Michael Jackson - The Little Brown Boy

June 25, 2009, Michael Jackson dies at the age of 50. I'm personally conflicted about Michael Jackson. I grew up loving him. I loved him because of his marvelous talent, but probably more so because he was a little brown boy like me.



There weren't too many little brown boys in the public eye when I was growing up who weren't caricatures. As I think back, the only other black boys that I remember seeing regularly on television when I was very young were Buckwheat, Stymie, Rodney Allen Rippey, and the Jacksons.



The Jacksons weren't dark, nappy headed, funny talking boys. They were just brown boys like me, except they had great talent. I loved Michael's music and his ability to captivate an audience, but there was a point where I became conflicted about Michael. Around the time of the Thriller album, I began to get a little confused.



He started to seem a little strange to me. His high pitched voice and strange mannerisms actually made it hard for me to appreciate the Thriller album at that time. Perhaps it was because I was on the verge of teen hood, and Michael no longer met the standard for my ideas about masculinity. I can't be sure right now. What I am sure of is that by the time the Bad album came out, I could no longer relate to Michael.



He was no longer that little brown boy. People like to joke that he metamorphosized from a black boy into a white woman. I don't know about that, but there is no denying that he took on a strange transgendered look. Who knows if he had a skin disease that caused his skin color to change, or if he bleached his skin. One thing is for sure, he mutilated the beautiful face of that little brown boy that I had grown to love.

Over the years, I learned to love Michael again. His performance at halftime of Super Bowl XXVII was hands down the best halftime show of all time. It made me see that beneath all of the surgeries, the little brown boy who was simply the greatest entertainer of all time was still there.

Behind all of the court cases, the accusations, the rumors and speculations, Never Never Land... was a tragic character. Most of us will probably never know all of the things that culminated in him becoming the 50 year old man that died on June 25th, but we do know that he changed the music industry, influenced countless entertainers who came after him, and literally made the music video industry.

I do find it interesting that a man who meant so much to black music seemed to have such an ambivilance about his own racial identity. Well, I will always remember him as that little brown boy. You know, the one with the wide nose, full lips, coarse curly hair, and brown skin... like me.

Africanisms in the Black Church

W.E.B. Dubois notes that the church was the only African institution that made its way from the African forest and survived slavery.

I have always contended that the flavor of the Black Church has been salted by our African roots and the Africanisms that express themselves through the lineage of our ancestors; however, I heard something recently that gave me a moment of pause. We are heading to South Africa soon for an initiative sponsored by the graduate school of education at Rutgers, and I want to examine the role of the church as a source of emancipatory education for South Africans pre and post Apartheid. I want to compare this to the role of the Black Church in the U.S. pre and post Emancipation. It was with this in mind that Dr. Godonoo



told me to pay attention to the ways that African Christians acknowledge and practice Christianity in their churches, and acknowledge and practice African religious rituals in their homes. “They go home from church and pour libations and practice other African religious rites,” he instructed.

This made sense as I read E. Franklin Frazier’s, The Negro Church in America.



Frazier said that although remnants of African religious culture were preserved in the African American experience, the breaking up of tribes and clans and the loss of language rendered African religious myth and cults devoid of traditional meaning and significance. Being kept in baracoons,...

...enduring middle passage,...

...and being dehumanized in every possible way before being acculturated to plantation regime served to strip the African of his/her cultural heritage. Couple this with the fact that whites were frequently on guard for African religious practices, as they feared they would contribute to slave revolt, and that these practices were weeded out and often outlawed; and one can begin to see how the Christian religion of the new world, in terms of the Black Church, evolved into a unique entity all its own. It became the basis of social cohesion, political enlightenment, educational advancement, social activism, and protonationalism (in some cases) for African Americans.

So much more to say on this topic, which I will reserve for later musings in an article...

It will be interesting to see what Africa reveals to me, but one thing is for sure... As Africans, we brought a strong “sense of” and “sensitivity to” the activity of the spirit world... the shout, the dance, the fervor of religious spirit, and the other worldliness that helped African Americans to escape from slavery if only in spirit, were the remnants of our African past, and are made manifest in our African American present. It is part of what makes The Black Church in America unique.

This Whole "Swag" Thing

“Swagger: prideful, arrogant walk or stride…”

“Swagger: poised, sassiness that can't be touched. It may be in the walk or it may be in the talk, but there is no doubt it means you own the room and you have that natural charisma. Basically, one with swagger dominates at life…”

“Swagger is the confidence exuded as a reflection of ones dress, shoe game, attitude, and how one handles a situation.”

