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Browsing Archive: December, 2012

Justspeak: (RE)Visioning a World without Violence Against Women

Posted by on Thursday, December 27, 2012, In : Policy Analysis 
The senseless murder of 22-year-old Kasandra Perkins by her boyfriend, Kansas City Chief's linebacker Jovan Belcher, 25, and his subsequent suicide, is a double tragedy that highlights the degree to which domestic violence has permeated our culture. Perkins was also the mother of a three-month old daughter fathered by Belcher, and according to news reports, his mother and the child witnessed the murder. What is unique about this case is that most of the original media coverage focused...
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Artspeak: Anthropology honors the mentoring legacy of Dr. Johnnetta Betsch Cole

Posted by on Thursday, December 13, 2012, In : A Moment in Time 
This presentation was delivered at the annual meeting of the American Anthropology Association on November 15, 2012 in San Francisco, where several sessions and panels were held to honor Dr. Johnnetta Betsch Cole. She is best known as the only woman to have served as President of two historically Black women’s colleges—Spelman College in Atlanta, GA (1987-1997) and Bennett College for Women in Greensboro, NC (2003-2008). 

Upon retiring from Spelman, Dr. Cole went on to become an intellectu...
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A Farewell Requiem: Dr. Elvyn Jones-Dube

Posted by on Thursday, December 13, 2012, In : A Moment in Time 
"I really have no regrets. I can go freely. There are things that I didn't accomplish that I wanted to but I have learned how to let go. I would have liked to have done more, and if I had more time, I would have done so." Dr. Elvyn Jones-Dube

Human beings, homo sapiens, or anthropology's political correct AMH (anatomically modern humans) are a unique species among mammals. We have culture, which according to my colleagues, has been our primary means of adaptation.

Through culture we have learne...
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Justspeak: Presidential slam dunk—Obama wins electoral landslide re-election

Posted by on Wednesday, December 12, 2012, In : Policy Analysis 
For the second time in this 21st century Barack Hussein Obama, the first Black President of the United States of America, has made history. He won his re-election by an electoral landslide. He beat the odds that predicted he would win the electoral vote but not the popular vote, and thereby further polarizing America.
Well, they were wrong. This incumbent president has won reelection with 50% of the people claiming President Barrack Hussein Obama as the person to lead them over the next four y...
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Justspeak: “Who Let the Dogs Out?” Romney and the Republican Party

Posted by on Wednesday, December 12, 2012, In : Policy Analysis 
Alexis Charles Henri Clérel de Tocqueville, Gunnar Myrdal, Governor Otto Kerner, Jr. What do they all have in common, besides being deceased and white men? Alexis de Tocqueville wrote Democracy in Americapublished in two volumes (1835 and 1840) in which he made observations about the impact of slavery on the newly-formed American society; Gunnar Myrdal ( a Swedish economist) wrote An American Dilemma: The Negro Problem and Modern Democracy (1944) on U.S. race relations; and Governor Otto Ker...
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President Obama: He got game!

Posted by Irma McClaurin on Wednesday, December 12, 2012, In : Policy Analysis 
Well if Stella could get her groove back, why not the President? We saw him in his "A" game mode during the second presidential debate. It was like Ali coming back at Frazier the third and final time around—"the thrilla in Manilla." What we saw was intellect unleashed—the thrilla in Hempstead, N.Y. Not quite as exotic, but it served its purpose. President Barack Hussain Obama, the incumbent, was on point—like Michael Jordan doing a slam dunk.

And what about Romney? He's still trying to s...
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Obama rewind needed

Posted by on Wednesday, December 12, 2012, In : Policy Analysis 

President Barack Obama and Gov. Mitt Romney

 I’m not sure who is coaching President Obama, but I hope they just got fired. As someone who has worked in media, given hundreds of speeches, taught university courses, and given many poetry readings, one thing I’ve learned is that people like a performance! And that’s what was missing from President Obama’s presentation in the first debate.

I think the Obama media people are young and old white men who have experience doing political campaig...
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WANTED: A caring and compassionate presidential candidate for the 47%

Posted by on Wednesday, December 12, 2012, In : Policy Analysis 
I confess. I am now, and probably always will be, a member of the 47% about whom Presidential Candidate Romney has voiced his disrespect and disdain. I am African-American. I was a single mom after my divorce. I was a college student who received a government subsidized student loan.

When I was a child, my divorced mom received benefits from Aid to Dependent Children (ADC). I am a working woman. And yes, I voted for President Barack Obama four years ago, and damn proud of it. I am in the ranks...
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Artspeak: The Nuding of Michelle Obama—Art or Insult?

