Camp We All Just Get Along?

I love camping. I love the big sky, the cold mornings, the tinge of soreness from sleeping on the ground, the freedom from laundry and shopping and busyness. I love how when you go camping, cooking is everyone’s job, not just mine. I love the boredom and the wonder. I love the char of food cooked on an open fire. I love smores. I love long talks around a bonfire, and the starlit ghost stories.

I haven’t been camping since our kids graduated from high school four years ago. But when they were growing up, our family used to venture into the woods to rough it with two other African American families. (Actually, one family even packed a portable toilet, a portable fridge and a three-bedroom tent, but I digress.)

It wasn’t long before I realized that our merry band of black campers was quite an aberration. Michigan is full of lakes and pristine forest, but you can go an entire season and not see another black person paddling a canoe or hiking the falls. The sad truth is that African Americans don’t camp—or hike or hunt or fish. According to the Fish and Wildlife Service, 96 percent of all hunters in the United States, 93 percent of wildlife watchers and 92 percent of anglers were white in 2006. The Outdoor Foundation contends that 80 percent of outdoor recreationists are white, across all age groups.

I once mentioned this to my mother who shrugged and said, “When you grow up without electricity and no indoor plumbing, camping isn’t a vacation, it’s real life.”

That may be true for a Depression-era baby who grew up in rural Virginia—but that certainly wouldn’t explain why so many African Americans don’t engage with the Great Outdoors. Psychologists offer a far more insidious explanation: The traumatic kidnapping of our ancestors across the bloody waters of the Middle Passage, the grueling toil under the slave sun, cross burnings in midnight forests, trees bearing that “strange fruit.” Shelton Johnson, an interpretive specialist at Yosemite National Park told the UPI last year that the apartheid of outdoor life is “bigger that just African Americans not visiting national parks. I think it is, in part, a memory of the horrible things that were done to us in rural America.”

What we as African Americans need to understand is that much of this is memory, not reality. According to the FBI, only about 1.2 percent of all hate crimes in 2008 happened in a field or the woods. About one-third (2,480 cases) happened at home with another third occurring on an urban road/alley or at an educational institution.

It’s great to see that this is an issue that is now getting some attention. Connecting youth with nature has increasingly become a tactic for easing violence and anti-social behaviors. That, coupled with the Green Movement, is moving urban blacks closer to the land and spawning a new generation of urban farmers.
As far back as 1993, a group of African American RVers gathered in suburban Detroit for the largest camping convocation of its kind. The outcome was the National African American RVers Association, which today has flourished into five regions and a National Annual Camp Rally.

As Dianne Glave wrote in the introduction to her book, “Rooted in the Earth: Reclaiming the African American Environmental Heritage,” “Long before the birth of the environmental movement, African Americans practiced environmentalism through the lenses of religion, agriculture, gardening and nature study. These practices have been documented in Africa as well as during enslavement, through the twentieth century, and even today.”

Maybe it’s not so much that African Americans don’t appreciate the outdoors, it’s just that we appreciate it differently. When I think about it, we are always fishing off of piers and docks, we are always growing flowers in the backyard and planting tomatoes along a hot brick wall. We are a community of front porches and evening fireflies. And we wade into rivers to profess our faith in God.

It’s little-known that novelist Richard Wright, famous for his searing depictions of racism and the alienation of urban America, sat quietly over the years contemplating nature. He left behind thousands of traditional Japanese haiku that harked back to the synergy of the natural world and the black soul:

In the silent forest
A woodpecker hammers at
The sound of silence.




P.S.
You might also be interested in reading, "Black Nature: Four Centuries of African American Nature Poetry," edited by Camille T. Dungy

She's Still Got More Hell to Raise

Bettye LaVette took the stage at Hart Plaza in downtown Detroit last night and sang away the rain with her hard-scrabble testimony. The Muskegon-born and Detroit-raised blues rocker didn’t start her career in church like so many other artists of her genre, but when she took the main stage at the African World Festival, she carried the audience from sin to salvation.

I first heard of LaVette through National Public Radio’s “Fresh Air.”  You might have seen her sing a duet of Sam Cooke’s 1964 “A Change is Gonna Come” with Jon Bon Jovi last year at President Obama’s Inauguration.  But she's been around a long time.

