"i have a nightmare"

Black mathematician, Jonathan Farley shares some rather inconoclastic thoughts about King in the recent Guardian piece, I have a nightmare. While Latina blogger, La Chola, responds in "non-violence failed us" Both pieces make me wonder if anyone out there is actually a pacifist anymore? And if we don't really believe in pacifism then what is the meaning and value of King's legacy? Did he only teach us how to take a beating? What do you think?

you can't please everybody (part two)

So the civilizational discussion is continuing with the folks (Forest Gump fans?) over at Pros and Cons in the post: You oughta come back home … to Greenbow ALABAMA!
And check out part one in: shock and awe or... you can't please everybody

rerun

I thought I should repost last year's in preparation for mlk day. I especially hope that, given the current conflict in the Middle East. instead of merely looking at, listening to, recalling the "I Have a Dream" speech that folks would also reflect on Beyond Vietnam Also consider: no wonder they shot him.

boycott

I was flipping channels the other day and came across Boycott (a tv movie on the Montgomery Bus Boycott) on BET. The movie was decent but mainly it reminded me of how Jeffery Wright (who played King) is an amazing actor. Every role I've seen him in (in Angels in America, in Shaft, The Manchurian Candidate, Basquiat, Presumed Innocent etc.) have been intense and radically different from one another. The next time I rent some DVDs I'm definitely going to look for more of his films.

old boondocks

On a Hill...

Huey to Ceasar: Soon our nation will pause and celebrate the Martin Luther King Jr. Holiday. We will reflect on his legacy and his wisdome. Who can forget when he said, "Violence against your fellow man is never the answer...

"... unless you suspect your fellow man has a weapon that you yourself have but don't want him to have, then you should bomb the bejeezus out of 'em!"

Ceasar to Huey: Stop that.

the urgency of now

On the occasion of MLK day, from Chickenbones Journal here is The Fierce Urgency of Now: Martin Luther King Birthday Celebration 2008 by Grace Lee Boggs

amir sulaiman: like a thief in the night

So one of the albums I did end up getting at the aforementioned trip to the music was was Amir Sulaiman's Like a Thief in the Night which I definitely recommend. I was able to find videos clips to go along with two of the tracks. One is the very short film by Bobby O'Neil called Spit:


and then there is also the more sensitive piece "She Said I Prefer a Broken Neck (To a Broken Heart)" which appears on Like a Thief in the Night. But this particular performance is from Def Poetry Jam:



See also: upon the ashes of babylon

mayda del valle

Just the other day I was in a music store and came across The Best of the Roots. There was no way my conscience was going to let me pay $17 get the CD since I already had the first six Roots albums, but one track which definitely intrigued me was a version of (Hip-Hop is the) Love of my Life featuring Mayda del Valle. (At least for now, the track seems to be available on her myspace page) I've mentioned her in passing before but for those that don't know, she is an amazing Puerto Rican spoken word artist, originally from the southside of Chicago. When I was at the National Poetry Slam a couple of years back, she was the only performer who actually made me feel starstruck when I would see them walking down the street.

She has a lot of different "ethnic" pieces which are amazing (I think "Descendancy" is my favorite) but I just happened across some of her other pieces which are pretty powerful too. First is "To all the boys I loved before" which is obviously a relationship piece...



And then there is "The Gift" which starts off as a why-I-write type of poem but also dips into relationship territory (Like she says, "my poems go off on tangents.")



I think that both poems should inspire any male to be the kind of man she says she deserves.

obama and black latinos

I just "discovered" the blog Multiplicative Identity through the entry Obama and the Latino Vote in the NY Times by Cuban blogger Alisa Valdes-Rodriguez. The article rightfully rips the NY Times a new one for the clumsy way in which they describe the demographic issues around Obama's efforts to campaign among Latinos in New York.

She also turned me on to the Blacktino e-News Network (BNN)

shock and awe or... you can't please everybody

Surprise, surprise: One of the contributors of the conservative Alabama-based blog Pros and Cons said in the entry Holy Smokes! that they didn't like or get Planet Grenada. I left a comment suggesting that they should read Hisham Aidi's piece Let Us Be Moors - Islam, Race And "Connected Histories" which fleshes out the mini-manifesto at the top of my blog. But the information was quickly deleted.

cuba: one race, two countries

From AfroCuba Web:
Tonyaa Weathersbee is a columnist for the Florida Times Union out of Jacksonville. A member of the prestigious Trotter Group of African American columnists in the US, she has maintained an interest in Cuba and issues of race & identity there. In September of last year Tonyaa Weathersbee wrote an article about a recent trip she took to Cuba, One Race, Two Countries. A group of 4 Cuban Americans attacked her for this article in a letter to the editor, Cuba is no paradise for blacks, 11/07. AfroCubaWeb columnist Alberto Jones comments on this attack in A Failed Revisionist attempt To Mask Cuba’s Tragic History, 11/07.

