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(09/15/03 6:12am)
In the late eighties and early nineties, Compton, a community of nearly two million people in Los Angeles County, California, had a bad reputation. The two best-known gangs in the United States, the Crips and the Bloods, both called it home. N.W.A.'s hometown ode, "Straight Outta Compton," shaped the city's image.\nBut the media overlooked the real story.\nStanford University professor of history Albert Camarillo lectured on Compton's history Tuesday afternoon as part of the History Department's Paul V. McNutt lecture series. \nCamarillo believes that the relations between the city's African-Americans and its growing Latino population foreshadows 21st century American racial politics.\nHistorically, Camarillo said, race relations have been "white and black." \n"You've got to take 'white' out of the equation," Camarillo said in a telephone interview. New patterns of immigration mean that race relations will be between different minority groups.\nCompton is an excellent example.\nWhen Camarillo was growing up in Compton, he lived in the city's only non-white area, a neighborhood of about a thousand Latinos, mainly Mexicans. But between his childhood and his research on the city's history, Compton changed from being almost entirely white to having a population with fewer than one percent Anglos. \nWhat triggered the change? Camarillo points to the devastating 1965 riots in Watts, just north of Compton, which left 34 dead and more than a thousand injured. This led to what he terms a "white exodus" from Compton. \nAs whites left, blacks moved in, seeing Compton as more desirable than L.A.'s traditionally black areas. Soon, the city had the only municipal government west of the Mississippi entirely run by black elected and appointed officials. \nYet by the early eighties, racial tensions were rising in Compton. The city was attracting waves of Latinos, who found themselves locked out of Compton's politics and society. Calls for greater integration grew louder as the city's Hispanic population increased, reaching two-thirds of the city's residents by 2000. But, until recently, the city's government remained entirely black.\nThis is Camarillo's new racial frontier. The dilemma for cities like Compton, Camarillo said, is simple: "Can these new minority-majorities establish coalitions that will allow them to live together and work together peacefully? Or will they repeat the same problems, issues and conflicts that have been characteristic of race relations historically?"\nCamarillo is cautiously optimistic. He points to the success of Compton's religious leaders in building bridges between the community's ethnic groups, and the city's new government has appointed a Latino as superintendent of the city's schools.\nBut other areas will face similar challenges. In Indiana, for example, the percentage of the state's population identifying themselves as "Hispanic" on census forms nearly doubled between 1990 and 2000, from 1.8 percent to 3.5 percent.\nMost of the growth in the state's Hispanic communities is taking place in the centers of the state's larger cities. Within a generation, Camarillo said, Hispanics could equal or outnumber blacks in Indianapolis. This raises a question: "What will be the relationship between new Hispanic immigrants and the more established African-American population?"\nThat's a question that nobody can answer yet.\nBut it's clear that Indiana's experience won't be exactly like Compton's. As IU Professor Jorge Chapa, director of the Latino Studies Program, said, "Hispanics aren't taking African-American positions of power in Indianapolis. [Blacks] aren't in control in Indianapolis the way they were in Compton."\nAnd, Indiana being Indiana, you can't take "white" out of our racial equation.\nCompton's civic leaders are struggling to tame the new racial frontier. The city is making progress with a situation unprecedented in American history.\nThe rest of the country will have to follow Compton's lead shortly.\nAnd the solutions to 21st century questions of racial politics won't be as simple as black and white.
