Christmas Dream

I was startled from my sleep on Christmas Eve by an urge to do good deeds. I looked at the clock, 11:59pm, without even a thought, I jumped into my Green Lantern costume, ran to the front porch, and took off through the air towards my hometown, Jersey City, NJ.

As I flew over the church steeple of St. Patrick's Church on Bramhall Avenue, and the clock struck 12, I knew there was no time for complacency or sloth. There was just too much to do.

I first flew over all the corners where drugs were being sold and turned crack rocks into skittles! BUT not only that, I instantly enrolled the young entrepreneurs into small business owners classes and arranged for them to get grants to start their own businesses, provided they finished their coursework.

Next I waved my hand and everyone with an addiction was enrolled in a program to help them get clean and stay clean...

Next, I got all of Jersey City's great athletes, business owners, professionals, and celebrities who had made it out of poverty and had them start up job training programs, as well as, open businesses in the community that would not only put people to work, but would give them long term stability and security. Then I put them in contact with all of the unemployed, under employed, and those who had just given up, and told them to get to work... TOGETHER.

Next I identified all of the undernourished children and arranged for them to have healthy, nutritious meals 3 times a day. Part of this plan involved making sure that there were food stores in the community that sold healthy, fresh, affordable foods.

I also arranged for all of the children to have access to free, HIGH QUALITY healthcare...

Then I flew over every detention facility and "bam" they all had REAL rehabilitation programs that help ex offenders to enter back into society with REAL hope.

After that, I made a pact with every ex offender that they would speak in schools and community centers about the mistakes they had made, and implore others not to do the same.

Next I pulled every corrupt politician together and had them make retribution Zacchaeus style. Read it for yourself:

Luke 19:1-10
Zacchaeus the Tax Collector

1Jesus entered Jericho and was passing through. 2A man was there by the name of Zacchaeus; he was a chief tax collector and was wealthy. 3He wanted to see who Jesus was, but being a short man he could not, because of the crowd. 4So he ran ahead and climbed a sycamore-fig tree to see him, since Jesus was coming that way.
5When Jesus reached the spot, he looked up and said to him, "Zacchaeus, come down immediately. I must stay at your house today." 6So he came down at once and welcomed him gladly.

7All the people saw this and began to mutter, "He has gone to be the guest of a 'sinner.'"

8But Zacchaeus stood up and said to the Lord, "Look, Lord! Here and now I give half of my possessions to the poor, and if I have cheated anybody out of anything, I will pay back four times the amount."

9Jesus said to him, "Today salvation has come to this house, because this man, too, is a son of Abraham. 10For the Son of Man came to seek and to save what was lost."

From there I flew over every courthouse and decreed that JUSTICE would prevail in every situation. That all people, rich and poor, black, white, brown, yellow, or red would be ensured impartiality and fairness in every situation.

Next I flew over all of the schools, identified all of the underachieving TEACHERS and ADMINISTRATORS, and enrolled them in programs to bring them up to an elite standard. I also gifted every under resourced school with all of the resources it needed to give young people the best possible education, so that every child has the opportunity to go to college.

Then I flew over the projects and the sub standard housing, turning them into beautiful places to live, and making many of the people property owners. I also launched programs in every community that taught people to value their properties, how to keep them up, how to save money, and create wealth.

I also, built homeless shelters that were safe, clean, and packed with resources that would help people get back on their feet.

Next I visited every house of worship and confronted the leaders with the urgency of the day. I implored them to act with self-LESS-ness, to walk the walk even better than they talk the talk, and we all prayed and cried together vowing to do our part.

I know there was much more to do, but I only had a few hours, and besides, it was just a dream... BUT it's not impossible.

Christmas isn't just a day, in fact the day itself is only "symbolic" in every possible way (no way that Christ was born in December). The true spirit of Christmas should be expressed in how we serve those less fortunate; those in need; the "least of these."

Written by Frederick A Hanna

Best Christmas Memory

I grew up the only child of a single mom, and we were tighter than pantie hose 2 sizes small! Still are to this day. We accept each others flaws, hoping we both grow, but not judging the other less worthy because of our imperfections.

One Christmas, mommy got her Christmas club money out and we headed to Toys'R'Us to get your boy his Christmas wishes. We went in the store and shopped every isle. I was elated, then we got to the cash register, and something had gone wrong. The yellow envelope that mommy's money was in was gone. Seems it fell out of her pocketbook when we got out of the car to go into the store. We searched to no avail, so we left the store with me confused and mommy in tears.

Mommy was proud. She was/is the kind of woman who finds it hard to ever ask anyone for anything (a pathology we share), and so we were resolved to have a less than perfect Christmas... still, we had each other.

