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Books by E. Ethelbert
Miller
How We Sleep
on the Nights We Don’t Make Love
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Fathering Words /
In
Search of Color Everywhere
First Light: New and Selected Poems /
Where are
the Love Poems for Dictators? /
Whispers, Secrets and Promises
Beyond
The Frontier: African-American Poetry for the 21st
Century /
Season of Hunger/Cry of Rain
Synergy:
An Anthology of Washington D.C. Black Poetry
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From Orenthal to Obama: Who Has the Juice?
By E. Ethelbert
Miller
It was difficult for me to look at O.J. being sentenced
yesterday and not think of the automobile industry. The
downfall of Detroit is also evident by the won/lost
record of the Detroit Lions but that's another E-Note.
June 17, 1994 and we are all watching the police chasing
a white Ford Bronco. The first reality show? Remember
all the discussion around O.J. and race? Remember when
we looked at O.J. on the cover of magazines and wondered
who "painted" him darker?
Orenthal. I was
never an O.J. Simpson fan. My sister was always annoyed
by how his head moved when he was doing television
commentary. O.J. had a head that moved one way and a
body that moved in the other direction. Maybe this is
what made him a great running back. My image of O.J.
will always be frozen in 1973. The last game in the year
he ran for 2,000 yards. I can still see O.J. running in
the snow becoming for the moment mythical. Today one
only has to look to Orenthal to discover the Oracle of
our lives.
O.J. represents how we view and interpret truth as well
as justice in our society. The fact that his life is
being overshadowed by Obama at this moment represents
our best opportunity to understand the change that is
taking place in our society. How do we measure what's
going on with our economy right now? Who do you
believe—Wall Street or Orenthal? Why? Consider how we
once measured our lives by watching the O.J. Simpson
trial. Today we are all wearing Obama caps and waiting
for January 20th. What's going on?
In many ways O.J. represents an obsolete black man. The
star football player and media personality reduced to a
vanishing line phone or telephone booth. Who killed the
old technology?
Who murdered our old industries? Do we blame it all on
greed? O.J. yesterday said he only wanted his stuff
back. How many of us want the world back after climate
changes? We pay no attention to O.J. today because O.J.
does not represent the "new" O. Obama is change we can
believe in. No one believes O.J. is innocent and didn't
kill Nicole Simpson and Ronald Goldman back in 1994.
Overlook the fact that he was found innocent in 1997. We
refuse to accept the verdict the same way we refuse to
hold the oil companies accountable to anything.
Explain the Orenthal and perhaps we unlock life's deep
secrets and we save the planet and ourselves. O.J. is
going to jail and many of us are heading for the
unemployment lines. O- for many of us. Obsolete. We can
no longer interface with the highly technological
revolution that is transforming everything at a pace
that will accelerate if it isn't regulated. The economic
markets out of control almost represents the internet.
What happens when we begin to see the emergence of
"pure" democracy? How do you regulate that? Enter -Obama
and hooking up an entire new generation like the
electric line that once blocked for O.J. Where we once
counted yards for O.J. we now count votes for Obama.
As the world turns hot—climate warming as well as wars
and (silly) pirates—Obama replaces Orenthal. The rebirth
of the cool. Obama as slick as a new cell phone. A black
man who loves his BlackBerry. A man who breaks the
chains while another is taken away in them. In the old
days the networks could follow the white Ford
Bronco—today we can create our own fantasy O.J. game.
Did he do it or was it you? A way of life is ending and
some of us are holding onto those memories of O.J.
rushing for 2000 yards in the snow. It's either that or
hoop dreams with Obama in 2009.
Mr. Miller has served as a visiting
professor at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas and
adjunct professor at American University. In 1996
he was the Jessie Ball DuPont Scholar at Emory & Henry
College. He was scholar-in-residence at George Mason
University for the Spring 2000 semester, and the 2001 Carell
Writer-in-Residence at Harpeth Hall School in Nashville,
Tennessee.
more bio
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Willie Brown's World
Ran into Quincy Jones the other
night. He was in town for a book signing, and I caught up with him at
1300 on Fillmore for supper.
