Afro-Netizen

Haunting movie "Precious" portrays the Black matriarch as villain

The Black Matriarch as Villain

By Juell Stewart

Republished courtesy of ColorLines.com

"Precious" is a haunting film that stays silent on how the political realities of 1980s Harlem shaped women. Clareece ‘Precious’ Jones (Gabourey Sidibe) is the shining star of her own imagination in the new movie Precious, which hits theaters nationwide on November 6.  Surrounded by bright lights and flashing cameras, she’s a magazine cover model with dreams of being in music videos and having a light-skinned love interest. The only thing she has to overcome are her circumstances—and boy, are there plenty of hurdles ahead of her.   The recipe is familiar: Start with an unfailingly tragic character, pile on the hardships, throw a few famous names on the credits, then sit back and watch the Oscar nominations roll in.  [B]eneath the film was something that I found to be problematic:  a reliance on the villainization of Black matriarch —rather than a mention of systemic race issues— to make the larger message of “pulling yourself up by your bootstraps” more palatable. Precious: Based on the Novel ‘Push’ by Sapphire could have been just another one film championing the underdog, but the powerful performances and unabashedly raw storytelling saves it from falling through the cracks. Precious is pregnant, illiterate, unloved and unwanted. Her mother, Mary, (played to chilling, cruel perfection by Mo’Nique) works harder at destroying her daughter’s self-esteem than she does anything else. Precious silently endures unbridled physical and sexual abuse at home, only to experience the ridicule of her peers at school and around Harlem.   It’s a wonder that anyone could survive the sort of utter despair that Precious lives in every day, but despite being illiterate in the ninth grade, she excels in math and is encouraged by a concerned teacher to pursue an alternative education during her pregnancy—a suggestion that her mother meets with a better one: to start collecting welfare and not to worry about education. Luckily, Precious escapes academic purgatory and enrolls in an alternative school for pregnant students, where she meets a series of nurturing figures who instill in her the sense of love and self-worth that was absent from her household for 16 years.  In addition to her teacher and mentor Ms. Rain (played by Paula Patton), there’s her classroom of tough-yet-supportive peers, and Lenny Kravitz as a nurse who shows her what is likely the most positive male role model that she has seen in her young life.   There has already been considerable Oscar buzz surrounding both Mo’Nique and Sidibe, and the film has received numerous accolades, including the Grand Jury Prize for the Dramatic category at Sundance and the People’s Choice Award at the Toronto International Film Festival. The actors and director Lee Daniels deserve the praise they’ve received for making such a powerful movie.   But beneath the film was something that I found to be problematic: a reliance on the villainization of Black matriarch—rather than a mention of systemic race issues—to make the larger message of “pulling yourself up by your bootstraps” more palatable.   This is a problematic image to see in white media, but it’s even more disheartening to see in examples of Black media. What’s so problematic about Mary is that the woman is made into a monster with no redeemable qualities—a decision that isn’t only lazy on behalf of the filmmakers, but also wholly irresponsible to the African-American community. But director Lee Daniels makes the critical mistake of ignoring the social and political reality that his characters inhabit.  Besides a title card in the beginning of the film and some outdated hairstyles, we as the audience see little of the forces that compel Mary’s actions. To ignore 1987 Harlem as the foundation for the permanent Black underclass created by the Reagan Administration through its abhorrent social reform policies—including the War on Drugs and welfare reform—is to ignore a crucial aspect of his characters’ lives.   The political forces at work during the period operated in a much larger scope than the familial level portrayed in the film.  And that’s why it was a grievous error for Daniels to paint a portrait of Mary as a one-dimensional demon, seemingly devoid of any ounce of compassion toward even her own offspring.

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Teacher's candid Washington Post column casts more heat than light on the plight of Black students

By Ronald Chennault

Guest Contributor

Patrick Welsh’s op/ed column in The Washington Post earlier this month gets off to a bad start—a very bad one.  

For starters, the piece’s very title ("Making the Grade Isn't About Race. It's About Parents.") signals where Welsh is headed, as it confidently points out that the much-discussed racial achievement gap isn’t really about race at all, but can be addressed by good parenting.  As if such a big problem could be solved so simply.  Then comes the first sentence of the essay, as Welsh recalls a question he had posed to his class of predominantly Black 12^th-graders: “Why don’t you guys study like the kids from Africa?”  