Urban Dictionary

You can learn how to dress just by jocking my fresh
Jocking jocking my fresh
Jocking jocking my fresh
Follow my steps, it's the road to success
Where the niggas know you thorough
And the girls say yes
But I can't teach you my swag
You can pay for school but you can't buy class
School of hard knocks
I'm a grad
And that all-blue Yankee is my graduation cap

--Jay Z////Swagger Like Us

I’m not feeling the whole “swag” thing. When I was younger, long before the term "swag" became popular slang, I used to laud my own swagger. I would walk around with an attitude... sometimes it was a nasty attitude... sometimes it was just arrogance... I told people about it, and explained that it was my "edge." It was what allowed me to have the self confidence I needed to succeed. When people told me it was arrogance, I explained to them that it was just self esteem. Some of it was a carryover of having to carry yourself in a certain way because you lived in a hostile environment... an environment where being soft could make you a casualty. I understood that being a member of a marginalized group meant that I needed to believe in myself, to be able to hold my head up, to be "black and proud."



While I would still argue that this is a truism, and that it is important that certain groups have this sense of self affirmation, I must also admit that there is a fine line between arrogance and self confidence. One displays a humble assuredness, the other reeks of pride. Pride is an ugly image to see when the man in the mirror is wearing it.

Sociologiaclly, "swag" is related to a fragmented gender identity among marginalized males that frequently renders them (us) invisible to mainstream society. The result is an exagerrated masculinity that masks an inner struggle with the feeling that one’s talents, abilities, personality, and worth are not valued or even recognized
because of structural prejudice and racism in society (Franklin, A. J. (1999). Invisibility syndrome and racial identity development in psychotherapy
and counseling African American men. The Counseling Psychologist, 27, 761-793.).

I don’t care how you try to dress up and recreate the term to mean confidence, manners, and style… When I hear the term “swag,” I hear arrogance, conceit, self-righteousness, pride, and vanity. I see the seeds of chauvinism, misogyny, and megalomania. Do me a favor; trade in your “swag” for some self respect, integrity, accountability, character, and humility…

In the words of Gang Starr's The Guru Keith E., "If you don't like it kid, take it personal."



Peace

Vancouver's Other Side

Had an amazing day in Vancouver today. We arrived via cruise ship, disembarking in downtown Vancouver. The city was beautiful as we cruised into the harbor. We arrived at our hotel, and ran off to have coffee before going to our magnificent hotel room. Downtown Vancouver is trendy and chic. It reminded me of New York City. All of the famous designers have shops there, there are tons of great restaurants, and the people dress with a European style. I was surprised at the number of Chinese people on the streets, even though I had read that Vancouver’s largest ethnic minority was Chinese. After walking through the downtown area, we took the ferry over to Grandview Island. Great place. Lots of great ethnic food, fresh fruits and veggies, art, musicians, culture... Lots of funky dressing people… I felt like I was in Soho. I was definitely digging the fashion forward clothing. We grabbed lunch and headed out for our whale watching tour which was fabulous. During our tour we learned about marine mammals and birds, but we also learned about the University of British Columbia, Stanley Park, and the Museum of Anthropology. Vancouver also boasts Broadway style plays along with other rich cultural experiences.

BUT… Some of you know that I can never visit a city and just see what the powers that be want you to see. I always have to investigate the seediest parts of the city. So after an incredible Thai dinner with my wife. I put on my walking shoes and decided to head 2 miles east to Vancouver’s notorious East Hastings Avenue. Our hotel happened to be on West Hastings in the beautiful downtown waterfront area, so finding East Hastings was no big deal. Take a right outside the hotel doors and proceed. The first mile was typical of what I had seen all day. Lots of renovation and restoration. Nightclubs bustling with scantily clad young middle class kids, etc. THEN ALL OF THE SUDDEN, it changed. I mean one corner was beautiful downtown, and the next corner was something completely different. The first signal of change I got was a cannabis shop. Is marijuana sale legal in Vancouver? I guess so, but I haven’t investigated it as of yet. The next sign was a series of seedy motels. The kind that either rent rooms by the hour, or house welfare families. Then all of the sudden there were hoards of people. There was a check cashing store, several run down bars, liquor stores, and convenience stores Homeless people everywhere. People covered in dirt and filth, walking around in circles in drug induced dazes, crackhead prostitutes with bodies like skeletons, people blurting out vulgarities and phrases that didn’t make sense, and hand to hand drug transactions. I saw a man sitting in a wheelchair shooting heroin right in front of a hotel in clear view. Then I saw a lady with 3 crack rocks (could have been crytal meth) on her knee as she readied the glass pipe to cook up the rocks. Next I walked through a haze of what I knew to be fumes from a crack pipe. I once watched a friend cook up and smoke crack in front of me, and you never forget that smell. I saw at least two more people shooting up on the sidewalk and countless others smoking crack up and down the sidewalk. This must have covered at least a mile of city streets on both sides of East Hastings. I saw a few police cars, but they seemed to be managing the chaos, not curtailing it. In all my time in New York, New Jersey, Philly, DC, and Baltimore, I have never seen anything like this. Homeless people lined the streets, people offered to sell me hot clothes, appliances, and sex, as one man stood on the corner feeding a huge pet rat. I never felt threatened though. I always feel a kind of kinship to disenfranchised people. They’re just people… People who need help.

Written by Frederick A. Hanna