Akua Naru “Gets Acrobatic” and Produces the Most Brilliant Hip Hop Album in the Last Ten Years

An Album Review by Dr Mark “ Notorious Phd” Naison

“There’s no girls in the cipher so I rock solo”

From “The Backflip”

“I can’t relate, nor can I hate, for ways we negotiate, the sexist spaces we navigate”

From “The World Is Listening.”

Imagine a hip hop artist with the flow and dexterity of Rakim, the poetic brilliance of Lauren Hill, and the ability to invoke, through their art, the full weight of Black women’s history the way Nina Simone or Toni Morrison does. That would describe Latanya Hinton, aka Akua Naru, whose album “The Journey Aflame” is the single most important collection of songs on a single hip hop album I have heard in the last ten years. Naru is currently a doctoral student in American Studies in Cologne Germany, but her formative years were spent in Black working class New Haven, a place she returns to with great regularity. When you add to that a BA from the University of Pennsylvania, and travels to China and Africa, you have an experience that might bring skepticism from those who feel you have to stay in the hood to cultivate hip hop as an authentic expression of urban art.

But the brilliance of Naru’s lyricism speaks for itself. I have spent two full weeks living with this album, listening to it in my car, in my office, and on my home computer, and am still dazzled by the variety of skills Naru brings to her art, and the power and brilliance of her songs.

There is one song on the album “The Journey” that is such a powerful invocation of the trials of African American women from the first slave ship to the present that it brings tears to my eyes every time I hear it. I will use this song in every single African American history class I teach. It manages to condense the experience of Black women from the first slave ship through hip hop’s “video vixens” into four relentless minutes the include some of the most inventive juxtapositions of words and images I have heard in any work of art, musical or literary.

But Naru doesn’t just deal in tragedy. Like MC Lyte, she can “rock the party” and “rock the body” with sounds that will get your butt and shoulders a shaking whether you are in a car, a classroom, or on the dance floor. Naru begins her her album with two songs “The Ride” and “The Backflip” which establish her credentials as a battle rapper. She boats, and backs it up with some sick verses that she can match any male MC, in any place or any era, for speed, flow and inventiveness. As Naru puts it “I’m so competitive my flow ran for President.” These songs represent pure, joyous boasting from a B-Girl posture, a stance Naru earned growing up in a single parent family in Black working class New Haven. Naru grew up around hip hop, inspired by the sounds she heard in every schoolyard and on every street corner, but felt found herself excluded from neighborhood ciphers when men and boys showcased their skills. As a child

“she rocked solo” but now she is ready to show the world she can take on all comers. “ For all of you waiting for hip hop,” she raps, “ she’s here.”

Naru’s stance is that of the B-Girl, competitive, combative, and confrontational, rooted in neighborhood realities, but honed by an acute historical sense and a deep rage at the objectification of Black women’s bodies in mainstream hip hop and in film and advertising. She admits to falling in love, and even to having erotic thoughts, but never constructs herself as seductive in a way that connotes weakness or availability. Her lyrical power and inventiveness never wavers, and she never relinquishes her dignity. She is creating music designed to empower Black women and help them reclaim a place of honor in their community while speaking out in behalf of Black and oppressed people all over the globe. As she sings in “Tales of Men”

“This is for my people, stuck in poverty, all around the World

This is for my people, who be suffering, all around the World

This is for my people, who be fatherless, all around the World”

Despite Naru’s global reach and profound historical sense, she never strays far from working class New Haven. Indeed, her music is as deeply connected to New Haven as Biggie Smalls was to Brooklyn, or Nas’ to the Queensbridge Houses. One incredibly beautiful song, “Nag Champa” invokes visions of Black folks in New Haven coming together in peace and unity on Sundays, even after “another murder on a Saturday night,” “another rape on a Friday night.” “Never Run” is a tribute to her mother, and to other black women, whose husbands left, but who “never ran” in the face of unpaid bills, difficult work, and the trials and tribulations that come with having children. This a woman’s version of “Dear Mama” except that Shari Hinton, Akua’s mother, never wavered, and never broke. It is on her strength that the foundation of Naru’s music is constructed.

