaeser and Duke University professor Jacob Vigdor, explain that “[t]he typical urban African American lives in a housing market where more than half of the black population would need to move in order to achieve complete integration.” Nevertheless, the report is largely celebratory in tone, and it has been received in that fashion by much of the news media.

Before we break out the champagne, however, it may be wise to pause and reflect for a moment on who was excluded from the analysis.

Our nation’s prison population has more than quintupled (soaring from 300,000 in the mid-1970s to more than 2 million today), due to a “get tough” movement and a war on drugs that has been waged almost exclusively in poor communities of color. Studies have consistently shown that people of color are no more likely to use or sell illegal drugs than whites, but a fierce drug war has been waged nonetheless, and harsh mandatory minimum sentences passed, leading to a prison-building boom unprecedented in world history. Despite this sea change, prisoners continue to be treated as nonentities in much sociological and economic analysis.

(MORE: Adam Cohen: The New Battle over Voting Rights)

In the Manhattan Institute study, prisoners are not even mentioned, despite the fact that millions of poor people — overwhelmingly people of color — are removed from their communities and held in prisons, often hundreds of miles from home. Most new prison construction has occurred in predominately white, rural communities, and thus a new and bizarre form of segregation has emerged in recent years. Ghetto youth are transferred from their decrepit, underfunded, racially segregated schools to brand new, high-tech prisons located in white rural counties.

In a sense, mass incarceration has emerged as a far more extreme form of physical and residential segregation than Jim Crow segregation. Rather than merely shunting people of color to the other side of town, people are locked in literal cages — en masse. Bars and walls keep hundreds of thousands away from mainstream society — a form of apartheid unlike the world has even seen. If all of them suddenly returned, they would not be sprinkled evenly throughout the nation’s population. Instead they would return to a relatively small number of communities defined by race and class, greatly intensifying the levels of segregation we see today. The likelihood of many escaping their ghettoized communities and landing in racially integrated, well-manicured suburbs is slim, given that people labeled criminals and felons can be legally discriminated against for the rest of their lives in employment, housing, access to education and public benefits — even denied food stamps. Although most people sent to prison are convicted of relatively minor, nonviolent crimes and drug offenses, they are treated as perpetual threats and locked in a permanent undercaste.

Those who imagine that the failure to account for prisoners can’t possibly affect the analysis would be wise to consider the distortion of unemployment figures in recent years. Because standard unemployment reports continue to exclude prisoners, we have been treated to a highly misleading picture of black unemployment. According to Harvard professor Bruce Western, standard unemployment figures underestimate the true jobless rate by as much as 24 percentage points for less educated black men. In fact, during the 1990s — the economic-boom years — noncollege black men were the only group that experienced a sharp increase in unemployment, a development directly traceable to the sudden explosion of the prison population. At the same time that unemployment rates were sinking to record low levels for the general population, the true jobless rate among noncollege black men soared to a staggering 42% (65% for black male drop outs.)

(MORE: Touré: Nostalgia: Our Favorite Cultural Cop-Out)

Prisoners do matter when analyzing the severity of racial inequality in the U.S. Yet because they are out of sight and out of mind, it is easy to imagine that we are making far more racial progress than we actually are. For now, let’s keep the cork in the bottle and pray that we will eventually awaken from our color-blind slumber to the persistent realities of race in America.

Alexander is a civil rights lawyer, advocate and legal scholar. The views expressed are solely her own.

Black Soul

By Martine Chartrand

 

2000 - 9 min 47 s

 

 

Gauguin Exhibition

Strikes Controversy:

Should An Artist Be Docked

For Personal Indiscretions?

 

First Posted: 02/21/2012 

 

Almost as legendary as Paul Gauguin's colorful depictions of Tahitian utopia is the colorful story of how he got there and what he did once in the tropical locale -- the bourgeois stockbrocker picked up and left his wife and five children to embark on a hunt to discover the primitive. After testing out and abandoning lands not quite savage enough, Gauguin landed in Tahiti, where he indulged in the native lifestyle of taking adolescent girls as wives.

