By Thomas L Blair
22 October 2009

What links a keen student of world economy, a careers advisor for Black beauty, and a candidate for a Conservative Party seat in Parliament for Hammersmith? They are Black and proud and raised some high-ambition goals at Rev David Shosanya’s State of Black Britain symposium launched 17 October.

 “Youth must globalise their knowledge,” Adam Cooper told the 200 delegates, families and children. Cooper, a scholar in Asian and African Studies, edits Ceasefire, the journal of student and academic activists in the peace movement.

  “Be Totally You,” advised Martina Nelson. The BTY college empowers youth with self-sustaining skills and careers in hairdressing, beauty therapy, ICT, and business administration.

 “Raise your political game”, said Conservative candidate Shaun Bailey. Born in a deprived inner London housing estate, his charity, My Generation, rescues troubled and crime-prone youth in the badlands of inner cities. Definitely not in the mould of his New Labour voting audience, “he is a Tory – and an increasingly influential rising star,” say party leaders.  

 These talent-led, “next generation” proposals herald major changes in knowledge, life styles and political action. Why? “Because the state of Black Britain is in deep crisis,” Rev Shosanya acknowledges. 

 Whatever area of life Black people find themselves in — from deprived neighbourhoods to Her Majesty’s prisons and to college, high-flying IT jobs and leafy suburbs — they are confronted by severe and unfair exclusions that  inevitably damage personal, family and community life.  “It’s time for change; time to say ‘Yes, we can!’ ” says the devout Black Christian church leader, echoing the campaigning motto of US President Barack Obama.

 Rev Shosanya clearly favours up-close, bonding and nurturing Black  communities. However, the founder’s vision may prove to be overly Christian, evangelical, bible-based and too God-obsessed for many in Britain’s diverse Black communities. Not all of Britain’s one million people of African and Afro- Caribbean heritage, colours and faiths can be expected to tread a single path to progress.

Contenders in the movement towards renewing Black Britain have their own views and spheres of influence.  They range from ministers  of the Black Muslims and the Nation of Islam,  disillusioned marxists and Labour stalwarts to obama-ists,  integrationists, mixed-race rights campaigners, Rastafarians and cultural nationalists to strivers, hustlers and “the brothers and sisters who just don’t give a damn”.

 Nevertheless, most recognise the need to increase social mobility and foster greater ambitions. Helping Black families and communities to recover from economic traumas is urgent. Rescuing ailing urban districts with significant Black populations—ghettoes, some say — is over due. Improving education, careers and job prospects are important issues. Crucially, Black voters seek to reform insensitve,  heavy-handed educational and criminal justice policies that weigh heavily on their youth.

 New talents have placed new thoughts for action on the Black Agenda. The symposium marked the first popular 21st century debate on Black life and political progress, or its lack. Constant dialogue about accelerating change over stagnant survival will fuel fierce debates on birthing a new generation in the State of Black Britain.

 * In this third part of a Black History Month 2009 series on Unshackling the Afro-British Mind, the author Thomas L Blair looks at how Blacks in Britain are bedevilled with problems and why talented youth could have the radical answers needed. He is a well-known academic and independent political commentator on Black urban affairs at http://Chronicleworld.org. Details of his book THE AUDACITY OF CYBERSPACE -The struggle for Internet power can be viewed at http://bit.ly/m-ybooksblair  and is highly recommended by The-Latest.com

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By Thomas L. Blair , 11  October 2009

Complacency is the greatest threat to Afro-Caribbean culture in Britain. Only a plan for rescue, revival and representation can save its carriers from a life sentence of cultural illiteracy and dependency. This article suggests the ways that a triad of Black youth, cultural scholars and policymakers can empower local Black communities and revolutionise their  relationship with providers of cultural services.

 After centuries as slaves and subjects of the empire and immigrants in residence, Afro-Caribbeans in Britain are victims of a monstrous popular stereotype – that they have no history, no culture and hence no future in Britain. 

 Alas, unlike Britain’s ethnic groups – indigenous Caucasians, South East Asians, Muslims, Chinese, Jews and Poles — it is solely the descendants of West Indian heritage who show a serious lack of continuity with their cultural, creative and ideological antecedents.

