This weekend, I bought a first edition copy of a book titled “The Negro in Chicago: A Study of Race Relations and a Race Riot” by the Chicago Commission on Race Relations. The book published in 1922 is a very comprehensive review of the events that led up to Chicago’s “Red Summer” riots.

In reading the chapter on crime and the Negro in Chicago, I came across this paragraph:

“In its inquiry the Commission met the following current beliefs among whites in regard to the Negro criminal:

That the Negro is more prone than the white to commit sex crimes, particularly rape; that he commits a disproportionate number of crimes involving felonious cuttings and slashings; that the recent migrant from the South is more likely to offend than the Negro who has resided longer in the North; and that Negroes willingly tolerate vice and vicious conditions in the midst of their residence districts.”

This was written in the early 1920s but one could hear similar sentiments being expressed in 2013…

This week, I spent an inordinate amount of my time giving talks that focused on violence in the lives of youth. I’ve adapted one of the talks I gave to publish here.

You might be forgiven if you thought that interpersonal violence (particularly homicides) among youth in Chicago was at an all time high rather than at one of its lowest levels in 20 years. The headlines blare that Chicago is a “war zone.” We are told that we are living in “Chiraq, Chiganistan, Terror city,” take your pick. Our frame is all war, all of the time.

In fact, a friend posted a photo of a poster that he saw in the South Loop (a fully gentrified community) just a few days ago advertising an art exhibition sponsored by Home Depot titled “Finding the Lost Childhoods of Chiraq” where the organizers label our children “child soldiers.”

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This week is the National Week of Action against School Pushout and my organization has been actively involved.

We co-organized, along with our comrades at the Illinois Safe Schools Alliance and the Chicago Freedom School, a wonderful event that took place on Monday evening. The event “Stand Up/Speak Out About School Pushout: A Youth Panel & Town Hall” drew an intergenerational packed house.

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I watched the excellent documentary “The Trials of Muhammad Ali” by director Bill Siegel a few weeks ago. When it comes to a theatre in your town or city, I highly recommend that you see it. Dave Zirin wrote a very good review of the film in the Nation Magazine. You should read it for a synopsis of the documentary.

I’d like to address some larger issues that were raised for me as I watched the film. The documentary is mostly about young Ali. He is beautiful. His sense of humor and genial personality come across very clearly. The film covers new ground as it delves into Ali’s relationship with the Nation of Islam (NOI) and his court trials for refusing to join the military when he was drafted.

It’s easy to understand the appeal of the NOI to someone like Ali. The overt expression of racial pride evident in Black Muslim ideology and teachings was surely a draw. At a time when Black was not yet beautiful to find a community that affirmed your humanity and worth would have been and still is enticing. The emphasis on self-discipline and self-determination might have been an attraction as well for Ali, the athlete. Most importantly perhaps was Malcolm X who was the embodiment of confident black manhood for so many. So often, marginalized people are expected to define ourselves through negation. In other words, we are NOT lazy, we are NOT criminal. It’s much more difficult to self-define through a positive affirmation of our qualities. We ARE loving, we ARE resilient, we ARE human. Malcolm was a master at self-definition through positive affirmation and for this he was loved & respected.

As a black person watching the film and hearing Ali call out the people who he saw as his oppressors, I could feel pride and satisfaction at his truth-telling. Yet, I have to admit to wondering what white people watching the film are appreciating about the man. How are they able to absorb and reconcile his confident, unapologetic blackness? In America, blackness is usually punished and contained. As someone on Twitter with the handle @freshestmhizha mentioned, “Black culture is popular, black people are not.” So it can’t be Ali’s embodied blackness that white people are celebrating. What is it then?

The Ali of today is feeble and ill with Parkinson’s disease. There have been several false reports of his impending or actual death. In other words, Ali is not a threat to white supremacy anymore. This no doubt makes it easier for white audiences to countenance and ultimately to forgive Ali’s blackness. After all, they are aware that they are watching history from a safe distance.

When Ali was in his prime, he was clearly considered as a threat by the U.S. government (his FBI file will likely confirm this posthumously). He came to public attention in the 60s during a time when there was real fear within the government of a domestic black insurgency. Ali had to be neutralized and the government found its mechanism when he refused to serve in Vietnam saying that it was against his religious beliefs to participate in a war. Ali’s thoughts on his conscientious objection to military service are encapsulated in the following words (some of which we get to see and hear him speak in archival footage in the film):

“I ain’t draft dodging. I ain’t burning no flag. I ain’t running to Canada. I’m staying right here. You want to send me to jail? Fine, you go right ahead. I’ve been in jail for 400 years. I could be there for 4 or 5 more, but I ain’t going no 10,000 miles to help murder and kill other poor people. If I want to die, I’ll die right here, right now, fightin’ you, if I want to die. You my enemy, not no Chinese, no Vietcong, no Japanese. You my opposer when I want freedom. You my opposer when I want justice. You my opposer when I want equality. Want me to go somewhere and fight for you? You won’t even stand up for me right here in America, for my rights and my religious beliefs. You won’t even stand up for my right here at home. “

Upon refusing to be drafted, Ali transforms from an admired athlete to a convicted felon. Like Jack Johnson decades earlier, he is “unforgivably black.” He is stripped of his heavyweight titles and ends up penniless. In order to support himself and his family, he has to embark on a series of speeches at colleges across the country. When he finally “wins” the right to return to boxing, it’s based on a legal technicality by the U.S. Supreme Court. He is never officially “vindicated” in his decision to refuse to fight in Vietnam. The film underscores the roles available to black men in the 60s. They could be athletes, soldiers, or felons.

When the documentary officially opens in Chicago, I will invite some young black men to see it with me. I am curious about who they will “see” when they watch a larger-than-life Ali filling the screen. Will they see themselves in his brashness or not? Will they be more likely to identify with Jackie Robinson who appears in the film to denounce Ali’s decision against serving in Vietnam? Will they too be struck by Ali’s unapologetic blackness or will they see something else?

I am curious.

Stay tuned…

I am very excited to say that today marks the official kickoff of the #31forMARISSA campaign.

The wonderful writer Darnell L Moore submitted a poignant letter that begins:

Dear Marissa,

It was a cold and dark Christmas Eve—sometime in the mid 80’s. My mom, my three sisters, and I lived in a small, but comfortable, house on Maryland Street in Camden, NJ. We smiled a lot. According to the pictures I recently stole from mom, my sisters and I donned big smiles and tight ass corduroys. What’s interesting to me some twenty-plus years later, however, is the hard fact that I cannot remember my smile, I cannot reach back and grasp the joy I possessed, because on many days—not unlike the particular Christmas Eve that I am recalling right now—I watched in horror and fear as my father used his heavy hands or feet or words to brutally attack my mother.What was he thinking or not thinking? What was he feeling or desiring to feel that would make him harm the woman who loved him?

A child should not have to help his mom wrap the many gifts that she purchased on her minimum wage income, write dad’s name on the gifts per her instruction, watch dad walk in the house with one of his peeps after he had been gone all day and week, bear witness to an argument that he started because she—according to him—purchased too many gifts, and then witness his dad beat the woman who cared enough to make him legible despite his absence. It was Christmas Eve, Marissa! There were no sounds of sleighs, jingle bells, carols, and laughter. None. Fist hitting mom’s face. Hair being pulled. Mom’s body being tossed…were dad’s gifts to us. And I cannot forget that evening even if I tried. I also cannot forget the brother that was with him, who watched and did nothing.

Read the rest of the letter here. We welcome more support from men everywhere.