(02/03/03 4:41am)
As more Hispanic families continue to settle in Indiana cities and towns, news organizations increasingly are trying to make them feel part of the community by giving them news they can use -- in Spanish.\nSome daily newspapers which have long provided local, state, national and international news for their communities are publishing Spanish-language papers for their new Hispanic residents. The publications often are monthlies left on news racks free of charge in Hispanic areas of the city where the daily circulates.\nIn Indianapolis, a new Spanish-language television station was scheduled to take to the airwaves Monday.\n"They're a segment of our community. We should reach out to them," said Gary Suisman, publisher of the Journal and Courier in Lafayette.\nThe decision to print a Spanish-language newspaper came after the paper's diversity committee met with Hispanic and Latino groups in Tippecanoe County four years ago.\n"Of course, the hope is over time, as they learn English, that they'll remember that we reached out to them," Suisman said.\nThe Hispanic population in the United States more than doubled during the 1990s, the 2000 census found. Many new arrivals were drawn by the booming U.S. economy and settled in areas of the South and Midwest that previously attracted few Latinos.\nCensus estimates released last month show that the nation's Hispanic population rose 4.7 percent to about 37 million between April 2000 and July 2001, surpassing blacks as the nation's largest minority group.\nIn Indiana, the number of Spanish-speaking residents has more than doubled in the last decade, to 185,000, more than half of the state's total Hispanic population of about 215,000.\nThe growing numbers of Hispanics mean the news media has to cover a culture it had little experience with before.\nIn the last decade, the state has seen more newspapers printed for Hispanic readers. Among them are La Prensa (The Press), produced by The Republic in Columbus, and La Comunidad (The Community), published by The Times in Frankfort.\nFrankfort is in central Indiana's Clinton County, which has the state's second-highest percentage of Hispanics who speak Spanish at home. In addition to publishing La Comunidad, The Times translates stories into Spanish on the newspaper's Web page.\n"I kind of put myself in their shoes. If I had to move to Mexico and I had to adapt to their society, boy, it would be pretty difficult," said Rick Welch, publisher of The Times.\nPapers published in Spanish provide a twofold benefit, said Zenaida Loveless, director of Hispanic Community Service, a United Way agency in Frankfort that helps Hispanic immigrants with visas and state governmental concerns.\n"If they didn't have the Spanish newspapers, they would not be able to know what's going on," Loveless said. "And it's brought the attention to the (Anglo) community what all this is about."\nNewspapers also have helped members of the state's Hispanic community find jobs and information on changing immigration laws, Loveless said.\nIn Indianapolis, at least three Spanish-language papers cater to burgeoning Hispanic populations, including the weekly La Ola Latina-Americano, or "The Latin American Wave."\nFor Publisher Ildefonso Carbajal, who distributes "La Ola" in eight Indiana cities, running a paper was his "American Dream" when he came to the United States illegally nearly 20 years ago.\nThere were weeks and months when he didn't get paid as the paper struggled to find advertisers. But he made changes, and his distribution at restaurants, grocery stores, and community service centers has grown to about 5,000 copies.\nNewspapers are not alone in reaching out to Hispanics. Indianapolis television station WISH, a CBS affiliate, will begin operating a low-power Spanish-language television station today featuring news and talk shows.\n"We have had an overwhelming response from people looking to get involved and be a partner for this operation," said Scott Blumenthal, general manager of WISH and regional vice president of the LIN Television Corp.\n"There are advertisers, there are community service organizations, there are governmental organizations that all are looking for a source to communicate to those people," he said.
(04/20/01 3:54am)
Acutely aware of the artist's responsibility to edify society, black poet/scholar Audre Lorde has used the following insight as both inspiration and to guide: "To survive in the mouth of the dragon we call America, we have had to learn that we were never meant to survive. Not as human beings." Her observation, contrary to what men such as David Horowitz are prone to believe, was not a product of rabid, wild-eyed black separatism or her own demagogic ambitions. \nInstead, Lorde's perspective emerged out of a sober and responsible study of America's historical record. Lorde understands that the European and American architects of the Trans-Atlantic slave trade operated on a shortsighted blueprint. \nThey had not calculated what they would do with their African slaves beyond the point of profit. The plan was to bring this free labor ashore, keep the workers healthy enough to be functional, feed the dusky beings every now and then. With luck, the slavers thought, their unpaid laborers would survive lifetime tenure on the plantation, and of course, never once ask for a wage, for a healthy meal, or God forbid, for the luxury to behave according to their own will. \nBecause there was no expectation that Africans would act out their own humanity, the Euro-American brain trust experienced crisis when reports of such unwanted petitions began to flood their offices. White-wigged white men haunted the hallowed halls of American government with the blind stares of the besieged. \n"What do we do now?" was the frequent utterance. The insecurity that plagued the South when enslaved Africans contested their exploitation pales in comparison to the mortal horror involved in owners and overseers having to approach their former property as human beings. Foresight had not accounted for this possibility.\nWe were never meant to survive.\nIn light of the all-too-human inability of one person to unhand his hardened understandings of another person -- that is, for an owner to look upon his tool as human -- Horowitz's arguments about widespread white benevolence toward blacks throughout the nation's history is nothing short of mythical. For example, when speaking about the Civil War and "the 350,000 Union soldiers who died to free the slaves" in his advertisement, "Ten Reasons Why Reparations for Slavery is a Bad Idea -- and Racist Too," Horowitz poorly characterizes the intent of the Union dead. \nMost white soldiers fought to preserve the Union, not the citizenship of former slaves. In fact, six months after the Emancipation Proclamation, on July 1, 1863, white Northern male draftees violently attacked black neighborhoods on the mere suspicion that they would be fighting for black liberty. The assault was logical. Why fight for people who will compete for your spot at the factory or the stockyard? Black enslavement was good for white job security.\nBeyond a white military, Horowitz's ad also celebrates antebellum anti-slavery movements as the successful brainchild of white Northerners. He notes that, "there never was an anti-slavery movement until white Anglo-Saxon Christians created one." Yet Horowitz ignores Quock Walker's efforts in 1791, when the ex-slave brought his owner before a Massachusetts court in a suit for his own freedom; or David Walker's 1829 writings that called for slaves to take up arms against their owners; or the thousands of bondspeople who attempted to flee the South with or without the assistance of the Underground Railroad. All these gestures preceded William Garrison's 1831 founding of the American Antislavery Society (peopled by only a minority of whites), which people such as Horowitz wrongly cite as the primary champion of slave emancipation. \nHorowitz's most shrill trumpeting of mass white largesse occurs when he suggests that affirmative action policies have offered due reparations to blacks for their centuries of unpaid labor. He notes that the State has transferred "trillions of dollars" in the form of "racial preferences" to African Americans. \nHorowitz omits that the majority of white Americans did not skip and whistle to the polls when facing the prospect of Civil Rights legislation. Whites were so resistant to the 1954 Brown decision that there was little evidence of its existence on the social landscape a decade later. A begrudged former President Richard Nixon issued executive orders to enact affirmative action in the early 1970s, and this reluctant attitude toward ameliorating past discrimination was manifest in continued challenge until the 1978 Bakke decision began to declaw such laws. So-called "Reagan Revolutionaries" and "Gingrich Contractarians" have effected the imminent death-knell of affirmative action policies, with very little protest from its primary beneficiaries: white females, whose genitalia no longer determine the social ceiling to their professional ambitions.\nIn short, though several white Americans have fought tooth and nail for racial equality -- indeed, some to their death -- the notion of mass white magnanimity toward blacks is a fantasy that never occurred. Moreover, one could certainly read the delay of an equitable society and the failure of begrudgingly implemented social programs as evidence that no generation of white Americans has ever had the fortitude or decency to experience the inconvenience of redistributing resources and power to effect racial equality. \nThe majority of whites, apparently, could never assimilate the prospect of having to deal with American Africans -- their former property or servants -- as social equals. No ideological apparatus available could allow such a thought.\nWe were never meant to survive.\nHorowitz knows this.
(11/06/00 6:16pm)
Joseph Lieberman loves the public life. His 2000 book "In Praise of Public Life," tells readers about his love for politics and his concern with what he perceives to be an increasing number of Americans reluctant to participate in their government.
(09/21/00 4:23am)
The road to Mexico is a long one, even when the method of travel happens to be phone lines. First comes the 14-digit phone number. Then, after a few foul-ups and a few recorded messages from the operator, it's time for a seven-digit billing number. The phone starts ringing and finally a voice picks up, saying "Hola?" \nLila Downs quickly switches from Spanish to English when she realizes her caller is not from the area. She's used to making adjustments. \nThe daughter of an Anglo-American father from Minnesota and a Mixtec Indian mother from the Oaxaca region of Mexico, Downs grew up bouncing from one culture to another. When she chose music as her method of expression, it stayed with her. \nNow she travels Mexico and the States combining traditional Mexican folk music, lyrics about the mythological account of the Mixtec heritage she inherited for her mother and the smooth sounds of jazz. \nDowns is only one of the 27 artists who will travel to Bloomington, bringing their talents for jazz, funk, reggae, pop, gospel, folk and blues from the United States, Ireland, France, Brazil, Puerto Rico, Canada, Morocco, Kurdistan, Azerbaijan, Finland, Sweden and Japan to the seventh annual Lotus World Music and Arts Festival, running from today through Saturday at a variety of locations around the city. \n Among those included on the schedule are American folk and blues artist Odetta, Brazilian performer Chico Cesar, Irish traditional group Lunasa and Bloomington-based Vida. In a world dominated by imitations, the artists of the Lotus Festival choose music that comes from them, no matter what combination of cultures, instruments and culture fits that definition. \nLila Downs: Seed of Cultures\nAlthough Downs has been singing since she was five, her current style of music only recently became her way of expressing and celebrating her culture. She grew up moving from the mountains of Oaxaca listening to the stories of the Mixtec Indians, or "cloud people," to the cold winters of Minneapolis, where she listened to Aretha Franklin, Bob Dylan, Melissa Manchester and Elton John. She attended the University of Minneapolis and studied voice, opera and anthropology, dropped out for a while, followed the Grateful Dead, learned to weave Indian textiles and, finally, did a senior thesis based on just about all of the above.\n"That's what brought me to what I'm doing today," Downs said. "It made me realize I could say things in a different way, that I didn't have to say things in terms of anything already out there, that I could invent my own language."\nWhen Downs speaks this language she tries to communicate the things she has learned during the years. As a product of two cultures, she spent some of her years growing up confused about where she belongs, something she likens to Third World countries being colonized by larger, richer nations. \n"There's a certain thing that happens in colonized countries; you watch TV and everyone is white or trying to emulate a Western model," she said. "If you don't have a comprehensive historical background, you tend to start thinking 'Why am I dark?' and 'Why do I have dark hair?' My music is about learning about who you are."\n"Learning who you are" also means embracing her American background. \n"My father is a Scottish-American white man and I also have that in my blood," Downs said. "I appreciate the gifts given by the many beautiful aspects of Western culture and I think it's important. I want to make people feel proud of themselves."\nDowns' concerts include music from the traditional harps of Paraguay and the Veracruz part of Mexico, percussion from Mexico, Native American drums, fiddles, guitars, jazz piano and saxophone. On stage, Downs tries to wear a special textile from her native home in Mexico or something that expresses a story of female empowerment. Her music is about learning and embracing all aspects of her personality. Her music is definitely not about trying to fit into the American musical mainstream. \n"People are always going to ask those kinds of questions," Downs said. "I think it depends on what your values are and what your dreams are in life. I want to move me and move people who share things in common with me. If I choose to sing a song that has more massive appeal, I don't mind if that's what I want to do as long as what makes me do those things is the truth within myself."