Posted by on Thursday, December 6, 2012, In : Black Beauty & Health 


 Karine Percheron-Daniels’ seemingly photo-shopped painting of First Lady Michelle Obama is embroiled in controversy (http://fineartamerica.com/featured/first-lady-karine-percheron-daniels.html ).  With the exception of the face and the insertion of the American flag, Percheron-Daniels’ portrait is an exact replica of Portrait d’une négresse painted by Marie-Guilhelmine Benoist and exhibited in Paris in 1800 at the Salon. Read More
Original Posting: 12 Sept 2012
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Travelin' the world ....lookin' for somethin

Posted by Irma McClaurin on Thursday, December 6, 2012, In : Public Engagement 
Pictured: Malik of African & Caribbean Culture Centre, McClaurin, Centre visitor
 Sweet Dreams are made of this
Who am I to disagree?
I travel the world and the seven seas.
Everybody's lookin' for somethin'.
Eurythmics, Sweet Dreams are Made of This

People often ask me why I travel. And it's only after I return home that I can truthfully answer that question. Perhaps, like the Eurythmics' lyrics suggest, I am looking for something. And that is true, then what?

Travel, for me, is an adventure. It...


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Black Feminist auto/ethnography that makes you want to cry

Posted by on Thursday, December 6, 2012, In : Feminist Funny Bone 

Left to right: Maritza Quinones, Cynthia B. Dillard, Irma McClaurin, Mary E. Weems, Aisha Durham and Robin Boylorn. Photo courtesy of Robin Bylorn .
 
 When Ruth Behar wrote her seminal collection, The Vulnerable Observer: Anthropology that Breaks Your Heart (1996), she spoke about what it meant to write “vulnerable” scholarship—the kind that “breaks your heart” and makes you want to cry. Read More
Original Posting: 27 June 2012
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Artspeak: The “Despair” of College Reunions

Posted by on Thursday, December 6, 2012, In : A Moment in Time 
Author, circa 1972.   Having recently returned from my 40th college reunion, I am reminded of Charles Dickens’ opening lines to A Tale of Two Cities —“It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair…;” A fair enough description of my college ...
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Artspeak: Macys misses the boat on celebration of Brazil

Posted by on Thursday, December 6, 2012,
What a delightful surprise to open my mailbox and see Macys touting a celebration of Brazil.  The merchandise colors are vibrant oranges, yellows, and shocking turquoise.  However, as I looked at the models chosen to represent Brazil, it was clear that Macys had missed the boat. Brazil is a multi-racial country. Everyone knows that its people represent a human rainbow, and in fact, after World War II, American scholars often pointed to Brazil as the racial ideal.  Thus was born what a...
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Artspeak: So long Donna Summer…Disco Queen par excellence

Posted by on Thursday, December 6, 2012, In : A Moment in Time 

Yes, I admit to rocking a Donna Summer in my afro “do” with bell bottomed jeans, and platform shoes. I even do the Hustle on occasion, if the right jam plays.

The death of the sultry “Queen of Disco” on May 18, 2012 is a different kind of tragedy than that of songstress Whitney Houston.  Donna Summer succumbed to death after losing her battle with lung cancer at age 63.  The singer believed that the cause of her illness was “inhaling toxic particles” after 9/11, according to ...


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Why George Zimmerman does not get the “Hispanic” pass card on racism

Posted by on Thursday, December 6, 2012, In : Policy Analysis 
George Zimmerman has finally been arrested.  But is it too little too late?  Perhaps, but it is important that those who follow this case not get confused by the assertions that Zimmerman could not be racist because he is “Hispanic.”  What has been missing from the discussion thus far is an analysis of race and racism in the countries of Central and South America, and how Spanish-speaking immigrants (and/or their American-born children) can harbor cultural baggage that includes the...
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Artspeak: Hands-on science: The next generation of museums

Posted by on Thursday, December 6, 2012, In : Public Engagement 
 
Science permeates our lives.  Yet for most of us, it is still something “out there.”  The opening of a new 80,000 square feet addition to the North Carolina Museum of Natural Sciences in Raleigh changes the game and takes museums and science to a new level.  It is the size of the Science Museum of Minnesota’s entire exhibition space (70,000 sf) and temporary exhibition space (10,000 sf) combined.  This newly opened Nature Resource Center (NRC) situates Raleigh, a bio-tech and te...
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Artspeak: Tyra Banks, supermodel, super executive and super motivator, spreads words of Empowerment

Posted by on Thursday, December 6, 2012, In : Black Beauty & Health 

 On March 17, 2012, in Raleigh, N.C., at the 18th annual Radio One Women’s Empowerment Expo, several thousand Black women sat enraptured with Tyra Bank’s “booty” talk.  Although not as well attended as the previous year, the Women’s Empowerment Expo brings primarily Black women from the Triangle Area and across the country together.  The event is part social, part educational, part marketing, part self-affirmation, and simply sisters hanging out to just having a good time amo...
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ARTSPEAK: DWB-- Diving while Black

Posted by on Thursday, December 6, 2012, In : A Moment in Time 




Irma McClaurin with Dive Master Eric Wederfoort. Photo Credit: ©2011 McClaurin Solutions
 My first memory of moving underwater wasn't real. At 8 years, old I participated in a special science summer program for what we would now call "gifted" children; I wrote a play in which the setting was the sea. The main character was a young girl who finds a seahorse that takes her on a magical journey underwater.

Never mind that I had not even visited the ocean or the sea, and never mind that I...


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