Well, just like old fabled St. Nicholas, my grandpop (God rest his soul) showed up on a snowy Christmas Eve. His nickname happened to be Nick too. He had a motto, "Say it with cash," and that's what he did. He heard what had happened and he came around with a little "ice cream money" for us!



My fondest Christmas memory is the one of me and my mother walking through Jersey City... up Monticello Ave, through McGinley Square, and into Journal Square, buying gifts all along the way on a snowy Christmas Eve. I don't remember what we bought, but I remember holding her hand, and I remember our footprints in the snow.



Do you have a favorite Christmas memory?

Images of Black Masculinity

Think with me! One of my dudes, a consummate thinker, commented that my new profile pic was very rap album-ish. I agree totally and found it quite funny. I also saw a lot of irony in the comparison when I thought of "typical" rap album images and messages they send about black masculinity. While all rappers do not portray themselves in the same manner, I think its safe to say that many people think of thugs, misogyny, and bling, when they think of rappers. I decided to post my picture side-by-side with one of these images and ask you all, "What ironies do you see?" and "What images (myth or reality) of black masculinity do you see in these pictures?"

What is the Mixtape of Your Life?

I heard a great talk yesterday at the Rutgers Camden Urban Youth Symposium (http://childhood.camden.rutgers.edu/urban_youth/schedule.php). The talk was led by English Professor James Peterson of Bucknell University. He writes and teaches in the areas of Africana Studies, Hip Hop Culture, Popular Culture, Media, African American Literature and Sociolinguistics. He talked about the influence of hip hop culture, and the significance of hip hop culture as something separate and distinct from other forms of culture. The hip hop aesthetic! He talked extensively about the literary potential of hip hop as a way of reading and interpreting culture, and he suggested that if Rutgers Camden had its own mixtape... a mixtape made up of 5 songs that tell the story of the school and perhaps more importantly the city of Camden... the 5 songs would be:

1. Lupe Fiasco – Put You on Game

2. Immortal Technique – Dance With the Devil

3. Jay Z - Meet the Parents

4. Grand Master Flash – The Message

5. Common - The Corner

I would have probably added Ghetto Bastard by Naughty, but you get the concept right?

If you take the time to listen to these songs, they paint a grim picture of Camden. I may have added a song that conveyed a stronger sense of hope and resilience, but maybe people do really perceive Camden as being devoid of hope. Peterson and his students, who are all outsiders to Camden, came up with this particular list. I wonder what songs would have been chosen by Camden natives?

Well, this all got me to thinking... If you had to construct a mixtape of 5 songs that told the story of your life... that if people listened to the tape and deconstructed the literary context of the lyrics, they would have a deeper sense and understanding of who you are... WHAT 5 SONGS WOULD YOU CHOOSE?

Written by Frederick A Hanna

The Problem With Exclusionary Discipline

Exclusionary Discipline

Students who experience academic failure are more likely to be pushed out of schools through exclusionary discipline practices. Exclusionary discipline practices are disciplinary measures that remove students from the learning process. These practices can be anything from timeouts, to suspensions, and expulsions. “Suspension and expulsion, the most common responses in discipline policies, are not effective in meeting the needs of any student and, ironically, exacerbate the very problems they are attempting to reduce” (Christle, 2007, p. 539). Any disciplinary act that separates a child from the educational experience could fit into the context of an exclusionary discipline practice, but zero tolerance policies have been most complicit in these practices. Zero tolerance policies demand punishment for violated school practices and policies, and often enact the most severe punitive response to any infraction of the rules. One of the dangers associated with zero tolerance policies is that students are singled out and severely punished for infractions that are commonly associated with adolescent immaturity. Acts like day dreaming, doodling, and talking out of turn are viewed as threats to the teacher’s authority, and certain students are repeatedly targeted with harsher consequences (Christle, 2007). These targeted students tend to be black and Latino males who are notoriously victimized by criminalization and stereotyping in America. As a result, zero tolerance policies that were put in place to curb inappropriate behavior may “exacerbate racial discrepancies” (Monroe, 2005, p47). Educators' unwillingness to draw distinctions between severe and minor offenses and the breadth with which zero tolerance approaches are applied appear to be primary sources of the problem (Skiba and Peterson 1999). The lack of practices that mediate discipline problems in the classroom can result in the victimization of the student. The emphasis on zero tolerance may also contribute to an “inattention to the value of working cooperatively with parents and communities to construct schools where disruption is minimized overall” (Monroe, 2005, p. 47). Once students are removed from the classroom, the process for the school to prison pipeline commences (Christle, 2007).