LaVette first tasted fame at the tender age of 16, when she recorded "My Man - He's a Lovin' Man,” with Johnnie Mae Matthews. It became a Top Ten R & B hit in 1962, and she ended up touring with the likes of Otis Redding. But she and other black artists were swamped by the British Invasion, a movement that borrowed heavily from the R & B and blues artists that it eventually buried. She had some hit singles and even a run on Broadway in “Bubbling Brown Sugar,” but never got the limelight she deserved.

That is, until a French R & B collector heard some of her unreleased master recordings for Atlantic Records (the company that deep-sixed her project in 1972 without explanation) and resurrected her career. Since then, she won the 2004 W. C. Handy Award for “Comeback Blues Album of the Year” for her CD, “A Woman Like Me.” In 2005, she released the groundbreaking "I've Got More Hell To Raise," a collection written entirely by women, including Fiona Apple and Dolly Parton. And her 2007 “The Scene of the Crime” album was nominated for a Grammy Award for “Best Contemporary Blues Album. ”

“Six years ago, they raised me from the crypt,” she joked on stage. Well, it’s been one heck of a resurrection.

Terry Mathis, Randall Coats, Bettye LaVette and Marissa Ross

Backstage, LaVette sat backstage sipping champagne and surrounded by a close clatch of family and friends. Old, old friends. They laughed and told stories about being on the road, while her daughter, Terry Mathis sat close by. Terry’s children, Randall Coats and Marissa Ross, were there too. Marissa will be a freshman at Western University in a few weeks, but not before accompanying her grandmother to performances out west.

On stage, the svelte 65-year-old, (who, by the way, danced in sexy stilettos the whole time), delivered a series of songs from her newest release, “Interpretations: The British Rock Songbook,” that were raw and personal. Her rendition of the Moody Blues’ “Nights in White Satin,” was so piercingly honest, it was hard not to flinch. She sang several other songs from “Interpretations,” including Elton John's“Don’t Let the Sun Go Down on Me,” but you couldn’t help but think that’s the way the songs should have been sung in the first place.

Everyone who ventured out in the chilly drizzle of late summer was rewarded by a performance to remember. But just watching LaVette give her all on stage, you knew that she’s beat back a lot more than a little bad weather.

African Americans and Asian Indians - Who's got the corner on blackness?

Desiree chats with Dr. Mahalingam about skin color on WDET

Several weeks ago, I blogged about the intersection between Malcolm X, the Black Panthers and the Dalit (Untouchable) struggle for equal rights in India. Today, I was on the Craige Fahle Show, 101.9-FM WDET, talking about the fascinating similarities for an hour.

We needed YEARS to unpack the joint experiences of colonial oppression, and how both groups have learned to oppress themeselves with prejudices against darker skin. If African Americans thought they had the corner on being "color struck," it pales (literally) in comparison to the Indian obsession with light skin.You'll have to hear it to believe it.

The conversation gets deep when Neena Pottore shares her American experience as a dark-skinned Indian.

After you've had a listen, you might want to check out the websites/papers online authored by my guests:

 Dr. Ram Mahalingam, Psychology, University of Michigan

Daniel Immerwahr, History, University of California-Berkeley

Two views of Detroit

Despite the cold economy and scalding weather this summer, Detroiters insist on finding something to celebrate. I’m a lucky girl that I can see the first base line from my office window overlooking Comerica Park. This season, more than any other season since I moved to Detroit in 1984, I’ve been hanging out at Tigers’ games, enjoying the great American pastime.


From a seat in the stadium, it’s easy to imagine Detroit in its glory days. The skyline is gorgeous, and the stadium is packed with happy sports fans. From the bleachers—armed with a hotdog and popcorn—one can almost imagine that all is well in the Motor City.

 

 

But just blocks away, there are always stark reminders...

This photo was taken by my dear friend, Bruce Giffin

Detroit Red and the Untouchables

(A version of this blog first appeared at The NAACP Legal Defense Fund's Defenders Online)

This year marks the 85th birthday of Detroit Red, the man the world knows as Malcolm X. The Muslim civil rights activist spent his younger years in Lansing and Detroit, Michigan. In 1953, he became assistant minister of the Nation of Islam's Temple Number One in Detroit.