 Professor Rex Nettleford, University of the West Indies vice-chancellor says, “This state of mind has taken its toll on the West Indian diaspora in Britain”. As a result, “The diasporic brethren and sistren are left without the icons of hope they need to survive spiritually in a hostile environment,” says the leading intellectual on urbanism, poetics and politics. 

 However, the situation is not hopeless. Black History can be re-discovered and saved from oblivion. Black Culture can be revitalised. A new Black Agenda can be planned.

 Unchaining the Afro-Caribbean mind begins with a conceptual fact. Experts define “Culture” as the socially transmitted patterns, traits, and products of a people, class or period. Britain’s white ethnic groups, the English Victorians, the Ashanti kingdoms, Han dynasty, and African Americans all have cultures. So do people of Afro-Caribbean and African heritage in Britain.

 Furthermore, evidence has proved that “[Black] Culture, is both a mode and a driving force for individual and group action, and remains the central pillar of black pride and black identity”, say scholarly editors of Présence Africaine, the cultural revue of the Black world.

  “We must learn to use Black culture as springboards to the future”, says Wole Soyinka, Nobel Prize winning writer, cultural activist and member of the Society of African Culture.

 However, major barriers must be overcome. Highly paid guardians of the British culture industry pontificate on what should be done for Black people while living miles away from them.

 What they stubbornly, and often hatefully, refuse to admit is that their arrogance is saturated with centuries of master over slave, white over black cultural abuse. This dominance tore the heart out of Black civilisations, raped their artefacts and resources, and nearly destroyed the inventors and carriers of Black culture, the people themselves.

 Who will silence the deniers of Black culture? Who will denounce the “afrophobia” that sours all Black-White social relations? Who, indeed, is to chart the passage through the valleys of complacency and malaise to the mountaintop of ideas and liberating action?

 [Renascent Black youth is the focus of the next instalment. The series began with Unshackling the Afro-British mind] ©copyright Blair ChronicleWorld 2009

Notes on the author

*Thomas L Blair, PhD and Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts FRSA, is an African-American sociologist resident in Britain for over 40 years. His book The Audacity of Cyberspace: The struggle for Internet power (2009) ISBN 978-1 906986-81-0 describes how Black communities in America, England, and language groups in sub-Saharan Africa are taming the new information technologies. It complements this article and is available through bookstores, libraries and online via Google and Amazon books.

A series by Thomas L Blair

October’s Black History month comes again – full of contradictions.  Local worthies recite undigested “facts” and add swatches of colour, comedy and music to the events. However, the back-up money and thematic control is firmly not in their hands.

The leading players are government and town hall agents, the media and advertisers.  Charities, churches, voluntary groups, primary care trusts add their balm of Gilead. Museums and libraries promise they care.  Of course, nothing confrontational, please.  Nothing “too political, or nationalist”.  Nothing “too black”, really. Only images that beguile and suit the tastes of the “wider society”.  

The usual cast of cardboard characters appear on stage. Politicians mouth their “I’m so happy to support you” platitudes to invited successful celebrities. City officials and “race relations experts” cobble together a potpourri of walks, talks and exhibitions endorsed by servile self-seekers and dependent local groups.

However, to keen observers, three decades of these post-colonial events expose a fatal flaw. The origins and meaning of Black History Month are ignored – some say suppressed.  It is not widely reported that a Ghanaian,  Akyaaba Addai Sebbo of the Greater London Council, is credited with originating the event in 1987.

We are deprived therefore of some essential information.  The African American Kwanzaa creator Dr. Maulana Karenga, the invited host of the first assembly, was a major source of inspiration.

Furthermore, at its deepest roots, the month signifies the gathering of the African community in the Diaspora. Originally, the celebrants shared their food, libations, dance and drumming. They extolled their leadership, sang praise-songs, and recited their common experiences in the citadels of modernism.

In this way, the celebrants of African heritage affirmed two important principles to safeguard them in a hostile urban environment. They strengthened their confidence and awareness of their cultural heritages. They celebrated their triumphs since slavery, colonialism and debt bondage. Moreover, they reclaimed their own humanity that has given so much to British society and world cultures.  

Hence, the misplaced zeal unleashed in October’s sponsored events masks a singular inability to be serious about Black culture.  Moreover, the hodgepodge of individual personalities and heroics – greats this and the 50 that – does not create collective cultural and social capital for Black communities.

