Banks Go Central

Still sobered by the rousing LeBron James' Vogue cover issue that erupted mere hours before, a perplexed Russell Simmons pensively looked on, perhaps now himself in search of solace, as Illinois Senator and leading Democratic presidential nominee Barack Obama sought to cleanse his own spirit on the delicate intricacies of race in this country.

“It's like he read all our minds,” says Simmons, a self-styled business mogul and entrepreneur. “I found myself listening in awe, unable to comprehend how this man running for president is honest enough to speak about race in America. What it'll all mean is anyone's guess. That's just the nature of the world we live in.”

And yet it all left the Foundation of Ethnic Studies chairman with one corrigible assessment: Just where do most of the perceptions we hold about race and ethnicity derive from? And what seems to propagate them to the point they now seem so irreversibly stitched in our consciousness?

It insists Simmons and others like him, who make the task of uplifting the entertainment media's often rigid view of subjects such as themselves a part of their life's work, stems from the movies we watch, the radio broadcasts we listen to and the words we read from the plethora of magazines, web sites and other forms of print media now so prevalent.

And certainly, in the case of minorities, no one can dispute that the media has been known to paint more darkened perceptions and illicit more grave illusions than even Van Gogh himself. And the instances are as apparent as the examples are endless, says Gregory Lee Jr., chairman of the National Association of Black Journalist (NABJ) Task Force.

Which all leads back to Vogue's much heralded decision to salute the 23-year-old James as only the third overall and first African-American male to ever grace the cover of the publication widely viewed as the industry's bible as it relates to all things fashionable.

James' pose, with the exquisitely coiffed super model Giselle Bundchen in arm, however, struck many as being anything but dapper, as his bulging muscles, rippling tattoos and bared teeth are as prominently displaced as his face itself. The high-brow glossy immediately elicited comparisons to the similarity staged, indisputably racially-tinged King Kong movie scene of yesteryear where the hulking-sized ape instantly becomes smitten with the petite, immaculately coutured leading lady.

"It's a great issue that Vogue has made trivial," Dr. John Hoberman, University of Texas professor and author of “Darwin's Athletes: How Sports Has Damaged Black America and Preserved the Myth of Race,” told ESPN. "It's exploitative. It's going for the primitive, racial emotion as opposed to something tasteful and edifying.”

Adds Lee Jr.: “The first time I saw the LeBron cover I didn't sense all the ramifications. That took a second look. Still, my primary issue with Vogue and publications like that is the makeup. With the very few people of color they have, it reasons that they'd drop the ball when interacting with subjects they know little about.”

NABJ task force members also note that the snapshot bares uncanny resemblance to Army recruitment paraphernalia used during World War 1, which again display an oversize ape carting off yet another distressed damsel under the banner: “Destroy This Mad Brute. Enlist U.S. Army.”

Certainly controversy stemming from African Americans donning magazine covers hardly falls under the headline of earth-shattering revelations. In 2002, Sp

orts Illustrated made the dastardly decision to feature Charles Barkley draped in chains from head-to-toe in a snippet reminiscent of a runaway slave fighting capture. Three years prior, ESPN featured Ricky Williams dressed in a full-length wedding dress, replete with matching head garb.

“True these guys were simply following direction in taking those poses,” says Lee Jr. “But those same people would have never asked guys like Peyton Manning or Troy Aikman to present themselves in those kinds of ways.”

Then there was Golf Week Magazine's call mere months ago to display a noose on its cover as a decree of in-depth coverage on the issue of PGA Tour racism after Golf Channel's Kelly Tilghman flippantly retorted that young golfers “should lynch Tiger Woods in a back alley” as a measure of both resistance and solidarity to his dominance.

And, lest we forget, Time Magazine's equally astonishing decision of a decade ago when editors took the heightened liberty of darkening O.J. Simpson's mug shot, unbelievably as if a multiple-count murder suspect needed to or even could be made to look any more grimacing.

Perhaps just as tellingly, Rolling Stone Magazine took just the opposite angle this spring when in endorsing Obama's candidacy in a cover profile editors were accused of drastically “whitening” his skin.

“The only way things are going to change is more African-Americans are in the decision-making,” says Simmons, who, in addition to having produced movies, owned record labels and web sites, once published a magazine entitled 'One World' and serves as chairman for the Hip-Hop Summit Action Network. Simmons is also a noted philanthropist, his widespread giving being recently chronicled in an Uptown Magazine cover piece.

“We have to unify,” he adds. “And the entertainment media has played a huge role in being a divider. I'm willing to put resources I have into seeing that change.”