Modern day attempts at school reform linked to standardized tests can also have the affect of pushing children into the school to prison pipeline. When students are identified as not being able to meet academic standards, or as contributing to school failure, it is easier to eliminate them from the equation than to enact measures to assist them in meeting the standards. “These children are often identified by their apparent inability to acknowledge and follow the hidden curriculum of schools and their failure to acquire the skills necessary to successfully negotiate the school environment” (Fenning and Rose, 2007, p. 237). Schools can mask their failures by removing children that do not make the grade. This is exacerbated in schools located in areas of concentrated poverty that do not have the resources to undertake the kind of in school reforms that are necessary to counteract the historical inequalities related to American schools. High stakes testing associated with No Child Left Behind has done more to reinvent school inequality, than to undermine and correct it.

See NY Times Op-Ed article for more info: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/11/opinion/11wed2.html?th&emc=th

Written by Frederick A Hanna

The Church, Not the Public School... QUOTE

In reading about the Cincinnati Bible War today, which concerned the debate against teaching Protestant Christian religious lessons in public schools in the 1870's, I found this interesting quote from a staunch Calvinist Presbyterian elder who was also an attorney for the Cincinnati school board. He said this in defense of his position that "the church, not the public school was the proper agency" for religious education:

"Cannot the church send out it's ministers? Or are they too busy, day after day, in their studies, preparing to dole out dogmatic theology Sunday after Sunday, to the tired ears of their wearied congregations? Cannot they send out their Sunday School teachers? Cannot they send out their missionaries?...Must we say that the church has grown idle and lazy, and can only hobble on its crutches, and therefore that our school directors must set themselves up as teachers of religious truth? No! Let the church cease to depend upon any adventitious or external aids. Let her rely solely upon the strength of the Spirit of the Lord that is in it...Here is our work to evangelize, to save the lost and perishing crowd"

--Stanley Matthews--

I could site any number of local missions opportunities in this declaration that the modern church misses time and time again that would get people out of the pews... Compelling argument in my opinion.

King's Intertextuality

Today I found myself reflecting on some comments made by Bishop Jakes at a training I attended a few weeks ago. His comments were about the gulf that seems to exist between intellectualism and spirituality in the minds of so many church goers. This supposed gulf impacts me in a personal way as I attempt to write my dissertation which deals with emancipatory education and the Black Church. The other day, I was explaining to my peers at the Center for Race and Ethnicity that my work, in addition to embodying my own personal sense of agency, attempts to bridge intellectual and spiritual territories that are often disparate. As I contend in my work, this should never be.

In the course of my reflections, I recalled the first time I read King's Birmingham Jail Letter during my 1st year of seminary in my New Testament class. I was amazed at King's ability to weave the African American story into the narratives of the Bible so seamlessly. Their were times where you were so caught up in his explication of the plight of the Civil Rights movement that you didn't realize that he was discussing the ministry of the Apostle Paul. It was upon reading this letter that I realized for the first time that Dr. Martin Luther King was not just "a young black minister from Georgia" as President Obama so frequently likes to refer to him. King was in fact one of the best theologians, intellectuals, and preachers in the history of the United States.

In considering this fact, I enjoy the way one of my former professors, Dr. Hak Joon Lee says it in his book, "We Will Get to the Promised Land: MLK's Communal-Political Spirituality. Lee notes:

"King was a philosopher and systematic theologian by training. It was King's belief that religion should be socially active as well as intellectually respectable. To be intellectually respectable, religious ideals and principals need to be communicated through reasonable and sensible language, in terms that the public can understand. In formulating a plausible form of public theology for social change, King translated his particular religious language and symbols into public terms, identifying and interpreting in spiritual terms the challenges and problems of a society. A master of intertextuality, King freely interwove various spiritual, moral, and intellectual sources for the persuasion of the public. He creatively mixed spirituals, African American proverbs, and folklore with phrases from the Bible (e.g., the Exodus, wilderness, crucifixion, redemption, and eschaton), Western philosophies, theologies, and political documents, such as the Declaration of Independence and the Bill of Rights, in making a public case for the freedom of African Americans."

Dr. King was indeed a minster from Georgia, but it was his God given intellectual prowess that separated him from the masses as an effective leader, that enhanced his ability to so profoundly articulate the gospel, and to encourage peoples' participation in the struggle, which for him was as much spiritual as it was political.

The next time you hear someone refer to King as simply a "young black minister from Georgia"... whisper in their ear that he was "much more than that." AND the next time someone tries to tell you that intelligence and spirituality can't coexist, remind them about a "young black minister from Georgia" who was really, really smart.

Written by Frederick A Hanna