To be serious requires Black definition and direction. Celebrating Black culture would have to be rooted in thoughtful afro-centric analysis.

Alas, a historically challenged people are disempowered – rudderless, adrift in a sea of despond. They have no major dedicated, guiding and protective Black advancement institutions. No anti-defamation leagues.  Publishing houses are scarce. The one “black newspaper”, The Voice, is “foreign-owned”  by the Caribbean Gleaner company  whose interests are more representative of its “Go Jamaica” tourist, sugar, rum, soft drinks and minerals supporters  than those of the poor in the Kingston yards.   

Moreover, the wellsprings of wisdom have run dry. The early prize-winning students and Rhodes scholars vanished in the olive groves of academe. There are no Black-led study associations. No authoritative, homegrown, sustainable Black literary, business and political journals exist. In addition, there are no dedicated teams of Africana and Black Studies scholars, writers and artists working to bring cultural history to life.

Without  grounding, community building institutions, rock-solid organisations and robust talents, Black pride and identity erodes, and cultural deformation and alienation surely follow. This is the hallmark of a postcolonial people in deep crisis.

To combat this dire prospect, it is essential to securely preserve, defend, authenticate and invigorate Black culture in the diaspora so that favourable conditions for development can be created.

In a series of articles, I propose a range of innovative ideas to unshackle the Afro-British mind. Questions will be asked and answered. What are the key issues shaping the crisis of culture called Black urbanism? How can cultural empowerment link to social, economic and political progress?  What are the best strategies to birth a new generation of cultural champions among Black youth, public intellectuals and policymakers?

Text and photo are Copyright © Thomas L Blair 2009 and cannot be used without  written permission. +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

 Notes on the author: Thomas L Blair PhD is a sociologist and independent online commentator, and publishes the 12-yearold Internet news magazine The Chronicleworld http://www.chronicleworld.org.  Author of numerous books and articles, his most recent publication is THE AUDACITY OF CYBERSPACE -The struggle for Internet power in Black World communities.  ISBN: 978-1-906942-00-7  Published 2009. See The-Latest.com Books page. PREVIEW AND ORDER this new vision and plan for Blacks in cyberspace at  http://m-ybooks.co.uk/blair/index.html

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The firebrand Muslim minister struck a blow  for African American civil rights and African liberation
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Thomas L Blair, 5 June 2009

Cairo on the tip of Nubian Africa has played host to two exceptional African Americans. One named Barack Hussein Obama, the son and grandson of Muslims, came as US President this June. The other was the radical African American Muslim minister El-Hajj Malik El-Shabazz (widely known as Malcolm X) in June 1964.

Both invoked the great Islamic past; both aimed to forge unity on crucial international issues. But what a dramatic contrast. Obama, the suited up, sophisticated new African American in the Office, aimed at calming the volatile Muslim world. However, Malcolm X in Cairo called for an unprecedented joint action by Africans and African Americans against a common scourge – racism and imperialism.

Malcolm came to this revolutionary conclusion after founding the secular, black nationalist Organisation of African American Unity (OAAU). Later, he tested his ideas with political activists in an extensive tour of Africa and the Middle East in June 1964.

The tour strengthened his newly developed beliefs. Officials courted him; he gave interviews to newspapers, and spoke on television and radio in Egypt, Ethiopia, Tanganyika (now Tanzania), Nigeria, Ghana, Guinea, Sudan, Senegal, Liberia, Algeria, and Morocco. Kwame Nkrumah of Ghana, Gamal Abdel Nasser of Egypt, and Ahmed Ben Bella of Algeria invited Malcolm X to serve in their governments.

The scene was set for his unprecedented call for concerted action at the second summit meeting of the Organisation of African Unity, convened from 17 to 21 July 1964.

His arrival was widely noted. To his admirers at the meeting of the fledging African authority, Malcolm X was a courageous advocate for the rights of African Americans, a man who indicted white America in the harshest terms for its crimes against black Americans. He was also El-Hajj, a penitent Sunni Muslim aware of the broad humanity of the Islamic faith.

