MICHAEL O. ALLEN

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Muhammad Ali’s Dream

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AliIt is a strange process that we put all our heroes and heroines through.

First, we seen them as dangerous and revile them. Then, in death, we (even their former antagonists and adversaries) adopt them and turn them into everything we wished the hero to be, everything we could not make them be when alive.

Much as we turned Martin Luther King, Jr. into a plaster saint that even the racists among us could quote to our own ends, so too shall we render Muhammad Ali.

For Ali, the process actually began when he lighted the Olympic flame at the 1996 Atlanta Olympics.

It was the first time the whole world saw how much Parkinson’s Disease had taken from Ali. Though, an apparition by the time he turned up in Atlanta, he stood tall, powerful and defiant still.

But because he could not really speak for himself, not anymore, people started speaking for him and saying for him things that he might not have said for himself.

His death may complete that process of sainthood. He would be fitted with feet of clay, the better to keep him in place. Writer Dave Zirin is cautioning against that in a Los Angeles Times opinion-editorial.

Kirin wrote:

“His life was one of polarization and reconciliation, anger and love, and a ferocious, uncompromising commitment to nonviolence, all delivered through the scandalously dirty vessel of corruption known as boxing. Few have ever walked so confidently and casually from man to myth, and that journey was well earned.”

I’ll quote one more passage but this article is required for anyone who ever cared about Ali and what he stood for:

“Ali’s death, however, should be an opportunity to remember what made him so dangerous in the first place. The best place to start would be to recall the part of him that died decades ago: his voice. No athlete, no politician, no preacher ever had a voice quite like his or used it as effectively as he did. Ali’s voice was playful, lilting, with a rhythm that matched his otherworldly footwork in the boxing ring. It’s a voice that forced you to listen lest you miss a joke, a gibe or a flash of joy.”

In a series of interviews with the BBC’s Michael Parkinson, Ali expanded on his views about everything under the sun. The most iconic of those interviews was the first one, which took place Oct. 17, 1971.

Some of what Ali remarked on then are commonplace today and are taken for granted. But, when Ali spoke, not only did African-Americans lack much power and rights, our society, including the power of our own government, resisted the civil rights movement.

June 6, 2016
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Men’s laws for women’s bodies

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Zina Saunders did this piece to accompany an article in The Nation magazine. Ordinarily, it would carry her byline but I do not want attribute to her my own thoughts on this issue. My thoughts, such as they are, are unformed and unsophisticated, incoherent even. Try this:

Isn’t it time we men stop manifesting our anxieties about our mothers’, daughters’, wives’, and sisters’ sexuality by passing laws to govern what they can and cannot do with their own bodies, their own lives?

I don’t have an answer. I just know that man’s laws and decrees, especially when they try to govern what women do with their bodies, wreck lives instead.

April 7, 2009
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A worthy comment

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Script:

Finally tonight as promised, a Special Comment on the passage, last week, of Proposition Eight in California, which rescinded the right of same-sex couples to marry, and tilted the balance on this issue, from coast to coast.

Some parameters, as preface. This isn’t about yelling, and this isn’t about politics, and this isn’t really just about Prop-8. And I don’t have a personal investment in this: I’m not gay, I had to strain to think of one member of even my very extended family who is, I have no personal stories of close friends or colleagues fighting the prejudice that still pervades their lives.

And yet to me this vote is horrible. Horrible. Because this isn’t about yelling, and this isn’t about politics. This is about the human heart, and if that sounds corny, so be it.

If you voted for this Proposition or support those who did or the sentiment they expressed, I have some questions, because, truly, I do not understand. Why does this matter to you? What is it to you? In a time of impermanence and fly-by-night relationships, these people over here want the same chance at permanence and happiness that is your option. They don’t want to deny you yours. They don’t want to take anything away from you. They want what you want—a chance to be a little less alone in the world.

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November 24, 2008
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I don’t hate Prince, just his views

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Sometime in the late to mid 1970s, Prince announced himself not only as a musical genius, but as a social revolutionary.

By highlighting different lifestyles and playing with (in his music as wells as personal style) sexuality and androgyny, for instance, Prince opened all of our eyes to the way people live. That earlier Prince seemed to say that it’s okay to be who you are and for me to be who I am. That gave power to his fans and deepened his music.

The music. I love Prince’s music and I own practically as much of the music as anyone could. I’ve listened to all of his output. And it has colored my view of the world.

But, in an interview with the New Yorker magazine recently, a different Prince seemed to emerge, a less tolerant and, perhaps, bigoted one.

Speaking seemingly about Prop 8, which overturned the state’s Supreme Court ruling and outlawed marriage by same-sex couples, Prince said:

“So here’s how it is: you’ve got the Republicans, and basically they want to live according to this.” He pointed to a Bible. “But there’s the problem of interpretation, and you’ve got some churches, some people, basically doing things and saying it comes from here, but it doesn’t. And then on the opposite end of the spectrum you’ve got blue, you’ve got the Democrats, and they’re, like, ‘You can do whatever you want.’ Gay marriage, whatever. But neither of them is right.”

When asked about his perspective on social issues—gay marriage, abortion—Prince tapped his Bible and said, “God came to earth and saw people sticking it wherever and doing it with whatever, and he just cleared it all out. He was, like, ‘Enough.’ ”

I don’t know what scripture Prince is referring to but he is just plain wrong.

And it saddens me that this man, who gave so much hope and entertained people and enriched lives, would now be spouting inane but hurtful bigotry.

November 17, 2008
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Jew Baiting

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This deserves much more attention than it’s getting.

Congressman Steve Cohen is Jewish. He represents the majority-black district in Memphis, Tennessee, vacated by Harold Ford in 2006. Cohen is among the House’s most liberal members, and he recently gained some notoriety for getting Congress to apologize for slavery and Jim Crow.

Cohen is being challenged in the Democratic primary by Nikki Tinker, a young African-American attorney whom Cohen defeated in 2006. Tinker has been endorsed by the Congressional Black Caucus and Emily’s List.

Tinker’s campaign has now descended into full-on Jew baiting.

Just days after airing a racially charged ad connecting Cohen with the Ku Klux Klan, the Tinker campaign is up with the vilest ad of the campaign season yet.

“Who is the real Steve Cohen, anyway?” a narrator says as a child is heard praying in the background . “While he’s in our churches clapping his hands and tapping his feet, he’s the only senator who thought our kids shouldn’t be allowed to pray in school. Congressman, sometimes apologies just aren’t enough.”

Tinker’s campaign has removed the ad from YouTube since the story broke yesterday afternoon. Emily’s List has issued a statement condemning the ad but stopping short of withdrawing its endorsement. No word yet from the CBC.

More on this here, here, here, and here.

Spread the word.

Has anyone heard anything from the Obama Campaign?

Cross-posted from Facebook

August 7, 2008
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Tony's Nobel grovel

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I don’t remember who started it, or when it started, so let’s blame it on Jimmy Carter. The former president rehabilitated his public service record by becoming a world do-gooder in chief.

He built homes for the homeless, cured elections, and generally did whatever he could to expunge from the public mind, his four years of failure as president of the United States.
Today, more people remember Carter for his Nobel than for his presidency. Which is just as well. Carter was a decent man who was ill-suited for the presidency.

Former British Prime Minister Tony Blair is another case. Blair had noticeable successes and following until he crawled into the lap of George W. Bush. He went to incredible lengths to help Bush sell a fraudulent war, eternally damning himself in the process. His once stratospheric popularity in England evaporated. He was soon chased from office.

Blair now wants to reconcile the world’s religion in the service of . . . globalization? What a crock. This effort might still win him the Nobel Peace Prize. It’ll still be stupid and fraudulent.

June 2, 2008
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FOR BLACK YOUTHS, AN UNEASY START

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by Michael O. Allen, Record Staff Writer | Sunday, October 27, 1991

The Record (New Jersey) | All Editions | NEWS | Page A03

Toward the end of his workshop Saturday, the Rev. Clarence L. James Sr. asked boys in the front pew at Mount Olive Baptist Church in Hackensack what it takes to be a man on the street.

Sell drugs, someone said. Kill somebody, another said. Beat your woman, replied another boy. And on and on: Fight to get respect, have many women, rape someone, gamble, have a gun, pimp.

The street is one of the primary institutions where black males are initiated into manhood, said James, a Baptist minister and evangelist from Atlanta who has been conducting a weeklong revival at Mount Olive Baptist Church that addresses the issues facing the black family. The other institutions he named were prison, military service, and college.