Acclaimed filmmaker and Morehouse College alum Spike Lee is another who has displayed a propensity for putting his money were his mouth is on the issue by helping fund the launch of a sports journalism program at his alma mater by raising more than $1 million in seed money.

The program began in earnest last year with 20 students. Its launch was expedited by donations from the likes of Major League Baseball, ESPN and filmmakers Steven Spielberg and George Lucas.

“Many of the social gains this country has gone through took place in sports before the rest of the public,” an oft-chagrined Lee told Associated Press just last year. “Historically, the black athlete has been demonized. If we can get our graduates into positions... hopefully we’ll get a more balanced view.”

As someone who works within the journalism industry, Lee Jr. looks forward to the day. “There are too many times I can turn off the picture, listen to the words and know what race the athletes are the announcers are referring to. There are all kinds of buzz words, references like 'smart, leader, athletic, immature and selfish' that just let you know.”

Spike Lee likewise insists his rationale stems from rather harsh, first-hand experiences. Like the time in 1992 when he agreed to be interviewed for an Esquire Magazine profile, only to be reduced to sullen indignation soon after when the article headline blared: “Why Spike Lee Hates Your Cracker Ass.”

Responded Lee in a subsequent Village Voice piece: “She spent three days with me trying to prove how liberal she was and that's all she wrote. I never said I hated anyone's cracker ass.”

Still, the episode was enough to have Lee expressing his rather innate preference of being interviewed by black writers when his much anticipated biopic “Malcolm X” hit the big screen later that year, a film the director openly trumpeted as a “spiritual journey” for Blacks.”

“I'm doing what every person in Hollywood does,” Lee told the New York Times. “Tom Cruise, Robert Redford, whoever. People throw their weight around. Black journalists would be more responsive and sympathetic to Malcolm X.”

Don Imus was certainly responsive last year on the morning of April 5, though not very sympathetic. The 66-year-old, self-described shock jock seemed in rare form for one yet in the midst of morning java when he ridiculed the heavily African-American Rutgers women's hoops team as “some nappy headed hos.”

Imus ultimately bit the bullet for his forked tongue, but by then his evil refrain had spun the globe a million times over. “No other group has to deal with that,” says Simmons. “Just for showing up to do your job.”

But then, Simmons points out, the other side of the equator allows for the proliferation of such powers as Oprah Winfrey and Tyra Banks, currently two of the most pervasive presences in the entertainment universe. The former is in the throes of building her own network, while the latter simply serves as the persona of an emerging one. There's everything from the “Oprah Winfrey Show,” to Harpo Entertainment, to the “Tyra Banks Show” and “America's Next Top Model.”

Still, monumental experiences and fierce accomplishments aside, both largely self-made divas might be wise in seeking the counsel of the likes of Black Entertainment Television exec and film legend Reginald Hudlin in truly encompassing all the nuisances of such a loaded endeavor.

Since taken over at B.E.T., Hudlin, whose works range from “House Party,” to “Everybody Hates Chris” to “Boomerang,” has tussled with the daunting task of upgrading programming at the Viacom-owned station still criticized over decisions to cut quality shows such as “Lead Story,” “Teen Summit” and “BET Tonight With Ed Gordon” in favor of more rap videos and lowbrow comedies.

While several of those particular decisions predate Hudlin's arrival, the atmosphere that made

them fly seems to still permeate.

“I don't think there's any conflict in profitable entertainment and social consciousness,” chastened Hudlin in alluding to issues that have long dogged B.E.T. “People want everything, they want their guilty pleasures and they want socially relevant content. They want to be served a balanced meal.”

But somewhere, somehow the menu Hudlin speaks of seems to have drastically changed enroute to the headquarters of sister station VH1. Morphed into a non-sequitur, even. How else, critics contend, can one explain such distasteful reality show concoctions as “The Flavor of Love and, “I Love New York.”

The shows premise center around the main characters, “Flav” and “New York,” putting a bevy of potential live-in paramours through the rigors and indignations of talent show competitions, multiple date settings and elimination nights, all in the heartfelt hope of finding “love.” At one point this season, 'Flav's search even had him “seriously” considering twin sisters as potential life mates.

It's all enough to seemingly keep Simmons and those of his mindset in perpetual movement, forever striving to color the societal landscape anew. How else to combat myths like those in a recent Time Magazine post entitled: “A Visit to Obama's Chicago Church."

The original piece, which stemmed from the recently dissected rantings of retired Trinity United Church of Christ stalwart Rev. Jeremiah Wright, described the heavily black, South Side community as "a sprawl of cracked sidewalks and boarded buildings that inspires fear among the city's middle classes, and even its wizened cabbies."