Interviewed by reporters and radio journalists in Cairo, Malcolm X said: “When I arrived here, there was a great deal of publicity in all of the press over here concerning my coming. It was historic in a sense because no American Negroes had ever made any effort in the past to try and get their problems placed in the same category as the African problems, nor had they tried to internationalize it.”
His reference to “colonialism”, and plea for renascent dignity and justice found favour in the highest quarters. Egypt’s President Nasser made specific reference to the condition of African Americans, and hailed the then recently passed Civil Rights Act of 1964, in his opening remarks.

With this cache of prominent supporters, Malcolm X gained acceptance as an observer at the OAU summit of independent African states. His eight-page memorandum warned America of a coming conflagration; it echoed James Baldwin’s eloquent manifesto “The Fire Next Time” (1963). He urged African leaders and freedom fighters to internationalise the plight of African Americans and bring the issue before the UN.

Then, in one of the most remarkable coincidences of the turbulent 1960s, Malcolm X delivered his memorandum on 17 July, a day before what later became known as the “Harlem riots” that rocked New York that summer.

* Thomas L Blair publishes the Chronicleworld http://www. chronicleworld.org. Discover the Internet facts and common visions of the Black world in the author’s just published E-book The Audacity of Cyberspace: The struggle for Internet power by Thomas L Blair (Orders may be placed at 
http://m-ybooks.co.uk/blair/default.html

South Africa’s homeless turn cyber-warriors
By Thomas L Blair 20 May 2009

There’s an uncompromising web site paving the way for South Africa’s militant poor to lead a grass-roots Internet revolution in South Africa. Led by cyberactivist S’bu Zikode, the online voice of the Abahlali baseMjondolo Zulu movement has declared a radical challenge. It opposes bureaucrats and land speculators planning to evict thousands of shackdwellers to beautify the city in advance of next year’s soccer World Cup.

 
Cyber-militants took to the Internet with a full-throated cry — Umhlaba! Izindlu! Land! Housing! Winning viewers with a rich diet of people’s voices, photographs and stories, they affirm, “Shack settlements are communities to be developed and not slums to be bull-dozed”.

In the process, they forged a template for small group and grass-roots cyber action. First aired nearly two years ago, Zikode sensed a desperate need to broadcast the shackdwellers’s case. He condemned the Zulu-Natal Slums Act of 2007 as the forerunner of mass evictions and disenfranchisement.

Traditional legal housing rights of shackdwellers, more than half of Durban’s African population, were in danger. The Act enforced a heavy penalty. “No Land; No house; No Vote!” said the cyberactivist.

Then Zikode and his comrades used their online journalism skills to “help people gain control of the forces that affect their lives”. They trumpeted the success of community leaders, mass meetings and informal schools and health facilities.

 
Then came the time for action to reform or repeal the threatening Act. With the power of the web in their hands, Zikode and the shackdwellers carried the protest to the highest constitutional courts.
However, the KwaZulu judicial authorities denied this troublesome plea in 14 May 2009. (Too reminiscent, many say, of Verwoerd’s apartheid doctrine of the 1950s: “If the native is being taught that he will live his adult life under a policy of equal rights, he is making a big mistake”.

 
This set back has not stopped the cyberactivity of the proud heirs of Chief Shaka Zulu, the revered political and military leader of the anti-colonial wars. It emboldens them. Cyber-community organisers rallied the shantytown people left out of the political system. Many live on the edge of poverty or are as badly off as their rural relatives earning less than two dollars a day.

Soon, the Abahlali baseMjondolo web site linked a network of “Internetworks” of the militant poor. One cluster of popular protests is the Landless People’s Movement (Gauteng). Another is the Rural Network (KwaZulu-Natal). In addition, the Western Cape Anti-Eviction Campaign adds its online voice. Together, Zikode and his comrades form the Poor People’s Alliance, “a national network of democratic membership based poor people’s movements”.

Furthermore, publishing their “fight-back” mood in major languages — English, Afrikaans, isiZulu & isiXhosa — has attracted South Africa’s politically influential net-generation to the shackdwellers cause. These include online progressive political and language groups, urban planners, housing experts and lawyers. In addition, anti-poverty campaigners, civil rights groups and grassroots organisations are pledging their aid.