Two more sounds, “The Wound” and “The Block” display the different emphases of Naru’s art. The “Wound “ is historical, invoking the ways that black folks have internalized the injuries whites inflicted on them. “Centuries pass the flashbacks still cripple me,” Naru raps. But her greatest anger is reserved for how black folk are treated in popular culture.”Another industry ready to bitch, ho and nigger me.” The song ends with guest artists Bliss the Ambassador saying “We Need Some Healing”

“The Block” is a haunting journey through Black working class New Haven, the donut shops, the bars, the barber shops and beauty parlors, the corner drug deals, the beefs and drive bys, juxtaposed to an extraordinary story of a woman raped and abandoned, claimed by no one, and a description of please shootings of men of color. The images flow in rapid success, all to an almost romantically beautiful studio beat, ending with an incredible saxophone solo.

In all these songs, the background beats are perfectly complimentary, whether they be created electronically, or with live instruments. All of the production was done in Cologne, Germany by people who loved and appreciated the artist and her music. There is not a lose note, not a moment that your attention is diverted from the powerful messages, and the magical lyricism

“The Journey Aflame” is an album you will find yourself coming to over and over again, for inspiration, for comfort, for the rage and strength you need to keep fighting for justice, and for a reminder how history lives in inside of us and must be dealt with if we are to achieve the freedom and peace of mind we seek.

This album will be part of my life for years to come. I hope it will become part of yours

Peace in the Struggle

Mark Naison

Brooklyn, NY

January 21, 2011

A Book Coming Out This Spring that Should Be Required Reading for Anyone Who Cares About Schools and Teaching

As Bad as They Say?Three Decades of Teaching in the Bronx
Janet Grossbach Mayer
$16.95
ISBN: 9780823234172Book (Paperback)Fordham University Press, Empire State Editions5 1/2 x 8 1/2150 pagesApril 2011

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"Janet Mayer's book is a page-turner about real life in urban classrooms today."—Diane Ravitch, author of The Death and Life of the Great American School System: How Testing and Choice Are Undermining Education

"Janet Mayer's As Bad As They Say is a brilliant and badly need answer to business minded 'educational reformers' who think that nothing good happened in American education before they took over. The story of a teacher who spent forty years of her life in Bronx public schools, it shows that the love of teachers for their students is the true transformative force in American education, not mindless imposition of standardized tests. Mayer turns her Bronx students, who learn under the most daunting conditions, into heroes, but in the process reminds us that great teachers are motivated by compassion as well as a love of learning. Signficantly, the book ends with a powerful, carefully documented attack on 'No Child Left Behind' a piece of legislation that seeks to render great teachers like Mayer irrelevant and invisible."—Mark Naison, author of White Boy: A Memoir

Rundown, vermin-infested buildings. rigid, slow-to-react bureaucratic systems. Children from broken homes and declining communities. How can a teacher succeed? How does a student not only survive but also come to thrive? It can happen, and As Bad as They Say? tells the heroic stories of Janet Mayer’s students during her 33-year tenure as a Bronx high school teacher.

In 1995, Janet Mayer’s students began a pen-pal exchange with South African teenagers who, under apartheid, had been denied an education; almost uniformly, the South Africans asked, “Is the Bronx as bad as they say?” This dedicated teacher promised those students and all future ones that she would write a book to help change the stereotypical image of Bronx students and show that, in spite of overwhelming obstacles, they are outstanding young people, capable of the highest achievements.

She walks the reader through the decrepit school building, describing in graphic detail the deplorable physical conditions that students and faculty navigate daily. Then, in eight chapters we meet eight amazing young people, a small sample of the more than 14,000 students the writer has felt honored to teach.

She describes her own Bronx roots and the powerful influences that made her such a determined teacher. Finally, the veteran teacher sounds the alarm to stop the corruption and degradation of public education in the guise of what are euphemistically labeled “reforms” (No Child Left Behind and Race to the Top). She also expresses optimism that public education and our democracy can still be saved, urgently calling on all to become involved and help save our schools.

Janet Grossbach Mayer has just completed her 50th year as an award-winning high school teacher of English and reading. For 45 years, she taught in NYC schools, 33 of them in the Bronx, and for the past 5 years she has been a home instructor for Port Jervis, N.Y., schools.She has no plans to retire.

A Teachers Lament: What I Do Best Matters Least
Dr Mark Naison
Fordham University


If someone ever asked me what I would most like to be remembered for, I would answer, without hesitation “my teaching.” Teaching wakes me up in the morning, and keeps me up at night. I think about how to motivate my classes when I am reading, listening to music, or talking to my friends and stay in touch with my students long after they have graduated. When I give a lecture where everything comes together exactly as I planned it and my students clearly “get” what I am trying to say, I feel like Bruce Springsteen, Janis Joplin, or Jimi Hendrix after a performance- exhausted, emotionally drained, but ready to recharge my batteries and do it again. I have found nothing that compares to the high of making my students see the world in a new way and finding powers inside themselves that they didn’t know were there.