He scrunched his face in mock disgust and winced with each reply.

“That is not the kind of man we need,” James said. “We need husbands for our daughters, fathers for our children, a provider.”

The audience consisted of 100 males, including 50 boys from Hackensack, Englewood, Teaneck, Westwood, Rutherford, and Paterson. James discussed the role of black men during slavery, black men and education, black men and the military, and black men in the family.

The Rev. Gregory J. Jackson, pastor of Mount Olive Baptist Church, said the workshop was an important part of the church’s yearlong celebration of the black family.

“The idea is that we are losing too many of our boys and men to jail, drugs, alcoholism, crime, et cetera,” he said. “We need to develop ways for saving our boys . . . find ways that we can help lost boys make a transition from adolescence to manhood.

“Many of these boys have fathers who are dead or in jail. They are our kids. We’ve got to help the kids grow up as men. You can’t just leave them out there for the world to raise. ”

James said part of their rites of passage into manhood must include educating them about their African heritage and instilling pride in that heritage.

The street, prisons, the service, and colleges have failed the black man because they have failed the black man and his family, James said. He cited the church as an institution where God-fearing Christians can help turn black boys into moral, upstanding men.

Samuel E. Adams, 35, of Englewood said the workshop is a godsend to the black community and that it should be done weekly.

“We first must be taught who we are to love ourselves,” he said. “With this knowledge we are gaining, we must take care of our own. We will never gain respect as a people until we start owning and controlling our community and our resources. ”

Caption: PHOTO – ROBERT S. TOWNSEND / THE RECORD – Youths and their elders joining in prayer at Hackensack’s Mount Olive Baptist Church.

ID: 17359261 | Copyright © 1991, The Record (New Jersey)

October 27, 1991
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TAKE PRIDE, PROFESSOR URGES BLACKS

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By Michael O. Allen, Record Staff Writer | Sunday, October 20, 1991

The Record (New Jersey) | All Editions | NEWS | Page A03

After professor Rosalind Jeffries concluded a speech urging blacks to take pride in their heritage, a waiter went over and thanked her for inspiring him and exhorted her to press on with her work.

The 45-minute speech struck the same chord with many of the 350 people at Saturday’s NAACP annual Freedom Fund Awards Luncheon who gave her several standing ovations and flocked to the podium to speak with her.

Jeffries, the wife of controversial college professor Leonard Jeffries Jr., is an art historian and curator, and is a professor at New Jersey State Teachers College. She talked about the contributions of Africans and African-Americans to history, religion, science, and the arts.

But people of all races contributed to civilization, Rosalind Jeffries said. So blacks have to bring forth research that acknowledges contributions of Africans that have long been ignored.

“She didn’t make a speech, she made a statement,” said George J. Powell, president of the Bergen County chapter of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People.

“She made a statement about life, a statement that when we say we are pro-black it doesn’t mean we are `anti anyone. See, there’s a lot of myth out there about blacks not being bright.”

Speaking with a flourish, and injecting humor and sarcasm, Rosalind Jeffries challenged those myths.

And, without naming names, she touched on a subject that black communities around the country have been embroiled in the Clarence Thomas-Anita Hill confrontation before the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee.

She decried the spectacle of two successful, educated blacks being part of such a lurid display before the nation.

“I hate to see a woman destroy a man in public because she was wounded,” she said. “Even when you are wounded and hurt there’s a time when you must sacrifice. I don’t condone sexual harassment and I am for women’s rights. But I think you must use wisdom in living, along with the knowledge that you acquire.”

Youth Achievement Awards were presented to Wendi Celeste Dunlap, a Hackensack High School sophomore; Richard Howard Jones, a Teaneck High School honors student; Kaileen T. Alston, a senior at Dwight Morrow High School in Englewood; and Natalie Louise Jenkins, a graduate of Demarest’s Academy of Holy Angels and a freshman at Spelman College. Also honored were: Lou Schwartz, Anne Strokes Joyner, Jacqueline Caraway-Flowers, and Curtis and Michelle March, all of Teaneck.

Keywords: SPEECH; BLACK; RIGHT; ART; HISTORY; TEACHER; AFRICA; RELIGION; SCIENCE; TEANECK; EAST RUTHERFORD; ORGANIZATION

ID: 17358599 | Copyright © 1991, The Record (New Jersey)

October 20, 1991
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