Decisions like impregnating a thirteen year old and giving her syphilis surely cast Gauguin in an unflattering light. And yet the artist's unethical and perhaps delusional escape to paradise led to one of the most revolutionary shifts in the visual vocabulary of all time. Gauguin's Primitivism used flat fields of acidic and unnatural color to convey stories that bridged history, myth, legend and dream. The utopias he painted expressed mystery, desire and the dark regions of psychology. This idea of making the invisible visible helped pave the way for contemporary abstraction. And no matter how you view it, the guy is an influential artist, even if he's someone you wouldn't want to take home to meet the folks.

What role, if any, should Gauguin's questionable ethics play in the reception of his art work? A recent review of Gauguin's exhibition at the Seattle Museum of Art by Jen Graves was hailed by some and reviled by others for enacting a personal critique of Gauguin as opposed to a purely aesthetic one.

Graves' article "You May Be Infected Already" on the exhibition "Gauguin & Polynesia" contains grating blows at Gauguin's persona, calling him, not-so discreetly, "vividly, eye-catchingly gross." Graves points out that Gauguin precipitated not only primitivism but also colonialism with a nice dash of misogyny. She applauded the SAM's exhibition for placing Gauguin's work in the context of Polynesian work in general, thus placing his delusions in close proximity with the islands' realities. Viewers get to see the European interpretation and the Tahitian interpretation, perhaps translatable to the orientalist interpretation and the native translation. Graves applauds the curators "who expose Gauguin's fantasies rather than indulge them." The exhibition does not simply worship Gauguin, it also unmasks him.

The comments section of the article exploded on both ends. While some backed Graves' morally inclusive reading, others declared her of being blinded to the art by the history of the artist. One comment by user Paddy Mac read:

"Huh. And what would you say about that sell-out Michelangelo? Or that violent drunk, Ernest Hemingway? You disqualify the art because of the misbehavior of the artist. Then how do you qualify it?"

Once you start looking at artists who behaved badly and disqualifying them for it, it becomes clear how many brilliant minds turned out to be horrible people.

The question is a tricky one. Is an artwork made by a racist inherently racist? Or is mulling over the artist's personal beliefs overlooking the image in front of you? In cases like Gauguin's, indecent actions can get buried in the past and become almost amusing additions to an artist's portfolio. Current moral offenders seem to suffer more for their personal decisions, from Woody Allen to Roman Polanski to the latest controversy over Chris Brown.

What do you think? Does talent allow one to ignore the social code? Does historical ingenuity compensate for personal faults? Let us know your opinion in the comments section.

Below are materials from "Gauguin & Polynesia", now on view at the Seattle Museum of Art until April 29.

 

 

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By the sixth day, M had given up on me. He made friends with a uniquely cheery Tongan waiter named Tony, who, interestingly, still wore women’s clothing. They would sit together on our deck looking out at the ocean, sometimes playing Scrabble, while I sat indoors wrapped in a cocoon fashioned from mosquito netting. If you squinted, eliding Tony’s fearsome biceps, you could imagine that M had met his Gauguin princess at last. ♦

>via: http://www.newyorker.com/archive/2004/06/14/040614fa_fact3

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Preview 2010 B3 FeatureLabs Project

"Gauguin's Lover"

 

News   by Tambay | December 8, 2011

Hmm... curious about this one.

A feature film currently seeking financing that was one of 7 projects that were accepted into the 2010 B3 FeatureLabs in the UK (similar to the IFP and Sundance Labs here in the USA) - a script development program that works with filmmakers to assist in seeing that they realize their full-length feature films for eventual commercial release. FeatureLabs is in partnership with Film4, and other collaborators. 

Titled Gauguin's Lover (as in Eugène Henri Paul Gauguin, the French Post-Impressionist artist), the film is said to be inspired by Gauguin's 1892 oil painting Spirit of the Dead Watching, which depicts a nude Tahitian girl (Gauguin's 14-year old Tahitian wife Tehura) lying on her stomach, with an old woman seated behind her, and the little known fact that Gauguin gave his lover syphilis.

In anticipation of the question... my understanding is that Tahiti, the popular tourist destination I'm sure we've all heard of, is a French Polynesian island off the Pacific Ocean, with a population that comprises of indigenous Polynesians as well as people of African,European and Mesoamerican descent.

But I'm working to get more info from the filmmaker (Devika Ponnambalam) on her intent with the work here, and where the project currently stands... 

In the meantime, watch the promo below: