I am honored and blessed to have the opportunity to write this series of articles for the Perspective II. In the coming months I hope to share my thoughts with Perspective II readers on a wide variety of subjects.
I have long thought that the Black community is facing a variety of crises and that these are dangerous days. That said, these are also days of great promise as well and we cannot lose sight of our many accomplishments, we must cherish and nurture our history, and we must especially celebrate the great things that our youth are doing. Like many of you, I recently read a spoof email about the supposed retirement of the Ku Klux Klan.
In this email, the Grand Dragon provides a list of things that Blacks do to themselves. Moreover, Blacks do these things so well that the Klan could not hope to replicate the success that Blacks have in destroying the very fabric that holds the community together. The email ends with the point that Blacks are their own worst enemies. The fact that this defeatist and borderline demeaning email has seen such wide distribution says far more to me than its problematic content.
In forwarding this and other emails among ourselves, we inadvertently and perhaps uncritically anticipate in the replication and consumption of images and ideas about our community that do little if anything to further our progress. In fact, one might argue that these seemingly innocuous acts do far more to hurt us than overt attempts by others to bring us down. My work for the Perspective II is
first and foremost intended to be uplifting. I intend to do two things: 1) follow Dr. King's injunction to "Speak the Truth in Love" and 2) to meet Malcolm X's challenge to invest as much time in discussing solutions as we invest in discussing the problems.
I mentioned earlier that I believe that our community is in a state of crisis. The markers of that crisis are all around us and do not need to be restated here. In the coming months, I want to pose some questions that I hope spark conversations in our community. How do we effectively address pipeline issues in an educational system that systematically fails our Black and Brown children? How do we harness the tremendous power of Rap Music and Hip Hop culture? So many people dismiss the
music because of the foul, base, and self-destructive offerings of all too many mainstream artists, while ignoring the great work of the many positive and underground artists.
How might we come together to more stridently support Black businesses that provide so many valuable jobs and resources to our community? What can we do to bring more interesting and culturally enriching programming to our community? What can we do to support that programming once it is in place? I for one believe that we cannot afford to fail in answering these and other pressing questions. I look forward to discussing these and other issues in the coming months. For the moment, I would like to provide a brief update on the status of Africana Studies at the University of New Mexico.
First of all, I want to thank Dr. Shiame Okunor and previous directors for setting the foundation for the future growth of this program. I am constantly amazed at the amount of work that these directors completed with limited or no new resources. Indeed, without the support of former director Dr. Harold Bailey, we would not have been able to acquire many of the resources we have acquired in the past two years. In particular, Dr. Bailey's office should be thanked for securing the resources Africana Studies will use to acquire important materials from the Black Panther Party Archive.
Our collection will be like no other collection in the country. Last year Representatives Jane Powdrell-Culbert and Sheryl Williams-Stapleton worked closely together to propose legislation amounting to more than $1,000,000.00 to directly support Africana Studies. While much of their work met with resistance, Africana Studies did receive new resources to start a Summer SAT Prep program and to build a distance learning facility that we hope will allow us to reach Black communities across the state, penitentiaries, and other colleges and universities with academic programming. I want to add here that Representative Stapleton courageously and effectively challenged the University of New Mexico to provide more support for Africana Studies than it has done in the past.
As a direct result of her tireless efforts and for the first time in its history, UNM has placed Africana Studies on its list of legislative priorities (1 of only 19 such priorities) for this coming legislative session. While much is left to be done, this gesture on the part of UNM is encouraging. The coming year promises to be a bright one for Africana Studies…perhaps even by the time you are reading this, the Africana Studies Faculty Initiative will have passed.
We began the year with the traditional Black History Month Brunch in January. Our theme this year is "Remembering our Roots; Preparing for Our Future." This theme worked well with this year's guest speaker being actor and director LeVar Burton. Hard to believe, but this year marks the 30th anniversary of the historic and groundbreaking television premier of Alex Haley's epic "Roots." Burton's role as Kunte Kinte is one of the most memorable in American cinematic history. His PBS series Reading Rainbow literally spans generations of American children and his role as Geordi LeForge on Star Trek: The Next Generation has made him a cultural icon around the world. We would like to thank those who joined us in welcoming Mr. Burton to our community during the Black History Month Kickoff Brunch.
On a final note, after more than two years of work, Africana Studies will debut the University's newest curriculum in the fall of 2008. If all goes well, we will be bringing in at least one new faculty member at
the end of next summer.
Peace and Much Respect!