“ 'Why don’t you guys study like the kids from Africa?' ”

I assume Welsh would defend his query borne out of “exasperation” by arguing that he knew his students well enough to believe that they would not be offended by it, but they—and all of us—should be insulted on many levels by such an action by a veteran teacher.  And this, according to the Post’s education columnist Jay Mathews, is what passes for “provocative” and “brilliant.”

But does the title of the piece really tell us what’s inside?  

Well, the essay does open with a discussion of parenting and its role in his students’ performance in school.  Welsh’s students lament the absence of fathers in their households or in their lives at all.  Those students have every right to cite that as a factor that influences their academic performance, and it’s a reasonable explanation.  Welsh goes one step further, however: he stops quoting his students momentarily and instead begins revealing his mind-reading ability, claiming that the students “knew intuitively” that their failure to excel academically “had nothing to do with race.”  So the kids didn’t actually say that race doesn’t matter, but Welsh expects the reader to trust that this is what they meant.

". . . [T]he kids didn’t actually say that race doesn’t matter, but Welsh expects the reader to trust that this is what they meant."

From there, the piece turns into a series of criticisms aimed at school administrators, a group Welch is obviously not very fond of.  Yet, in the middle of this tangent, Welsh actually arrives at some important points: that the gap that exists between students who are served best by schools and those who are served the least by them cannot just be attributed to race; that familial support and involvement matter, but so does income inequality; and that academic achievement is affected by factors that school leaders have little control over (but which doesn’t keep Welsh from blaming them anyway).  

So, given Welsh’s acknowledgement that multiple factors are at work, why does he insist on reducing all of that to the simple point of "it's about parents"? Why Welsh’s piece offers such a somewhat incoherent and ultimately unconvincing argument is not clear to me.  

He does make one thing clear, however: getting rid of out-of-touch school administrators and recruiting involved parents would solve a lot of our problems.  

If only it were that easy.   

Prof. Ronald Chennault, Ph.D. is a professor of education at DePaul University in Chicago, Illinois. Prof. Chennault's research interests include cultural studies, educational theory and policy, media analysis and race and cultural pluralism.

Limbaugh: "[I]n Obama's America, the white kids now get beat up with the black kids cheering"

H/T to Media Matters for this . . .

Read more about this here (Joan Walsh of Salon.com) and here.

Obama administration selects fathers' rights attorney Jeffery Leving to head first White House Roundtable on Responsible Fatherhood and Healthy Families

Afro-Netizen received the following press release from the law office of Jeffery Leving.

If this new presidential roundtable takes on the tone of Obama's infamous 2008 Father's Day speech, it may wind up causing more trouble than traction among parents who supported Obama in hopes that his administration would reform and create policies that encourage parental involvement in lieu of those that all but destroy already challenged families.

The White House Selects Fathers’ Rights Attorney Jeffery Leving as Resource:
First Annual White House Roundtable on Responsible Fatherhood
 
(Chicago, IL) On Wednesday, August 5, 2009, Fathers’ Rights Attorney Jeffery Leving will join senior White House staff to discuss strategies to promote responsible fatherhood and healthy families.  This is the first White House Roundtable on Responsible Fatherhood and Healthy Families in Chicago. This is the beginning of President Barack Obama’s national conversation on responsible fatherhood and community involvement.  Michael Strautmanis, Chief of Staff to the Assistant to the President for Intergovernmental Relations and Public Liaison (Valerie Jarrett) will be in attendance at the private Roundtable event with Jeffery Leving.

This private Roundtable will focus on strengthening fathers and families and address the challenge of father absence in America and will be held at the University of Illinois at Chicago (UIC) Forum located at 725 W. Roosevelt Road. The private Roundtable is scheduled from 3:00 – 5:00pm and will be followed by a Town Hall Meeting at 6:30pm.  President Barack Obama will participate through a video conferencing link.

This event is co-sponsored by the White House Office of Faith-based and Neighborhood Partnerships and the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services’ Center for Faith-based and Neighborhood Partnerships and the Administration for Children and Families.