The fact that much of the South Side generally boasts longtime black middle-class neighborhoods Chatham, Avalon and Roseland seemed to evaporate to mere dust amid the writer's rather blatant quest to paint the area and in a gravely distinguishable light. They'd be no gray areas here, all the doctors, architects and prominent journalists of note that comprise Trinity's pulpit be damned.

What's more, a subsequent Chicago Tribune analysis of some of Wright's speeches, used as incendiary sound and video bites attesting to his racist nature. concluded that “for more than 30 years, Wright walked churchgoers along a winding road from rage to reconciliation, employing a style that validated both. Examining the full content of Wright's sermons and delivery style, yields a far more complex message.””

But in the case of the Time Magazine article, Simmons thought the message was clear. “Those are the kinds of irresponsible statements that spread the stereotypes about how we all live as black people,” he says. “It paints us as being just a monolithic group and that couldn't be further from the truth.”

In fact, the levity of such a broadly spread misnomer brings to mind the Blaxploitation film era of the 1970s, a period when many ignorantly believed all African-Americans lived in ghettos and everyone survived as either pimps, drug dealers or hit men. It's a picture Spike Lee still maintains inspired him to spend his adult life making films of such riveting magnitude.

Lee's 1989 “Do the Right Thing,” where he chronicles the interactions of residents in a racially divided Brooklyn neighborhood on the hottest day of the year, has been classified “culturally significant” and selected for National Film Registry preservation by the Library of Congress. But to him it was simply a case of holding true to his mission.

And a great deal of that calls for being brutally honest with himself. “You get into that position and you know your films have to make money no matter who you are,” Lee told Slate.com in a 2005 interview. “But I can confidently say that if there had been a gatekeeper at MGM, I don't think “Soul Plane” could have gotten made.”

And Spike Lee wants to feel just as confident that when minorities venture to the movie theaters to spend their hard earned dollars, they're being well spent on material that sheds a truer reflection of the subjects starring back at them.

“All I'm saying is that there would be more variety and diversity as far as subject matter,” he continued. “I would hopefully see a greater picture of African-Americans' experience vs. one that's limited to comedies and hip-hop, drug, gangsta, shoot 'em up films.”

The celebrity/media power now wielded by Oprah and Tyra is certainly a move in a more conscionable direction. Harlemite Quincy Troupe, who penned the novel that spurred the Will Smith-starring blockbuster film “The Pursuit of Happyness” and is now being consulted on another film about the life of jazz trumpeter Miles Davis stemming from another of his books, likewise has come to know a bit about the Hollywood way.

“I've been one of the fortunate ones in that I've worked with the same person and he's someone who's stayed true to the characters as I've originally written and defined them. He's someone who hasn't taken the common way out, which is to turn the characters into stereotypes and caricatures for the sake of digestible consumption,” says Troupe, who also wrote “James Baldwin: The Legacy,” featuring the last known Baldwin interview.

The aim of institutions like Accuracy In Media is to assure that experiences such as those reflected upon by Troupe don't continue to be such isolated episodes. The Washington-based, grassroots non-profit touts itself as a “citizens watchdog of the media that critiques botched and bungled news stories on important issues that received slanted coverage.”

Indeed, those seem words to live by a mandate we'd all be wise to underwrite.

 

Remember The Time: John Carlos Reflects 

By Glenn Minnis/ RISEUP Magazine

John Carlos still recalls the time as if it were just yesterday. Maybe that's because there are still so many instances when he feels as if he's yet living in those moments.

Indeed, the parallels between now and four decades ago, when Carlos and Olympic teammate Tommie Smith took to the winner's circle at the 1968 Mexico City Games as intent on making  a statement about the struggles of finding a place within a society that largely viewed them as less than equal as accepting their medals, are boundless.    

How, they often wondered aloud, can you rise to praise and salute the nature of the man, yet so disrespect the culture that bore him? Now with the Beijing Games of 2008 upon us, John Carlos doesn't quite move the way he once did. But clearly the 63-year-old former sprint star remains adept at turning heads.

"Things have truly come full circle over the last forty years,” says Carlos, who along with Smith , dawned black gloves and raised them to the heavens back then in protest of widespread racism and poverty here in America as "The Star-Spangled Banner" played during the awards presentation.

“Again we find ourselves in the middle of a very politicized season,” Carlos adds. “One filled with much strife over issues like war, human rights and genocide. In '68, a young man named Bobby Kennedy came along with a beautiful vision and mandate for change that would put America on a higher path. This time it's Barack Obama's vision, hopefully the world can stay true to the mandate this time, truly make this a land where we all can start to grow, learn and prosper.”

To that end, John Carlos feels a people can never genuinely move forward without first understanding where it is they come from. Hence, his need to set the record straight on just what he, Smith and all the others involved in their movement and the night of October 16, 1968 were truly trying to illustrate.

“It wasn't so much a matter of us being defiant,” says Carlos. “As black men, we just wanted to feel we could make a place for ourselves in this land. We wanted to know four ourselves and our people that if we followed the letter of the land we too could have the chance to make lives for ourselves and family. This wasn't a movement about separation or even preaching all hatred of one group to raise another.”

But given the turbulent, race-torn times of 60's, Carlos remembers their message being received in just those tones. Before nightfall, he and Smith had been suspended from the national team and kicked out and banned from the Olympic Village. By the time they arrived back in the States, they were widely ostracized as unappreciative, uppity, rabble-rousers unworthy of American praise or distinction. Soon they would lose both their medals and standing in society altogether.

“We were the ones cast as hate-mongers, race-baiters,” he says. To this day, the biggest myth about what we did remains that we were some sort of card carrying Black Panther militants. The name of our organization was the Olympic Project for Human Rights and we were simply a group of Black men, many of which were college students, who wanted change.”

None of that is too say John Carlos regrets any of what he came to do. In fact, he swears he'd do it all again in five minutes. Today.

"It's about right and wrong,” he declares

By: Glenn Minnis, BlackAmericaWeb.com

Todd Bozeman is convinced he can't lose. Even pitted against the likely national player of the year on the game's grandest stage, the third-year Morgan State and MEAC coach of the year still feels destiny lies on his side.

And just why shouldn't he? Ask yourself, who in the history of the collegiate ranks, player or coach, has ever staged a more improbable comeback, somehow managed to make a way out of no way, more so than the tireless 45-year-old?

But the rapture of somehow turning exile into exultation only scratches the surface in the modern day rise of Todd Bozeman. At 29 years old, he became only the second University of California coach in more than three decades to lead the Golden Bears into the land of the NCAA Tournament. Three more trips in just four years would follow, and soon the program figured prominently in most all conversations when the subject of the game's biggest players was broached.

Over his short tenure, Bozeman recruited seven eventual NBA hoopers, surefire Hall of Fame point guard Jason Kidd among them, to the Berkley campus. But how does such an ambitious upstart manage to keep the music playing in the ultra-competitive arena of college basketball without ever coming to skip a beat? Like so many veterans before him, the young, still evolving Bozeman struggled with coming to grips with the the rhyme and reason of all that. And soon, the world would know just how much.

In 1996, Bozeman was first suspended than ultimately forced to resign after the parents of former Cal player Jelani Gardner went public with revelations he provided them with $30,000 to travel to and from home to see their son play. In addition to a death-penalty like eight-year ban, the NCAA placed him in “show cause” status, meaning no college could again hire him without first showing reasonable cause to the governing body and gaining NCAA approval.

For more than a decade, Todd Bozeman scurried about, trying to stay true to the game by scouting for any NBA team that would have him and coaching on the amateur circuit. And now, today in downtown Kansas City in the South Region of the NCAA Tournament against Blake Griffin and powerhouse Oklahoma (27-5), all comes full circle for Bozeman, who will lead Morgan State into the field of 64 for the first time in school history and just less than three-years after his tenure began a dismal 4-26.

"I always believed it would happen," Bozeman says of his return. "I never wavered on that, I just didn't know when. I was just determined to stay the course and ride it out. At Cal, I made a bad judgment, and I use it as a life lesson for my family/players/other young coaches. I've moved on. I was punished accordingly and now I'm here to show everyone I can rebound from all this.”

And in that rationalization potentially lies the rapid-fire emergence of one of the nation's fastest growing mid-major powers. Junior guard Reggie Holmes, senior forward Marquise Kately and freshmen center Kevin Thompson were named to all conference teams this season, and all eagerly attest to the wizardry of Bozeman.

“In the past, coaches would let me get away with everything," says Holmes, the team's leading scorer at 17 points per game. “He's such an intense guy, he doesn't let me get away with anything.”

Perhaps that's because Bozeman has learned rules are not meant to be broken.

"My energy, my passion, that's all the same," insists Bozeman, who adopted his then 15-year-old nephew after his older brother succumbed to a pulmonary embolism two years ago. "Now I'm just older and wiser."

But for Bozeman that seems to make a world of difference.