Marco McWilliams
More Local Action Toward Justice for Trayvon Martin
The perplexing “missteps” by the Sanford police in the handling of the Trayvon Martin murder are adding up at an alarming rate. We recall that a narcotics detective, and not a homicide detective, was first to assess the scene and engage Zimmerman, or that the lead investigator, Chris Serino, had called for the arrest of [...]
Community Forum on Trayvon Martin Murder
Due to the egregious inaction by local, state and even federal authorities in Florida regarding the non-arrest of GEORGE ZIMMERMAN, the killer of TRAYVON MARTIN, and given the complex racial dynamics and their implications for Black males nationally, the Providence Africana Reading Collective (PARC) will host a community action forum. We will discuss/plan how we might [...]
Commodification of Suffering: An Ethics of Charity
While shopping at Whole Foods last week (yeah, I do that often #smirking) I came across a new Whole Foods brand coffee. It was arranged in a pyramid styled display, and the store rep., having just completed the task of assembling it, stood nearby staring on with a look so proud it bordered on the supercilious. [...]
It’s Black History Month and the Sankofa Bird Speaks
History is a clock that people use to tell their political and cultural time of day. It is also a compass that people use to find themselves on the map of human geography. History tells a people where they’ve been and what they’ve been; where they are and what they are. History tells a people [...]
The Weapon of Memory: A Brief Reflection
“You say, ‘I haven’t left anything in Africa.’ …you left your mind in Africa!” — Malcolm X With legitimized trepidation in each painful step, their soiled and bloodied feet, shackled with rusting iron at the ankle, marched from maritime prisons into a new reality — indeed a prison of sorts. This alternate reality entailed not [...]
The African American Vote in 2012 and Beyond
Human agency as the right to live, to be free, to self-determine your existence characterized the initial struggle for enslaved Africans in the American empire. The long prelude to becoming “American” played out on a bloody stage. And though less overtly bloody, this insidious political drama continues unabated.
They Are Not Starving, They Are BEING Starved!
Like a banal refrain in American discourse on Africa they ring out: death, disease, war torn, drought, famine, starvation, etc. The list could go on but it would not matter. Like the white noise of a humming fan on a hot summer day, we hear the Western refrain on Africa, yet, somehow we do not. [...]
Hegemony of Narrative: “The Help” as Freedom Myth
“Naiveté is often an excuse for those who exercise power. For those upon whom that power is exercised, naiveté is always a mistake.” ~Michel-Rolph Trouillot “Ideology is a representation of the imaginary relationship of individuals to their real conditions of existence.” ~ Althusser What is required for an empire to maintain the subjugation, if not [...]
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