The audacity of the Zulu cyber-warriors has merit. Information is power; and online shackdwellers push us towards greater awareness of the social uses of the Internet.
Will this new class in the making forge new, more just policies for affordable housing, living wages and secure futures for their children? Will they build unity with the workers’ and trade union movements? Will students and the net-generation take up the cause of the shack dwellers?
Moreover, will “going digital” prompt action from diverse, minor political forces, for example the Pan Africanist Congress and the Communist Party? What will the KwaZulu-Natal’s prime minister and powerful African National Congress do? Will ANC leader Jacob Zuma, a Zulu himself, and South Africa’s fourth president, intervene?

Answers to these questions will determine the democratic future of South Africa and influence Internet campaigns for people’s empowerment in many other countries.

NOTE: Thomas L Blair publishes the Chronicleworld http://www. chronicleworld.org. Discover the Internet facts and common visions of the Black world in the author’s just published E-book The Audacity of Cyberspace: The struggle for Internet power by Thomas L Blair (Order from http://m-ybooks.co.uk/blair/default.html)

Women of the shackdwellers movement

Quietly, model Black women are building sisterly bonds

When Black women sing praisesongs to empower communities across the African diaspora we all ought to listen. Especially when the women are high achieving educators, broadcasters, writers, fashion icons, and  policymakers in Britain, and Africa’s First Ladies.

Witness the paeans of affection for Dame Jocelyn Barrow, teacher and civil libertarian, by prominent Black women at her tribute dinner in London, in April.

Among the celebrants were Baroness Scotland, the UK’s attorney general, Baroness Amos, the ex-leader of the House of Lords and first Black woman British cabinet minister, publisher, author and broadcaster Margaret Busby, and Moira Stuart, Britain’s pioneering Black woman news presenter.

They applauded Dame Barrow’s 50-year career. In the 1960’s when many Black educators were keeping their heads down, she helped lead the earliest civil rights group, the Campaign against Racial Discrimination. Without CARD, some, say the Race Relations Act of 1968 would never have passed.

Later, she rose up in the bastions of power; she chaired the Broadcasting Standards Council, and was the first Black woman to be a governor of the BBC, famously described as “all-white middle class and male”.

In her long career, Dame Barrow received Empire awards for her work in education and community relations, and in European social and economic affairs.

Many praise her report ‘Delivering shared heritage’, for the Mayor’s Commission on African and Asian Heritage (MCAAH) 2005, that defended diversity and the contribution of London’s many communities.

The praisesong for empowerment — one of the most widely used poetic forms in Africa — has its bards across the diaspora.

 Super-rich model Naomi Campbell lent her celebrity to the voices of Africa’s first ladies at a health summit held in Los Angeles in April. The two-day summit brought Campbell and the wives of African leaders together with U.S. experts, key political figures and aid organizations to create ongoing partnerships on health, women’s issues and HIV/AIDS.

The first ladies envisioned a new dawn in African development in their countries: Angola, Burkina Faso, Cameroon, Cape Verde, Central African Republic, Kenya, Lesotho, Mozambique, Namibia, Niger, Nigeria, Sierra Leone, Tanzania, Swaziland and Zambia.

Significantly, they all agreed: “Empowering Africa’s first ladies is an innovative approach to bettering the lives of millions of Africans.”

Quietly, Black women are laying the foundations of innovative cooperation. Black communities everywhere, hammered by the recession, credit crunch and underemployment, need the high-flyers to represent their cause before hope evaporates and fears thrive.

Hailing Black women in education, broadcasting, politics and public affairs should give them inspiration. Black critics offer words of caution, however: “Do their sentiments foster actions to alleviate the problems of Black people in hostile environments? Joining the ranks of power and privilege is all for naught if leading personalities fail as drum majors for Black achievement.

 If, however, the emerging “sisterhood” can ramp up the levels of shared expertise, resources and skillsets, in Africa and the diaspora, and if this ultimately translates into political influence and social capital, then a chorus of new voices will be heard in the praisesong for Black people.

© Thomas L Blair, Chronicleworld weblog 2009

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 Black demand for web-democracy predates Obama’s net-generation

By Thomas L Blair, tb@thechronicle.demon.co.uk, 20 January 2009 

Barack Obama’s “net-generation” ignited his journey to the White House as 44th President of the US – and its first Black leader. On the campaign trail, young “net-geners” attracted millions of donors and volunteer in a multicultural political coalition. 

