Barack Obama

TA-NEHISI COATES, BAZ DREISINGER, PENIEL E. JOSEPH & VICTOR LAVALLE in conversation at LIVE from the NYPL
Thursday, April 9, 2009 at 7:00 PM in the Trustees Room (Rm 206)
of the Stephen A. Schwarzman Building on 5th Avenue and 42nd Street
Tickets www.smarttix.com or 212 868 4444

Making Sense of Black Nationalism in the Obama Era
With an African-American president in the White House—and the first black chairman voted to head the Republican National Committee—has black nationalism become irrelevant? Novelist Victor Lavalle explores the personal and political valences of the nationalist idea, and makes a case for embracing a more ecumenical view of black experience—including the freedom to move beyond traditional conceptions of blackness. Baz Dreisinger, author of Near Black: White to Black Passing in American Culture; Peniel E. Joseph, author of Waiting 'Til the Midnight Hour: A Narrative History of Black Power in America; and Atlantic Monthly contributing editor Ta-Nehisi Coates respond.
This event is co-presented by: BOOKFORUM

Ta-Nehisi Coates is a contributing editor for The Atlantic. He lives in Harlem with his partner and his son.

Baz Dreisinger is the author of Near Black: White to Black Passing in American Culture. She teaches at John Jay College of Criminal Justice. Together with Oscar-nominated filmmaker Peter Spirer, she produced and wrote the documentary
Black & Blue: Legends of the Hip-Hop Cop which investigates the New York Police Department’s monitoring of the hip-hop industry.

Peniel E. Joseph is associate professor of Afro-American Studies and history at Brandeis University. He is author of Waiting 'Til the Midnight Hour: A Narrative History of Black Power in America. His book Dark Days, Bright Nights: From Black Power to Barack Obama will be published in 2010.

Victor LaValle is the author of Slapboxing with Jesus and The Ecstatic. His novel, Big Machine, will be published in 2009.

Our participants recommend...

These sites:

TheRoot.com, DailyBeast.com, Racialicious, An overview of Drug Policy in the United States, WNYC interview with William Julius Wilson, NPR interview with Peniel E. Joseph, Black Power: Inside The Movement
Debrah Dickerson's website, and Melissa Harris-Lacewell's website.

These articles:

"The End of White America?" by Hua Hsu,"Passing and the American Dream" by Baz Dreisinger,"Beyond the Skin Trade: How does black nationalism stay relevant in the age of Barack Obama?" by Victor Lavalle and "Black Power" by Phillip M. Guerty in the Magazine of History.

And, these books:

Hip Hop Revolution by Jeffrey Ogbar, Color Conscious by Anthony Appiah, Black on White: Black Writers on What it Means to be White by David Roediger, The Great Negro Plot by Mat Johnson, Hubert Harrison: The Voice of Harlem Radicalism, 1883-1918 by Jeffrey B. Perry,
Black Politics / White Power: Civil Rights, Black Power and the Black Panthers in New Haven by Yohuru Williams, Bloody Lowndes: Civil Rights and Black Power in Alabama's Black Belt by Hasan Kwame Jeffries and
Sweet Land of Liberty: The Forgotten Struggle for Civil Rights in the North by Thomas J. Sugrue.

→ Steven Johnson will be moderating next week's LIVE from the NYPL event, "Remix: Making Art and Commerce Thrive in the Hybrid Economy" — Thursday, February 26 at 7pm at the Celeste Bartos Forum at The New York Public Library

*     *     *     *     *

The great thing about next Thursday's NYPL event on remix culture is the fact that the topic is at once incredibly timely, and yet at the same time it has deep historical roots. It's timely for the obvious reasons. We're going to be talking with the artist Shepard Fairey, whose work has explored the possibilities of remixing images and ideas, and pushed the boundaries of where exactly art is supposed to happen. I think many would agree that Shepard's Obama "Hope" image--which embodies so many of the values that we associate with the remix culture--became the defining image of 2008. And of course we're going to be talking with Larry Lessig as well, whose new book Remix is really the definitive study of both the legal and cultural issues at stake in this new paradigm. But I think the topic is timely in a broader sense as well -- not just that it's in the headlines and on the new non-fiction table at the bookstore. It's also timely because we seem to be at a turning point in the public discussion about the flow of ideas; that after years of emphasizing closed systems, proprietary data, and secrecy, there is a new sense that innovation and creativity and understanding are often undermined when we lock up ideas or artistic expression, when we put up walls and barricades instead of making new connections.

In a real sense, this faith in the power of open information networks -- where art and science are encouraged to mix and re-combine in all sorts of surprising ways -- is a core part of our intellectual roots as Americans. I've spent the last year or two tracing those roots in writing my latest book, The Invention of Air, which tells the story of the friendship between the British scientist and polymath Joseph Priestley, and Franklin, Adams, and Jefferson. What's so striking reading through all their correspondence is how committed they were to the open flow of information, and to the importance of allowing ideas and innovations to move across disciplinary and institutional boundaries. The Enlightenment happened in large part because the systems that we now use to police and regulate the flow of ideas simply hadn't been invented yet. I actually start the book with a quote from Jefferson that I first came across as an epigraph in another of Larry Lessig's books, The Future Of Ideas. It's a perfect introduction to the worldview that we'll be exploring next week:

"That ideas should freely spread from one to another over the globe, for the moral and mutual instruction of man, and improvement of his condition, seems to have been peculiarly and benevolently designed by nature, when she made them, like fire, expansible over all space, without lessening their density at any point, and like the air in which we breathe, move, and have our physical being, incapable of confinement or exclusive appropriation." (source)

I look forward to mixing it up at the NYPL on Thursday!

The image above is from 1889, taken during the centennial celebration of George Washington's inauguration. I wonder what kind of celebration there will be 100 years from tomorrow . . .

To be sure, one will not need to wait 100 years to see a celebration. Washington, D.C. is gearing up for the largest crowd it has ever seen. I won't be there on Tuesday, but I will be watching. In fact, if you want to join me, stop by the Humanities and Social Sciences Building. We'll be watching inaugural festivities in the South Court classrooms.