But the thrill of teaching, which motivated me to get a Ph.D in the first place, has had virtually nothing to do with my professional advancement. Every time I have received a promotion, it has been on the strength of my published writings, or on the research I have done. I benefit from tremendous support from the Fordham University administration, and am treated with considerable respect by my professional colleagues , but I doubt if much of it derives from what goes on in my classroom. The only people who know, or care, about the time and effort I put into my teaching are my students and it is their response to me, and their accomplishments, that I have to use as an affirmation of the value of what I care about most.

I am not saying this to complain about my personal situation, which is, at the very least, a privileged one, but to point out how little teaching is valued, or understood, in American society. Because so many of the traits that make a great teacher- particularly the emotional connection they forge with their students, and the long term impact of the knowledge they impart- cannot be easily quantified, it is tempting to see teaching as something that anyone can do, to view teachers as replaceable parts, or to see teaching as a necessary evil for scholars whose “real work” is research.

This attitude toward teaching is damaging at all levels, but particularly so in elementary and secondary education. The best people enter teaching because they want to change lives, but when those making policy devalue the emotional connection teachers make with students in favor of achieving results on standardized tests, it pushes great teachers out of the profession.
When you reduce teaching to its capacity to generate short term performance under conditions of extreme stress, you not only take most of the joy out of teaching and learning, you undermine the capacity of teachers to stir the imaginations of their students and inspire them to do great things. Mastery of a defined body of knowledge is only one portion of a teacher’s job; the other is to make learning itself joyful and exciting. If you base evaluation of teaching only on the first, because it is the only thing that can be easily measured, then you end up penalizing teachers for creativity and making students hate school. This is precisely what the education reform movement institutionalized by No Child Left Behind and Race to the Top has done. It has created a legion of browbeaten and demoralized teachers and fostered a lifetime aversion to education among young people in working class and poor communities who are being drilled and drilled, and tested and tested and whose remarkable creative talents go unrecognized and untapped.

If education is going to thrive in America in every community, including the poorest and most socially isolated, we need to recruit and retain teachers who love teaching and treat them with respect. Salary is one component of this, but autonomy is another. If you don’t give teachers the freedom to be creative and create emotional connections with students and their families, then you will simply reproduce the existing structure of race and class inequality in the next generation. We need to view students as creative thinkers and makers of their own destiny, not as obedient and subservient drones who recapitulate bodies of knowledge in easily digestible form. And that requires having teachers who can strike a balance between skill instruction and tapping students imaginative and creative side. Many of those teachers are already there, ready to be unleashed; others are waiting to be recruited to the profession.

But until education reform becomes “teacher centered,” rather than infused with managerial imperatives and obsessed with accountability, our education system, at all levels, will remain stagnant.

There are great teachers everywhere. If you honor them and reward them, maybe we will can bring back joy and creativity to our schools

Mark Naison
December 28, 2010

Sometimes Superman- And Lois Lane- Live Next Door- What We Can Learn About Teaching from the Pruitts of E 168th Street

Dr Mark Naison, Fordham University

Today, I had a chance to spend time with two members of the most amazing family of educators I know, the Pruitt’s of East 168th Street in the Morrisania Section of the Bronx. The Pruitt family, who moved a small row house on 168th Street in the early 1940’s when the neighborhood was mostly Jewish, had five children all of whom became teachers- Harriet ( McFeeters) who worked more than 40 years in the Bronx as a teacher, principal and assistant district superindent James, who taught social studies in Bronx High Schools along with a stint running the Upward Bound Program at Fordham; Bess, who was a gym and dance instructor at Evander Childs High School and founded one of the first dance promotion companies run by a Black woman, and Henry and Janet, who were teachers and school administrators in Englewood and Newark, respectively.

At a time when improving our public schools, especially in poor and working class communities, has become a national obsession, it is astonishing to me that no one in the New York City Department of Education has sought to draw upon the experiences of this remarkable family for clues to how recruit and retain talented teachers Every one of these remarkable individuals spent their entire professional life as teachers and school administrators and achieved remarkable success in inspiring students who worked with them and teachers who worked under their leadership.