The brilliant tactic of Internet social networking was clear, however, at least a decade before. Globally, the “net-roots” commitment for change swept the Black World – Africa and the Diaspora. Black communities were adapting the instruments of the digital age– the Internet and computers — for equality and social justice as early as 1996.

This surely must have impressed the young Obama, when organising community action in the politically volatile, working poor voting districts of Chicago.

 In Britain, online Black communities promoted “digital cities” that value citizen participation. African communities trained cyberactivists and challenge media companies and Internet providers to close the “digital divide” between the “info-haves and have nots”.

 In America, the early Black cyberorganisers were blooded by “dreams” for a changed America — from the civil rights pioneers Rosa Parks and Fannie Lou Hamer, and Martin Luther King, Jr and Malcolm X to Rev Jesse Jackson’s rainbow campaigns of 1984 and 1988 for jobs, education and health care.

Armed with the rousing anthem “We shall overcome”, and Sam Cooke’s “A Change is Gonna Come” may have provided the highlight, cyberorganisers preached the radical idea of “net-working with your neighbours”. They carried their Internet-based redemptive message into schools, universities, churches, clubs, beauty parlours, community halls and workers’ unions.

Obama’s net-geners and Internet-savvy voters inherit this demand for change and thrust the revolutionary idea of power sharing into electoral politics. From the rise of Obama 2006 to 2008, they forged the biggest user-friendly, special interest group in the nation. Undoubtedly, the first truly “wired” presidency owes its origins in no small part to the precursors of Internet social action, Black communities.  

Hands that once picked cotton now “internetwork” for social change and participatory democracy.

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Thomas L Blair publishes the Internet journal Chronicleworld.org and is the author of the forthcoming book Audacity of Cyberspace: The struggle for internet power. See book content and details at http://www.thomblair.org.uk/audacity.htm 

All enquiries, comments and expressions of  interest will be gratefully received tb@thechronicle.demon.co.uk

Wiring-up Black Britain

Community-oriented web sites are defining the emerging Black British experience in cyberspace.
Black Britain is not the most outstanding example of wired up communities. African Americans are closer to this vaunted ideal. But “going digital” is increasingly the preferred option of African-Caribbeans in the UK.

Mutual aid and self-help
Overcoming the worst effects of information poverty is a typical theme. Patrick Vernon’s Every Generation serves as an “online community resource,” says the Labour councillor and race equality chief in London. “We aim to empower young people and link them with the older generation through history, family genealogy and heritage,” he says. Notably, Every Generation won the Commission for Racial Equality 2003 Race in the Media Award for best website. www.everygeneration.co.uk/

There is an urgent need for Black-led Internet initiatives. Leaders of the African British organisation, ACFF, aim “to raise the aspirations and achievements, academically, professionally and economically for people of African and Caribbean descent”. www.acff.org
Furthermore, Afro-British communities use the Internet to channel aid to their kith and kin in far-off homelands. AFFORD – Africa Foundation for Development “aims to involve Africans abroad more directly in Africa’s development”. www.afford-uk.org

Politics and civil rights
Campaigning groups are starting to make an impact. LIGALI, the Pan African Human Rights Organisation, challenges the misrepresentation of African people, culture and history in the British media. “We produce progressive Africentric media and education programmes that actively work for self determination, socio-political freedom, physical wealth and spiritual health”. www.ligali.org/
The Africa Reparations Movement demands reparations from the former colonial powers for the harm done to Africa and the African Diaspora “through enslavement, colonisation, and racism”. www.arm.arc.co.uk/home.html
Cultural activities
The Africa Centre projects a positive face of Africa in London. The directors use the Internet to broadcast their meetings, talks, exhibitions, cinema, literature, and performing arts. www.africacentre.org.uk
British Black Music has its staunch defenders, too. The online home for the Black Music Congress is the hub for information regarding the state of the African British Music industry.www.britishblackmusic.com
Business and professionals
Web site organisers are catering for a new class of Black achievers. The EPN is an online forum for networking and socialising amongst African British business owners and professionals working in London and environs. www.theepn.co.uk. The 100 Black Men of London, mobilise African British professionals to raise the aspirations of youth and their communities. www.100bmol.org.uk

News, views and commentaries
Cyberactivists are convinced that sharing information is the key to a better future. The Black Presence in Britain highlights the lives of the African /Caribbean people since the 1950’s. www.blackpresence.co.uk Black In Britain bridges the digital gap with news, views, and lists of cultural events. www.blackinbritain.co.uk.

