Understanding “The Help” 08/16/2011

In its first five days, the film adaptation of “The Help” has earned more than $35 million. According to Disney, which released the movie as part of a partnership with Dreamworks, “74 percent of the audience was female and 60 percent was over the age of 35,” Entertainment Weekly reported Sunday.

The social drama, set in Civil Rights-era Jackson, Miss., focuses on the lives of African American domestic workers and the white women who employ them. Some of the women are involved in a clandestine project that puts “them all at risk. And why? Because they are suffocating within the lines that define their town and their times. And sometimes lines are made to be crossed,” according to Stockett’s Web site.

While fans of the book and others fill theaters, many people also are taking issue with aspects of the movie.

“#TheHelpMovie reduces systematic, violent racism, sexism & labor exploitation to a cat fight that can be won w/ cunning spunk,” Tulane professor Melissa Harris-Perry live-tweeted Wednesday during a screening. Harris-Perry is author of “Sister Citizen: Shame, Stereotypes, and Black Women in America,” a former professor of politics and African American studies at Princeton University and current contributor to MSNBC and The Nation columnist.

“I understand the sentiment that movies/culture are frivolous compared to ‘real issues’ but these images matter,” she tweeted as she suggested different works dealing with race, gender and class such as Chana Kai Lee’s “For Freedom’s Sake: The Life of Fannie Lou Hamer”; Micki McElya’s “Clinging to Mammy: The Faithful Slave in the 20th Century”; and Tera Hunter’s “To Joy My Freedom: Southern Black Women’s Lives and Labors after the Civil War”.

To read other reaction to the film, visit the Washington Post’s OnFaith and BlogPost blogs.

Remembering King on eve of memorial opening 08/10/2011

New signage at bus stops and television commercials are promoting the upcoming events associated with the opening and dedication of the Martin Luther King, Jr. National Memorial. As I think about that historic occasion, I am also reminded of Memphis and the last time I was there – the day of President Obama’s inauguration and the national holiday in honor of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Also, thinking about issues that confronted the nation at the time and how many persist today.

 

 

Young visitor to the National Civil Rights Museum, former site of the Lorraine Motel where the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated

Time for jubilation or reflection? 05/02/2011

Newscasts and the Internet are abuzz with nonstop reports on the killing of the al-Qaeda leader who long evaded intelligence agencies. Osama bin Laden’s death in Abbottabad, Pakistan Sunday has many implications. How will it impact the 2012 presidential campaign? Will it spark retaliatory attacks by bin Laden’s supporters in the United States or abroad? Does it truncate the U.S. role in Afghanistan?

As many rejoiced in New York’s Ground Zero, outside the White House in D.C. and elsewhere, several observers also noted that this occasion should also be marked with reflection, solemnity. How should people react?

The following is a roundup of reactions by different faith-based organizations and religious leaders to the end of the long manhunt for the world’s most wanted terrorist:

• “We continue to pray for those whose lives were lost on September 11, their families, and those in the Armed Forces who have sacrificed so much to bring a measure of justice to this terrible tragedy,” said the Rev. Dr. James H. Cooper, rector of Trinity Wall Street, in a statement posted on the church’s Website.  “Let us also reflect on the wisdom of Archbishop Desmond Tutu that justice requires reconciliation, and while we seek the end of violence, we work and pray for reconciliation and peace.”
• “Before the news last night, it was clear that Osama bin Laden was already losing. The ‘Arab Spring’ of young Arabs and Muslims through nonviolent democratic movements has been a repudiation of bin Laden and his radical terrorist agenda. The death of Osama bin Laden could be a turning point in our ability to both resist evil and seek good, to turn away from the logic of both terrorism and war, and, as the Bible says, to find the things ‘that make for peace,’” wrote  Jim Wallis, theologian and CEO at Sojourners, on a blog he maintains.
• Speaking about President Obama’s speech Sunday night, Eboo Patel wrote in a blog for the Washington Post, “He was very clearly our commander in chief – recounting how he told C.I.A. Director Leon Panetta to make the capture or killing of Osama bin Laden his top priority, getting frequent briefings on the relevant intelligence and giving the final order that authorized the fatal mission. His demeanor was focused and serious. ‘I did what had to be done,’ he seemed to be saying. Vanquishing evil is necessary but insufficient. Obama seemed most human to me, most American, most presidential, when he spoke of life, not death. He recalled America in the immediate aftermath of 9/11, a nation shocked and grieving, a country focused more on community than revenge.”
• “We join our fellow citizens in welcoming the announcement that Osama bin Laden has been eliminated as a threat to our nation and the world through the actions of American military personnel. As we have stated repeatedly since the 9/11 terror attacks, bin Laden never represented Muslims or Islam. In fact, in addition to the killing of thousands of Americans, he and Al Qaeda caused the deaths of countless Muslims worldwide. We also reiterate President Obama’s clear statement tonight that the United States is not at war with Islam,” according to a statement issued Monday by the Council on American-Islamic Relations.
• “Osama bin Laden, as we all know, bore the most serious responsibility for spreading divisions and hatred among populations, causing the deaths of innumerable people, and manipulating religions for this purpose,” said Vatican spokesman Father Federico Lombardi, according to a Catholic News Service story . “In the face of a man’s death, a Christian never rejoices, but reflects on the serious responsibilities of each person before God and before men, and hopes and works so that every event may be the occasion  for the further growth of peace and not of hatred.”
• “Ecclesiastes expressed it best. There is not just a time to love but also a time to hate. I hate Osama bin Laden but I will not rejoice in his death. It would have been better for the world had he never been born. But once he was, and once he directed his life to unspeakable cruelty, it was necessary for him to be stopped and killed. And for that I give thanks to G-d and the brave soldiers of the American military for making the world a safer, more just, and innocent place,” wrote Rabbi Shmuley Boteach, founder of This World: The Values Network, in a column on the Huffington Post Website.
• “We did the best we could do, and that is often where we are left. We are left with a sense of sober satisfaction. This is no small comfort to all those who are still grieving — the loved ones of September 11, and the loved ones of all who lost their lives while wearing the uniform of the United States fighting bin Laden and the forces of terror. But, as is always the case, we are left with a sense that a higher court is still needed. Christians know that Osama bin Laden escaped the reach of full human justice and a trial for his crimes, but he will not escape the judgment that is to come. Bin Laden will not escape his trial before the court of God. Until then, sober satisfaction must be enough for those still in the land of the living,” wrote Southern Baptist Theological Seminary president Albert Mohler on his blog.
• “I remember when Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated and some of the white people in my city danced and said, ‘good!’ We, Americans, didn’t like it when we saw people dancing in their streets when the World Trade Center buildings came down. Not even sports teams allow the winner to gloat in front of the team they’ve beat. It is behavior unbecoming to an American. It feeds those who already hate us, who think that we are arrogant and selfish and self-serving. We have a right to be happy that bin Laden is gone, but gloating is not good,” wrote the Rev. Dr. Susan K. Smith, senior pastor of Advent United Church of Christ in Columbus, Ohio, in a blog for the Washington Post.
• Added May 3: Everyone I know had a reaction to one man’s death. Many were gleeful singing victory or revenge, some were fearful of retaliation, some were judgmental complaining that people were rejoicing and relieved. How did u balance what you believe about God with what you felt as a witness to the gas chamber like execution of thousands of innocent people on 9-11? I won’t judge what u felt, but what did u learn? ~ Bishop T.D. Jakes, senior pastor of The Potter’s House in a message posted on the T.D. Jakes Ministries/The Potter’s House Facebook page .
• Added May 3:   Bin Laden’s death is a “huge psychological victory” according to the Rev. Jesse Jackson. “It is a cause for celebration. So many people lost their lives, their family members lost their lives. It was such a traumatic blow,” Jackson said, according to a Dr. Boyce Watkins’ blog. “This might be the first real emotional venting for the pain that came from 9-11, the kind of relief that the plotter had destroyed.”  On his radio program Tuesday, Watkins interviewed the Rev. Al Sharpton. Sharpton, a native New Yorker, said, “Everyone died on 9-11. Blacks, whites, Muslims, Latinos and working class people,” he said. “He didn’t care who was in those buildings or on that plane. All Americans shared in that pain and all Americans can share in what we are seeing today.”

Birth certificate release stirs emotions 04/29/2011

The Rev. Jesse Jackson doubts conspiracy theorists will stop even though President Obama released his long-form birth certificate Wednesday amid questions about his citizenship.

Media and the political blogosphere buzzed as President Obama said making it public was intended to end debate. Activists, religious leaders and scholars also gave their takes on the birth certificate issue via columns, blogs, tweets and interviews.

“This is the most personal attacks on any president ever,” Jackson told Politico about rhetoric challenging the legitimacy of Obama’s presidency is really racially tinged code.

In 1984 and 1988, Jackson sought the Democratic nomination. The current political climate is very different, he said.

“Whose personal religion has ever been challenged before? That has strong racial overtones,” he said.

“Birthers don’t want to lend legitimacy to the Obama presidency. And that refusal is not about policy it is about race,” tweeted Eddie Glaude, Princeton University’s William S. Tod Professor of Religion and African American Studies Wednesday. “Obama’s birth certificate will continue to be an issue, even with this evidence, as long as the press lends this nonsense credence.”

“The President believed the distraction over his birth certificate wasn’t good for the country,” said White House communications director Dan Pfeiffer, in a statement posted on the White House Website Wednesday morning. “It may have been good politics and good TV, but it was bad for the American people and distracting from the many challenges we face as a country.”

The week before Easter Donald Trump was the second leading newsmaker behind President Obama, according to news analysis by the Pew Research Center’s Project for Excellence in Journalism, “registering as a dominant figure in 4 percent of all the week’s stories.”

“That is six times more attention than the next most covered potential GOP contender, Sarah Palin, generated last week,” said Project for Excellence in Journalism associate director Mark Jurkowitz, in a press release Tuesday.

The celebrity developer and possible presidential candidate’s statements helped push the 2012 race into the news. But his questions also reflect mainstream Republican belief about Obama’s birthplace, according to a New York Times-CBS News poll released April 21.