(Here is the original article and the various responses)

barak obama on the middle east

Common Dreams: Barack Obama on the Middle East by Stephen Zunes

See also: Planet Grenada on Obama (and other related subjects)

dropping out of electoral college

From In These Times: Dropping Out of Electoral College by Martha Biondi summarizes a rather clever plan devised by a Stanford University computer scientist named John Koza to do an end run around the electoral college without having to overhaul the U.S. Constitution. It’s called National Popular Vote (NPV), and in April, Maryland became the first state to pass it into law. It works as follows: according to the Constitution, states have the right to determine how to cast their electoral votes. So instead of awarding its electoral votes to the top vote getter among that state's voters, under NPV a state would award their electoral votes to the winner of the national popular vote. As soon as the measure passed in enough states, the electoral college would technically still exist, but for all practical purposes we would be able to directly elect the president. Pretty sneaky sis.

For another interesting idea on tweaking the election system in the interests of greater democracy check out Common Dreams: The Glories of the ‘Single Transferable Vote’ by Ari Savitzky and David Segal

britney spears may convert to islam

Alarabiya: Britney Spears may convert to Islam

Stranger things have happened. Actually no, they haven't. Somehow in the cases of other celebrity converts to Islam (Jermaine Jackson, Everlast, Cat Stevens, Rick James, or even looking at the rumors around Prince Charles) there seemed to be a little bit more continuity, however faint. In any case, this should be interesting however it turns out. Let's keep her in our dua.

white muslims
"we shall change them for fresh skins"
i'm rick james, ukhti?
michael jackson: off the wall
Middle East Quarterly: Prince Charles of Arabia

more on deobandis (and barelwis)

Recently JinnZaman over at Global Intifada posted an article on the Differences between Deobandis and Barelwis which gives an enlightening perspective on the two groups. But to be honest, I personally don't understand how two groups that are so close (both Hanafi, both Maturidi, both looking back to Ahmad Sirhindi and Shah Waliullah, both respecting the various Sufi tariqats) could be so much in conflict. Why can't they just emphasize their (considerable) common ground instead of their differences?

Planet Grenada
the jamaa'at tableegh and the deobandis
a deobandi with a difference
differences between schools
ideology and temperament
ideology and temperament (the habashis)

muharram facts

For more information on Ashurah and the New Year, you can check out:

Sunni Path: Fiqh of Islamic Months: The Month of Muharram
New Islamic Directions: The Blessings of the Day of Ashura by Imam Zaid Shakir

along with a number of Ashurah/Muharram links over at Scatterbrained Soonee Sister's entry: Welcome Muharram 1429

happy birthday to me

So this year my (Gregorian) birthday landed on a date close to the Islamic new year and I just realized that the same was probably the case when I was born (which should give a hint about how old I am). It all reminds me of how arbitrary all these methods for marking time are.

mancala

For reasons I don't want to get into right now I've been thinking a lot about mathematics education, especially in the Black community. In that vein, I want to make a plug for using mancala games (sowing games or count-and-capture games) as a tool in the classroom and elsewhere to stimulate greater interest in mathematics, logical reasoning and strategy among Black youth.

Firstly, many of the games in this category are Afican in origin and are commonly played in Africa or the diaspora so the the games would be able synergize well with any other Afrocentric content which was part of the school curriculum. (Some of these games are also popular in Asia. E.g, recently a friend of mine sent me a picture of a Malaysian coin which has the image of one of these games on one of its sides.)

Secondly, the games are almost purely "mathematical" in the sense that they are based on keeping track of the number of stones or seeds contained in various "pits" on a game board and so they will provide a certain amount of practice in counting, doing arithmetic, and certain kinds of mathematical reasoning.

To be honest, I'm still trying to figure out which particular mancala-game is the most mathematically rich for the purposes of teaching. Oware is one of the more "serious" versions and seems to be the most respected in terms of adult-play (e.g. The Oware Society holds international tournaments and keeps track of rankings.) Kalah is the most widely-marketed version in the U.S. (It was one of the games included on my first cell-phone and it is also the game included in the links below.) I've met a group of Haitian-American students who like to play a version of mancala which is basically a race to clear their side of the board. But there are literally dozens of variations. If anyone out there takes my plug for mancala games seriously, you might even consider starting clubs or organizations where young people could come together to become familiar with several different games instead of just focusing on one.

Mancala (Kalah):
Mancala (3 stones per pit)
Mancala (4 stones per pit)

Planet Grenada on games:
submachine games
pencak silat
weeping and nashing of teeth aka he got game

happy new year (it's 1429 y'all)

(see also ashurah 1428) InshaAllah, in a day or so, I'll put another such post together for this year.

more on black jews

Over at ChickenBones: A Journal, I recently saw two articles by Adeyinka Makinde which discuss the possible Jewish descent in the Igbo of Nigeria: on the Igbos: A Lost Tribe of Israel? and The Igbo and Jewry. But really, these sorts of articles shouldn't be surprising. As I point out in another post:

...according to the Bible, Jacob (Israel) and his sons went into Africa as a group of 12 households and hundreds of years later they came out of Africa as a nation of millions. Either the children of Israel are really really really inbred or they intermarried with the people around them and became basically an African group. The Bible even explicitly says that Abraham, Joseph and Moses married African (Egyptian and Cushite) women [Genesis 16:3, Genesis 41:45, Numbers 12:1].

I think I need to read How Jews Became White Folks and What That Says About Race in America by Karen Brodkin which has been recommended to me on more than one occasion. There is so much history and politics behind racial classifications and I would like to have a better understanding of how the process unfolds. 

 See also: 

the lemba 

"i've seen ethiopians knocking out rome" (part 2) 

reclaiming jewish traditions in mexico 

are desis white?