The common view is that using the Internet and new information technologies is “liberating”. Moreover, this has global implications. Online Black cyberactivists everywhere are using the Internet to encourage community cohesion, promote alliances, and to prod uncaring politicians in to action on equality demands.

Of course, we cannot ensure that new technologies — the personal computer, the World Wide Web, the all-powerful smartphone — will help set beleaguered minorities free or merely give us that illusion. My forthcoming book The Audacity of Cyberspace explores the issues behind the astonishing trend toward Black cyberpower. It includes:
• Articles by leading specialists and cyber activists from America, Britain and Sub Saharan Africa
• Profiles of more than 100 online community organisations
• The 50 best innovative strategies by governments and infrastructure companies
• Get the facts from 500 internet sources on health care, xenophobia, workers’ rights, or the depiction of minorities in the mass media.

A Black man’s thoughts on Barack Obama’s election, which I did not predict. A sign of my age. Exclusive extracts from C Gerald Fraser’s private notebook

Of course, my answer was no. I had envisioned a ballot-box lynching. After the votes were tallied, I thought, thank God for the ghastly economy, Americans have been forced to cope with reality. There was also, from my perspective, something that most people didn’t talk about, or realize, that I thought had at least a bit of significance.

As a resident of New York for many decades, I have often thought of my adopted hometown as a city of unrivaled eminence. If you thrive on knowing that your needs and wants are, figuratively, never far from your doorstep, New York is the place to be.

Obama’s victory underscores Chicago’s premier position as a city of vigorous, earnest, smart Black people. And, alas, that is nothing new. The Black Chicagoan–past and present–is who I thought played a critical role in the making of this new President.
In politics, Chicago always seems to be in front. The first Black member of Congress in the twentieth century came from Chicago, Oscar De Priest, who served from 1929 to 1935. As corrupt and unyielding as the legendary Chicago political machine was, in it Black Chicagoans had a place.

Chicago, in the twentieth century, has sent two Black individuals to the U.S. Senate to represent the state of Illinois: Carol Moseley Braun (1993 – 1999, the first Black woman U.S. Senator,), and Barack Obama (2004). No other state has done that.

The former spiritual home of Malcolm X, the organization now led by Louis Farrakhan, the Nation of Islam, or the Black Muslims, has its national center in Chicago.
                                             
Oprah established Chicago as the base for her billion-dollar empire.

When Jesse Jackson, the astute yet often-maligned survivor of the 1960’s civil rights movement, the “shadow senator” from Washington, D.C., the presidential candidate in 1984 and 1988, put down roots for his political base, Rainbow/PUSH, he chose Chicago.

Chicago forged tough people. The white people (many immigrants from Ireland and Eastern Europe) were tough and the Black people were tough also and had to unite to survive…

This is part of what I believe it took to create the community organizer heading for the White House. New Yorkers are too couth, too individualistic–New York City’s fabled “melting pot” sapped our spirit, produced entertainers, a few athletes, and thousands of wannabees–Chicago produces doers. Hats off, Chicago.

Now what? What’s the next move for America’s Black population–the young and the old, the urban, suburban, and rural, the middle class (whomever), and the working poor?

Among the myriad activities we confront, I think invigorating, energizing, and waking up the Congressional Black Caucus should be high on our agenda. Forget that most of its 41 members (with the exception of the President-elect) were running after Hillary Clinton as the Democratic presidential primary dawned.

Forget that Black Caucus elders espoused, for example, the impeachment of President George Bush and the defunding the Iraqi war when they were out of power in the Congressional hierarchy. But when voters anointed them in 2006 with the might to do, or even try to do these things, they backed off. 

Now it behooves those of us who send Black men and women to Congress to individually and collectively light a fire under them to push the new President in the proper direction and to use the bully pulpit to let their constituents and the country at large know what is happening in the nation’s capitol.

(Let’s hear from them beyond their self-serving newsletters and taxpayer-paid-for communiques to the faithful constituents. Let’s see them force their way, if they must, into the media–print and broadcast. Let’s hear from them.)