I’ve noticed that the mainstream media still talks about Malcolm X as “controversial,” although he seems to be embraced more widely today than he was when he was living. But it wasn’t until I met Meena Kandasamy that I realized just how broadly Malcolm X not only influenced the course of civil rights in the United States, but the worldwide struggle for equality as well.

Meena is slightly built, with a mane of dark hair and a disarming smile. Underneath, she is a fireball poet-revolutionary, full of an indignation reminiscent of the young Malcolm X. A resident of Chennai, India, Meena was born a Dalit, or Untouchable. The word “Dalit” means crushed, broken down, torn apart. There are more than 160 million Untouchables in India, a group that is reviled as the lowest rung of the caste system, much like African Americans before the Civil Rights Era.

“The Dalit struggle for the last two centuries has sought for the right to use public roads, public transport (recently, a Dalit was beaten up for daring to sit next to an upper caste man), enter public places of worship, and so on,” Meena said.

It’s interesting that while the black Civil Rights Movement looked to Gandhi as a model of social change, Dalits look to African American militant movements.

“For us, Malcolm X is iconic,” she said. “The Dalits also borrowed from the Black Panther Movement when they realized that they had to deal not only with a discriminatory society, but with ruthless state terror in the form of police atrocities. The crimes against Dalits were seldom taken care of by the state, and in most instances, the worst hit were the women.”

The lack of police protection led the Dalit people to escalate their violent discourse: “They said, if you touch our sister, you will not have that hand,” said Meena, who is an English lecturer in Anna University in Chennai.

The early Dalit militant movement, which began in the state of Maharashtra, even called itself the Dalit Panthers. Dalit activists translated black poets like Langston Hughes.

When will the caste structure finally be decimated? Despite her commitment to the cause, Meena is not optimistic.

“The system operates through distrust: and a preconceived notion that we are not only low, but also evil,” she wrote in the Himal Southasian, in April 2010. “Demonizing us, and dehumanizing us, allows caste Hindus the luxury of having an argument to defend their case, and to gloss over all the social injustices with which the system has been permeated.”

Which is why, she wrote further, that the quest for equality is too often seen by the “upper” castes as a movement to “humanize,” “civilize” and educate the Dalits. Sound familiar?

Here’s another connection between African Americans and Dalits—it turns out that the culture of segregation is not only about law, but about mindset. Meena told the story about a fellow Tamil Dalit who was driving through Denver with another caste Hindu.

"Seeing the poor African Americans there, the rundown neighborhoods and obvious poverty, the caste Hindu, said, ‘Namba ooru cheri maadiriyae irukku illa?’ (It is exactly like the Dalit settlements in our village, isn’t it?),” Meena wrote. “That is the problem with the caste-Hindu mind: it is trained to recognize caste everywhere, and to replicate its order.”

That’s why, she continued, an Indian living in the United States will perpetuate the caste distinctions, imposing them on the African American culture. He might wonder, “‘How do I face my relatives and family back in the village if my daughter marries a kallu (black)?’” wrote Meena. “His fear is as heartfelt as that of a 15th-century Brahmin facing excommunication for transgressing caste boundaries.”

She added that President Barack Obama might be astonished that his black brothers and sisters are not only seen through a racial perspective, but also in a casteist manner—a point of view that hampers African American—Indian relationships. “Until there is a change in this mindset,” she wrote, “wishing away caste is going to be a pointless pastime.”

But at the most basic level, there may still be more to connect Dalits and African Americans than what separates them.

"I believe that a lot of common work is possible,” said Meena. “Discrimination on the basis of race and on the basis of caste are basically signs of xenophobia and birth-based discrimination. When society fails to treat people with dignity, deprive them of equal opportunity, make them victims of violence and unduly criminalizes these communities and denies them access to the best education there is a lot to be shared—not just in terms of solidarity and support, but also in terms of dialogue and engagement and lessons from each other's experiences of resistance.”