\nAntibalas: The sounds of afrobeat \nWhile it only takes a 10-digit phone number to dial up the Brooklyn-based home of Antibalas, the roots of the band and their style of music called afrobeat extend out through many countries and inspirations. \nThe music of afrobeat can be traced back to a Nigerian composer and performer named Fela Anikulapo-Kuti, explains Antibalas drummer and percussionist Phil Ballman. Kuti created his music by combining funk, jazz and the rhythms of Africa. \n"Afrobeat is a fusion of different musics that (Kuti) created, and we're keeping his tradition alive by playing original music in his style," Ballman said. "It's kind of like if James Brown was born in West Africa and he had an African drum heartbeat and a jazz horn line." \nFourteen musicians with Latino, white, African-American, African and Asian-American heritage by way of New York City form Antibalas. They create music using guitars, trombones, saxophones, conga drums, sticks, shekere gourds, trumpets, an organ and vocals. Lyrics for their songs are derived from the English, Spanish and Yoruba languages. \n"For myself, I first heard this kind of music when I was 19 and I was completely floored," Ballman said. "I listened to it for six months. I was playing drums at the time and I thought this would be such great music to play because it has elements of jazz and funk. The polyrhythms of typical African music are very complex and sophisticated but it is also extremely groovy and danceable." \nAlong with formulating afrobeat, Kuti also believed in social justice. This tradition has also been carried on in Antibalas. The group named itself after the Spanish word for "bulletproof" or "anti-bullets."\n"The name sort of symbolically carries on a tradition of being strong and being against violence," Ballman said. \nLike Downs, Ballman and the members of Antibalas are the first to admit that the music they love to play isn't the music that will make them rich in the financial sense. \n"Who cares?" Ballman said. "The idea is just to play music that you are really emotionally moved by and excited about. We all feel the music is really incredible and powerful; that's the reason why we play it."\nThe Lotus Festival will mark Ballman's first trip to Indiana. He and the rest of the band decided to make the trip after also committing to play at the Chicago World Music Festival. A trip to Bloomington turned one road trip into a mini-tour of both Midwestern festivals. \n"We hope what we can do is really get people excited about the music and moving," Ballman said. "We do try to somehow bring a message with the music and the message is more or less just to be aware. To stand up and be a free person"
(09/21/00 4:00am)
The road to Mexico is a long one, even when the method of travel happens to be phone lines. First comes the 14-digit phone number. Then, after a few foul-ups and a few recorded messages from the operator, it's time for a seven-digit billing number. The phone starts ringing and finally a voice picks up, saying "Hola?" \nLila Downs quickly switches from Spanish to English when she realizes her caller is not from the area. She's used to making adjustments. \nThe daughter of an Anglo-American father from Minnesota and a Mixtec Indian mother from the Oaxaca region of Mexico, Downs grew up bouncing from one culture to another. When she chose music as her method of expression, it stayed with her. \nNow she travels Mexico and the States combining traditional Mexican folk music, lyrics about the mythological account of the Mixtec heritage she inherited for her mother and the smooth sounds of jazz. \nDowns is only one of the 27 artists who will travel to Bloomington, bringing their talents for jazz, funk, reggae, pop, gospel, folk and blues from the United States, Ireland, France, Brazil, Puerto Rico, Canada, Morocco, Kurdistan, Azerbaijan, Finland, Sweden and Japan to the seventh annual Lotus World Music and Arts Festival, running from today through Saturday at a variety of locations around the city. \n Among those included on the schedule are American folk and blues artist Odetta, Brazilian performer Chico Cesar, Irish traditional group Lunasa and Bloomington-based Vida. In a world dominated by imitations, the artists of the Lotus Festival choose music that comes from them, no matter what combination of cultures, instruments and culture fits that definition. \nLila Downs: Seed of Cultures\nAlthough Downs has been singing since she was five, her current style of music only recently became her way of expressing and celebrating her culture. She grew up moving from the mountains of Oaxaca listening to the stories of the Mixtec Indians, or "cloud people," to the cold winters of Minneapolis, where she listened to Aretha Franklin, Bob Dylan, Melissa Manchester and Elton John. She attended the University of Minneapolis and studied voice, opera and anthropology, dropped out for a while, followed the Grateful Dead, learned to weave Indian textiles and, finally, did a senior thesis based on just about all of the above.