For more information call Media Coordinator - Jennifer Whiteside at (312) 296-3666.

Open Letter to President Obama: Young men of color need assistance too

By Henrie Treadwell
Guest Contributor

ATLANTA - I applaud your recent creation of the White House Council on Women and Girls to help ensure we are treated equally in public policies, by employers and in every other aspect of American society.  I must also urge, however, that you place a similar emphasis on men and boys, particularly young men of color, who face some of the steepest hurdles in American society.

The reasons cited in forming the new council are just – throughout our nation’s history women have often been treated as second-class citizens when it comes to earning a livelihood, climbing the corporate ladder and even exercising the delayed right to vote. Let us not forget that the Equal Rights Amendment was first drafted in 1923—and has yet to be ratified.

To be sure, the new council will focus attention on continuing the progress that has been made through the decades as women have crashed through the glass ceiling.

But I would argue that young men of color face even more daunting circumstances. Young men of color face challenges ranging from a justice system that disproportionately incarcerates them to media and entertainment industries quick to portray them as worthless, violent and criminal.  Even before the recession, our young men of color faced a bleak job market where discrimination, globalization and structural change made it difficult for them to find good jobs and succeed in life. With the nation’s economy in a tailspin, the unemployment of young men of color has been spiraling out of control.
Consider this sampling of data:

·       High school graduation rates for males of color –African Americans (42.8 percent), Native        
        American/Alaska Natives (47 percent) and Hispanics (48 percent)—are far lower than for whites    
        (70.8 percent).

·       Minority youths are disproportionately in the juvenile justice system: African Americans (1,004 per
        100,000), American Indians (632 per 100,000) and Latinos (485 per 100,000) compared with whites
        (212 per 100,000).

·       More than 29 percent of African-American boys who are 15-years-old today are likely to go to prison
        at some point in their lives, compared with 4.4 percent of white boys the same age.

·       The mortality rate from homicide for African-American boys ages 15-17 is 34.4 per 100,000,
        compared with 2.4 per 100,000 for non-Hispanic white boys.

Let’s face the reality.  It can be a gritty and dangerous world on the streets of urban America, on the impoverished Native American reservations and in the camps of migrant workers. In many cases, government and much of our society turn their back to these conditions and ignore their existence—rather than seek to allocate resources and develop policies to redress the conditions that threaten the survival of young men of color.

An array of public policies enforced by the schools, police and courts has helped put young men of color at such a disadvantage. These policies range from mandatory-minimum sentences to zero tolerance of behavioral offenses in schools to minimum wages that do not afford a young adult an opportunity to support himself, let alone a family. These public policies have often been popular with the public, but collectively have built many of the barriers to young men of color leading productive lives.

Moreover, the media and entertainment industries have also contributed greatly to raising these hurdles. 

Clearly, a disproportionate number of young men of color have dropped out of school, been arrested and been left jobless. Still, there are countless others who go to college, succeed in their jobs, are good fathers and make outstanding accomplishments in their lives. Unfortunately, however, very little information is shared about their achievements or successes. Rarely are young men of color projected or viewed as positive role models.

While there has been a growing angst over the misdeeds of some, there has been little attention paid to what public policies or social determinants have contributed to the plight of young men of color.

Certainly, some of the responsibility lies with the child or teenager who made wrong decisions, as well as with family members who failed to help youngsters overcome critical obstacles and to guide them to a more productive course.  But we cannot underestimate the powerful negative impact of the stereotypical portrayals, the glorification of criminal and violent behavior in movies and television, and the lack of good news stories about young men of color on the airwaves.

Mr. President, what you can do is create a council that looks into how public policies can be amended and how portrayals of this demographic can be changed.  As others have stated, the women and girls that you want to help prosper need male counterparts to build strong families.

You can take a huge step by creating a council that helps men, particularly young men of color, be successful in American society. Right now, they often face insurmountable challenges.
Men need your help, too. 

Dr. Henrie M. Treadwell is director of Morehouse School of Medicine’s Community Voices, a non-profit working to improve health services, and health-care access, for all Americans.