We real hot
By Meena Kandasamy
(Inspired by "We Real Cool" by Gwendolyn Brooks)

We real hot. We
Ne'er rot. We
Know knack. We
Beat back. We
Shock stars. We
Win wars. We
Ne'er late. We
Fuck Fate.

http://www.meenakandasamy.com/Interviews.htm


http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2003/06/0602_030602_untouchables.html

Lights, Camera, Action Everywhere!

Here's something you don't hear often in Detroit --- I'm sick of all the movie stars.

Yesterday, I was just trying to get my favorite fattoush salad at Al's Paradise when suddenly I found myself in Paris, circa 1980. A crew filming Richard Gere's new independent movie, "The Double," had transformed nearby beer and burger joint, Coaches Corner, into Le Petit Escargot. The park was suddenly lined with red umbrellas and artists easels, a la Paris's Left Bank. Strange European cars lined the street.

I hung around and took pictures until a security guard walled me off. Never did get my fattoush..and never saw Richard Gere.

 

On Monday, I blogged about the reality show "Parking Wars" filming in Detroit. This week, they've been running a marathon on A and E, which I finally watched until the bickering got the better of me. One of the Detroit parking violation stars is "Ponytail," a man whose nickname is self-explanatory. When I drove up to work this morning, who should be out front writing parking tickets? PONYTAIL!!!!

He's quite a celebrity and very friendly when he's not putting a ticket on your windshield. We chatted until the man at the expired meter discovered a City of Detroit love note on his windshield. I snapped a picture of the confrontation, but, unlike the cameramen in "Parking Wars," left the scene before things got too hot.

There's so much filming happening in Detroit, I just might start wearing make-up everyday.... Naw.

Just what Detroit needs--more reality

I'll admit it. I LOVE reality shows: "Project Runway," "Top Chef," "Hell's Kitchen," "House Hunters" and even "American Idol." It's a blast to peek into other people's lives and watch them overcome life's challenges (even if it's contrived).

There are  few cities in the United States where people are facing more challenges than in Detroit. (On the reality show "Last Comic Standing" last night, one comic said that Haiti will soon be sending aid to Detroit.) That makes Detroit fodder for some great reality shows--until recently.

In May, 7-year-old Aiyana Stanley-Jones was killed by a policeman's bullet during a morning raid. The police had been trailing a murder suspect who was thought to be hiding in her home. Questions still swirl as to whether the horrible accident was fueled by the fact that a TV crew was along on the raid. They were filming for a new, A and;E reality show, "The First 48," about police tracking down murder suspects.

The city has been outraged, and the Mayor has even banned TV crews from tagging along on police raids.

But that hasn't stopped the cameras from rolling. In August, NBC will feature a reality show, "School Pride," in which Detroit's Communications and Media Arts High School will get a makeover. The school had been slated for closing until it won a spot on the show.  

And who doesn't love "Animal Cops: Detroit," on Animal Planet?

My friend Booba is always casting for a hypothetical "Real Housewives of Detroit." The clear choices are: Former City Council President Monica Conyers (who will soon serve a prison sentence for corruption), no-nonsense Wayne County Chief Operating Officer Bella Marshall (married to cable pioneer, casino magnate, and businessman Don Barden), Democratic political activist Debbie Dingell (married to Rep. John Dingell), businesswoman and publisher Denise Ilitch, lawyer and political junkie Sharon McPhail and, of course, Aretha Franklin.

Monica Conyers   

Sharon McPhailDebbie DingellDenise IlitchAretha Franklin

Bella Marshall

Recently, I was hanging out in front of Garden Bowl on Woodward (built in 1913, it's America's oldest active bowling center). A city parking officer drove up and started writing a parking ticket. Since it wasn't my car, I really didn't pay any attention--until the TV cameras showed up. Turns out, they were filming for "Parking Wars Detroit," a reality TV about our public servants who write tickets and boot cars. I gawked for awhile waiting for the drama to unfold.

Where was the inarticulate, dentally-challenged, doped-up, victim of foreign hair-dos when you needed him? The whole scene was very Zen, since the ticketee never showed up. Evidently, the real reality show has a bit more grit. Check it out.

Honestly, I think that the last thing Detroit needs is more hard reality. I'm keeping my fingers crossed for a fictional show based in Detroit called "Full Employment."