Forty five percent of Republicans and 45 percent of self-identified Tea Party supporters believe he was born in another country. The poll also found that 57 percent of Americans believe he was American-born, against 25 percent who didn’t.

“The influence of racial prejudice in contemporaryU.S. society is typically manifested in subtle, indirect forms of bias. Due to prevailing norms of equality, most Whites attempt to avoid appearing biased in their evaluations of Blacks, in part because of a genuine desire to live up to their egalitarian standards, but also because of concern regarding social censure,” wrote University of Delaware doctoral student Eric Hehman in a recent study measuring prejudice and opinions of president’s “Americanness” and effectiveness.

“When commentators asked why the president had not done this sooner, I screamed back at my television: ‘Why should he have to do it at all?’ I would be surprised if you did hot hear me screaming at your house, wherever in the world you live,” wrote scholar Valerie Elverton Dixon on God’s Politics blog maintained by theologian Jim Wallis and friends.  “That the president of theUnited States had to do this was not only a national embarrassment; it was an insult to every American who voted for him, and a special offense to African Americans.”

A few minutes before the president’s news conference, Glaude tweeted, “I know this is a stretch, but it almost feels like he has been forced to show his papers proving that he’s free.”

“It is not just the birth of President Obama that is at stake. Those leading the charge for states’ rights are against the birth of EEOC,” wrote Jackson in a column  posted on Huffington Post’s Website Wednesday night. “They are against the birth of contract compliance. They are against the birth of Title IV. They are against the birth of Affirmative Action. They are against the birth of the Voting Right Act. The attack against the president is really an attack against the birth of the Civil Rights Movement. Today we see leaders of this modern-day states’ rights movement trying to use their newfound power as Governor’s and state legislatures to undermine the Civil Rights gains of the 50s and 60s.”

As satirist Jonathan Swift is credited to have said, “One cannot reason someone out of something they were not reasoned into.”

“I know that there’s going to be a segment of people for which, no matter what we put out, this issue will not be put to rest,” President Obama said during a news conference Wednesday. “But I’m speaking to the vast majority of the American people, as well as to the press.  We do not have time for this kind of silliness.  We’ve got better stuff to do.  I’ve got better stuff to do.  We’ve got big problems to solve.  And I’m confident we can solve them, but we’re going to have to focus on them — not on this.”

A recent USA Today/Gallup poll found that 24 percent of Americans who suspect he was born abroad. Gallupeditor-in-chief Frank Newport said beliefs reflect a partisan connection.

He said 43 percent of Republicans believe Obama is foreign born including “including 15 percent who are definite in their beliefs and another 28 percent who say ‘probably.’”

“Of some concern to the White House and Obama’s 2012 re-election strategists is the fact that 20 percent of independents believe Obama was probably or definitely not born in the U.S. Nine percent of Democrats agree,” said Newport in a report posted on the organization’s Website.

In a Huffington Post column Thursday titled “It’s Time for Donald Trump to put up or shut up,” the Rev. Al Sharpton wrote about how the media scrutinized him when he was a 2004 presidential candidate and that it’s time for Trump to be held by the same standards. He also commented on the Rev. Franklin Graham’s statements aired on ABC’s “This Week” on Easter that raised skepticism about the president’s faith and citizenship.

“Graham not only continued to fuel the flames of ‘otherness,’ but at its very core, his statements went against all the fundamentals of Christianity itself,” Sharpton wrote. “The Bible clearly states: ‘Judge thee not.’ As a minister myself, I was deeply offended that Graham would even attempt to suggest that the president was lying about his religion, or had a different ‘definition’ of it.”

“Many on the left say that birtherism is just racism, but there’s more than simple racial animus behind it. I suspect that part of the problem is that Obama is indeed not black enough; specifically, the president is not sufficiently Negro—the historical variation of blackness that is uniquely and indisputably American,” wrote Melissa Harris-Perry for The Nation.

She writes that it’s not just about his birth.

“When birthers accuse President Obama of not having a ‘real’ birth certificate, they’re telling him to ‘go back to Africa,’” wrote the former associate professor of politics and African-American studies atPrincetonUniversitywho will teach political science and head a new program at Tulane University’s Newcomb College Institute this summer. “It’s a taunt he’s able to dismiss because he knows exactly where and when he’s from. But for black Americans descended from slaves, to question one’s birth raises perhaps a more troublesome enigma: to be born in servitude to someone, but from nowhere.”

National Urban League CEO to speak for Howard’s graduation 04/11/2011

Howard University President Sidney Ribeau announced Monday that Marc Morial, president and CEO of the National Urban League, will deliver 2011 commencement address.

Morial, a graduate of the University of Pennsylvania and Georgetown, also served two terms as mayor of New Orleans. During commencement exercises, he will also receive an honorary doctor of humane letters; he has honorary degrees from Xavier University, Wilberforce University, and the University of South Carolina Upstate.

During graduation, New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman will also receive an honorary doctor of letters. Other honorary degree recipients are former Howard trustee Marie C. Johns, deputy administrator of the U.S. Small Business Administration, and Dr. John Brooks, former director of the National Science Foundation.