Professor Whaley Post: Midterm Due Thursday, March 5th! Plus Thursdays Activities

Of course, the midterm is due today!!! (in class, no emails or faxes--sorry!). I will collect midterms top of the hour, so make sure you arrive on time. We will discuss your blogs, and then we will discuss two of the autobiographies we did not get to that were assigned for Tuesday (Amira Baraka and Malcolm X).

In class discussion pieces:

"Ka'Ba" by Amiri Baraka

A closed window looks down
on a dirty courtyard, and Black people
call across or scream across or walk across
defying physics in the stream of their will.

Our world is full of sound
Our world is more lovely than anyone's
tho we suffer, and kill each other
and sometimes fail to walk the air.

We are beautiful people
With African imaginations
full of masks and dances and swelling chants
with African eyes, and noses, and arms
tho we sprawl in gray chains in a place
full of winters, when what we want is sun.

We have been captured,
and we labor to make our getaway, into
the ancient image; into a new

Correspondence with ourselves
and our Black family. We need magic
now we need the spells, to raise up
return, destroy,and create. What will be

the sacred word?

Baraka Discussion:

In the above poem, what connection does Baraka make between history and identity? Now that you have read the Jay David book, can you make comparisons and connections between the poem's meaning and the "work" of autobiography?

Malcolm X Clips:

1. This first clip discusses X's childhood, issues of objectivity, the shaping of religion on his world-view, and what he describes as the "race problem." In the clip, the discussants question his objectivity. Can African Americans be objective concerning issues of race? At the end he quotes JFK. What would Kennedy or X say is the problem of the 21st century and why? Would they see things similarly? Why/why not?



2. This second clip represents X's transformation after leaving and denouncing the Nation of Islam. Many issues brought up in this clip exist today, such as red lining districts and segregation (New York City). X ends by saying as long as one African American person does not have freedom/respect, that he is not truly free. What does he mean by this? In other words, why do you think he makes the distinction between individual and group success? Does such an idea about freedom seem naive in contemporary times? Do his comments assume a perpetual victimhood status? Should individuals advocate based on group status? Is individual freedom and respect a more achievable and/or desirable goal? Why/why not?