But the idea of recruiting lifetime educators seems to have low priority for those guiding America’s school systems. Teach For America, the largest and most prestigious alternate certification program in the nation, actually promotes teaching in poverty schools as a pathway for entering more prestigious careers ( TFA once put up a poster at Fordham explaining how joining TFA could improve one’s chances of getting into Stanford Business School!) and keeps only a fraction of its recruits in the classroom for more than five years. Under the Bloomberg/Klein regime in New York, the Department of Education has made a concerted effort to replace veteran teachers with newcomers from alternative certification programs, many of whom burn out and leave in two or three years. The idea of recruiting people who grew up in working class neighborhoods and giving them first class training so they can return as teachers to the neighborhoods they grew up doesn’t fit in the business models dominating educational policy, which look to maximum flexibility and mobility in the educational workforce

However, when it comes to teaching, flexibility and mobility may not be the traits we are looking for. The best teachers do more than impart skills and subject matter to their students; they build relationships that last a lifetime. I have seen this first hand with the two members of the Pruitt family I know best, Jim Pruitt and Harriet McFeeters.

You cannot go anywhere in the Bronx with these two individuals without running into someone who was one of their students, or their colleagues. Invariably, there are hugs, kisses and comments to me about how the person I was with either changed their life ( if they were a student) or helped them do their job better ( if they were a teacher or principal). But my evidence for this is not just based on individual encounters. I had the privilege of attending the retirement party for Jim Pruitt when he finally left teaching that was attended by more than two hundred people, most of whom were his former students from Morris and Kennedy High Schools. I also, almost every year, drop in on the Fordham Upward Bound Reunion, where more than 50 Black and Latino men who grew up in the Bronx reminisce about the experiences they had under Jim Pruitt’s mentorship.

There are a few things about the Pruitt family history that might provide clues to their success. They grew up in an African American family working class family where learning and public service were held up as ideals irrespective of the wealth one possessed. Each child attended New York City public schools and attended New York public universities. And two members of the family Bess and Harriet, lived in the family house in Morrisania during all the years they worked in the Bronx public schools, years that included an arson and abandonment cycle that decimated many portions of their neighborhood, a fiscal crisis took music, arts and after school programs out of the public schools, and a crack epidemic that destroyed many young people and their families. Through all this, Bess and Harriet remained in their neighborhood and remained in Bronx schools, guiding young people who others gave up on and mentoring new teachers who came in to work for them.

If you are looking for Superheroes, educators whose experience may hold the key to helping young people growing up in poverty embrace education, the best place to look may not be in the Charter Schools of Harlem, but in a little row house on East 168th Street between Prospect and Union Avenues in the Morrisania section of the Bronx.

I know that’s where I go when I’m looking for inspiration, along with a great public school in the Bronx, PS 140, headed by a remarkable principal, Paul Cannon, who grew up only two blocks away from the Pruitts.

Maybe someday, when the people running our schools stop looking to Wall Street or Hearst Publications for guidance, they will turn to the people who have a proven track record for educating inner city youth, and who did it- and are doing it- in the neighborhoods they grew up in.
Mark Naison, December 22 2010

Erasing History: A Key Feature of the Bloomberg/Klein Regime in the New York City Public Schools.



Dr Mark Naison, Fordham University

One of the characteristic of all dictatorial regimes is the rewriting of history to enhance the regime's claim to leadership. This was done by European colonialists, by Soviet Communists, by third world dictators like Rafael Trujillo and Idi Amin, and, for a very long time, by white supremacists in the US who systematically erased all achievements by blacks, whether in the US or Africa, from the historical record.

The same thing has been done by the Bloomberg Klein team in charge of the New York City school system, who has made it seem that everything that took place before them in New York City public schools was scandalously flawed and injurious to New York City school children. Racially charged rhetoric has been one of the major weapons in the campaign of intimidation the Klein DOE has used to impose a rigid test driven regime upon teachers and principals. One CUNY administrator allied with them, in a conversation with me, called the New York City schools pre Klein/Bloomberg, a “criminal conspiracy against black and latino children.”

If you have not spent much time in New York City public schools, or had little personal contact with longtime teachers and administrators, you might find this analysis believable. But as someone brought up by two parents who were lifelong teachers( at Jamaica HS and Eli Whitney Vocational HS), and revered by their students and colleagues, and who is married to a principal who is a legend in her school and neighborhood, I was predisposed to be skeptical of Bloomberg Klein portrait of what went on in New York City schools before they were put in charge.

But really brought home the absurdity and injustice of their campaign was the experience I have had bringing the research of the Bronx African American History Project into Bronx schools. Over the past seven years, I have spent time in more than 30 bronx elementary schools, middle schools and high schools, giving lectures and tours, doing teacher training, speaking at graduation ceremonies, and sponsoring school wide oral history festivals and my experience with teachers in those schools totally contradicted the image of a pre Klein educational wasteland that the DOE has been promulgating.