\n"That's what brought me to what I'm doing today," Downs said. "It made me realize I could say things in a different way, that I didn't have to say things in terms of anything already out there, that I could invent my own language."\nWhen Downs speaks this language she tries to communicate the things she has learned during the years. As a product of two cultures, she spent some of her years growing up confused about where she belongs, something she likens to Third World countries being colonized by larger, richer nations. \n"There's a certain thing that happens in colonized countries; you watch TV and everyone is white or trying to emulate a Western model," she said. "If you don't have a comprehensive historical background, you tend to start thinking 'Why am I dark?' and 'Why do I have dark hair?' My music is about learning about who you are."\n"Learning who you are" also means embracing her American background. \n"My father is a Scottish-American white man and I also have that in my blood," Downs said. "I appreciate the gifts given by the many beautiful aspects of Western culture and I think it's important. I want to make people feel proud of themselves."\nDowns' concerts include music from the traditional harps of Paraguay and the Veracruz part of Mexico, percussion from Mexico, Native American drums, fiddles, guitars, jazz piano and saxophone. On stage, Downs tries to wear a special textile from her native home in Mexico or something that expresses a story of female empowerment. Her music is about learning and embracing all aspects of her personality. Her music is definitely not about trying to fit into the American musical mainstream. \n"People are always going to ask those kinds of questions," Downs said. "I think it depends on what your values are and what your dreams are in life. I want to move me and move people who share things in common with me. If I choose to sing a song that has more massive appeal, I don't mind if that's what I want to do as long as what makes me do those things is the truth within myself."\nAntibalas: The sounds of afrobeat \nWhile it only takes a 10-digit phone number to dial up the Brooklyn-based home of Antibalas, the roots of the band and their style of music called afrobeat extend out through many countries and inspirations. \nThe music of afrobeat can be traced back to a Nigerian composer and performer named Fela Anikulapo-Kuti, explains Antibalas drummer and percussionist Phil Ballman. Kuti created his music by combining funk, jazz and the rhythms of Africa. \n"Afrobeat is a fusion of different musics that (Kuti) created, and we're keeping his tradition alive by playing original music in his style," Ballman said. "It's kind of like if James Brown was born in West Africa and he had an African drum heartbeat and a jazz horn line." \nFourteen musicians with Latino, white, African-American, African and Asian-American heritage by way of New York City form Antibalas. They create music using guitars, trombones, saxophones, conga drums, sticks, shekere gourds, trumpets, an organ and vocals. Lyrics for their songs are derived from the English, Spanish and Yoruba languages. \n"For myself, I first heard this kind of music when I was 19 and I was completely floored," Ballman said. "I listened to it for six months. I was playing drums at the time and I thought this would be such great music to play because it has elements of jazz and funk. The polyrhythms of typical African music are very complex and sophisticated but it is also extremely groovy and danceable." \nAlong with formulating afrobeat, Kuti also believed in social justice. This tradition has also been carried on in Antibalas. The group named itself after the Spanish word for "bulletproof" or "anti-bullets."\n"The name sort of symbolically carries on a tradition of being strong and being against violence," Ballman said. \nLike Downs, Ballman and the members of Antibalas are the first to admit that the music they love to play isn't the music that will make them rich in the financial sense. \n"Who cares?" Ballman said. "The idea is just to play music that you are really emotionally moved by and excited about. We all feel the music is really incredible and powerful; that's the reason why we play it."\nThe Lotus Festival will mark Ballman's first trip to Indiana. He and the rest of the band decided to make the trip after also committing to play at the Chicago World Music Festival. A trip to Bloomington turned one road trip into a mini-tour of both Midwestern festivals. \n"We hope what we can do is really get people excited about the music and moving," Ballman said. "We do try to somehow bring a message with the music and the message is more or less just to be aware. To stand up and be a free person"