First of all, the vast majority of teachers and principals who brought me into the schools to help incorporate community history into the classroom have been longtime veterans of the NYC public school system. From Phil Panaritis, the head of Social Studies at a Bronx District who first brought me in to present our research to teachers in his district, to Julia Swann, the network leader who had me do oral history training in the 13 schools in her charge; to Gary Israel, the brilliant teacher and robotics coach who brought me in to help create a Museum in Morris High School, to Paul Cannon, the visionary principal who had our research team help him organize his entire school culture around community history,; the most impressive people I have encountered in Bronx schools have been longtime veterans of the New York City public school system, not hotshot young teachers brought in by alternative certification programs.

All of these individuals, who are passionately committed to educational equity, were working to inspire and empower students long before the Bloomberg Klein team took charge of the schools, Many were products of the New York City public schools themselves.

And they are not alone. During the course the lectures and workshops and tours that I give in Bronx schools, which I do on the average of two per month, I have met hundreds of veteran teachers who are intellectually curious, invested in their students well being, and determined to try anything that will instill a love of learning in the children they work with.

These people were all in the New York City school system long before Michael Bloomberg became Mayor

Devaluing their accomplishments, and erasing them from history not only does violence to the real history of the New York City school system, it gives the leaders of the DOE license to implement policies which take power away from teachers and imposes a regime of rote learning and test preparation which is more likely to harm students than help them

Keep the Gates of Fordham Open to the Community! Contribute to the Bronx African American History Project

Friends

In the midst of a terrible economic crisis, when the gap between the haves and have nots in the US has widened dangerously, I am asking you to contribute to the Bronx African American History Project, not just to support its ground breaking research, but to help keep the gates of Fordham open to the Bronx community.

It's no secret that Fordham is a thriving institution. New buildings are going up; applications are rising steadily, and university fundraising activities are more effective than they have ever been

But though this dynamism makes Fordham an exciting place to teach and go to school; it also can have the effect of' transforming Fordham into a closed, gated community that working class people from the Bronx enter only infrequently. Anyone who has tried to invite community people to a student or faculty event know how difficult it can be to get visitors on the campus. Especially when students organize events, administrators seem determined to keep community participation to a minimum

The Bronx African American History Project is one important force on the Fordham campus which consistently fights to keep the gates of Fordham open. All events we organize, be they interviews, lectures, concerts or festivals are open to people from the community
and we fight tooth and nail to make sure visitors are treated with respect. From the Akwasidae Festival we supported that highlighted Ghanainan traditions and culture, to the Hip Hop Showcase at Rodrigues we helped inspire, to the Mic Check Events sponsored by Dolores Munoz
to bring Bronx talent to the Fordham campus,to the Bronx Berlin Youth Exchange we do every year, we make sure that Fordham remains a place where people from Bronx schools and neighborhoods feel at home.

If you support these activities, there is no better way of showing it than by contributing to the BAAHP

I know times are tough.Every contribution you make, be it five ten, twenty or fifty dollars, insures that the BAAHP will continue its fight, not only to
insure that long overlooked histories of Bronx neighborhoods are recorded and preserved, but to sustain Fordham's long tradition
of community outreach

Thanks for listening, and thanks for your support



Sincerely Mark D Naison

Founder and Principal InvestigatorBronx African American History Project




Please make your checks out to the “Bronx African American History Project” and send them to BAAHP, 641 Dealy Hall, Fordham University, Bronx, NY 10458

Or, if you would like to Donate Online, go to http://fordham.edu/gifts_to_fordham/ ; Click on “Make a Gift Online” then select “BAAHP” under “Annual Giving and Resticted Funds”

First Video of the "Teachers Talk Back" Project

Friends

Here is the first video for the "Teachers Talk Back": project, an interview with master teacher Dave Greene, who has spent nearly forty years as a teacher, coach, and trainer of young teachers. Dave talks about what makes a great teacher, why standardized test performance is a poor indicator of teacher effectiveness, and why educational reformers have got it all wrong when it comes to evaluating teaching and retaining good teachers. The video was produced by Dawn Russell, videographer and documentary film maker for the Bronx African American History Project.

Please view this, email your comments, and pass it on.

The Teachers Talk Back Project aims to give teachers a chance to tell their own stories at a time when politicians
and the media have made them scapegoats for many of the nation's problem
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X0GMFRuDUog

Thanks for listening

Best,

Mark Naison
Fordham University,
Bronx African American History Project
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