Quincy had just been inducted into
the California Hall of Fame. He was talking about Barack Obama's
inaugural. And like everybody else, he was trying to figure out how to
get on the stage at the official inaugural ball. I told him, direct the
band for Aretha Franklin and you'll be right up there.
As I was leaving, this brother
comes up and says to me, "Willie Brown, even with the housing market and
the economy, this has been a really great year for black people."
"Why?" I asked.
"Because we got
Obama."
Then he said, "But you
know, come to think of it, it was a good year for white people, too."
"Why's that?" I asked.
"Because they finally got O.J."
SFGate
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O.J. Simpson statement before sentencing
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OJ Simpson: Fallen star who fumbled
American dream
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Male Male-Intimacy in Early
America
Beyond Romantic Friendships
By
William Benemann
Previously hard-to-find information on
homosexuality in early America—now in a
convenient single volume! Few of us are
familiar with the gay men on General
Washington’s staff or among the leaders of
the new republic. Now, in the same way that
Alex Haley’s Roots provided a generation of
African Americans with an appreciation of
their history,
Male-Male Intimacy in Early America: Beyond
Romantic Friendships will give many
gay readers their first glimpse of
homosexuality as a theme in early American
history.
Male-Male Intimacy in Early America
is the first book to provide a comprehensive
overview of the role of homosexual activity
among American men in the early years of
American history.
Male-Male Intimacy in Early America is the
first book to provide a comprehensive
overview of the role of homosexual activity
among American men in the early years of
American history. |
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This single
source brings together information that has until
now been widely scattered in journals and distant
archives. The book draws on personal letters,
diaries, court records, and contemporary
publications to examine the role of homosexual
activity in the lives of American men in the
colonial period and in the early years of the new
republic. The author scoured research that was
published in contemporary journals and also
conducted his own research in over a dozen US
archives, ranging from the Library of Congress to
the Huntington Library, from the United Military
Academy Archives to the Missouri Historical
Society.—Routledge
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Sex at the Margins
Migration, Labour Markets and the Rescue Industry
By Laura María Agustín
This book explodes several myths: that selling sex is completely different from any other kind of work, that migrants who sell sex are passive victims and that the multitude of people out to save them are without self-interest. Laura Agustín makes a passionate case against these stereotypes, arguing that the label 'trafficked' does not accurately describe migrants' lives and that the 'rescue industry' serves to disempower them. Based on extensive research amongst both migrants who sell sex and social helpers, Sex at the Margins provides a radically different analysis. Frequently, says Agustin, migrants make rational choices to travel and work in the sex industry, and although they are treated like a marginalised group they form part of the dynamic global economy. Both powerful and controversial, this book is essential reading for all those who want to understand the increasingly important relationship between sex markets, migration and the desire for social justice. "Sex at the Margins rips apart distinctions between migrants, service work and sexual labour and reveals the utter complexity of the contemporary sex industry. This book is set to be a trailblazer in the study of sexuality."—Lisa Adkins, University of London |
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The New Jim Crow
Mass Incarceration in the Age of
Colorblindness
By Michele Alexander
Contrary to the
rosy picture of race embodied in Barack
Obama's political success and Oprah
Winfrey's financial success, legal
scholar Alexander argues vigorously and
persuasively that [w]e have not ended
racial caste in America; we have merely
redesigned it. Jim Crow and legal racial
segregation has been replaced by mass
incarceration as a system of social
control (More African Americans are
under correctional control today... than
were enslaved in 1850). Alexander
reviews American racial history from the
colonies to the Clinton administration,
delineating its transformation into the
war on drugs. She offers an acute
analysis of the effect of this mass
incarceration upon former inmates who
will be discriminated against, legally,
for the rest of their lives, denied
employment, housing, education, and
public benefits. Most provocatively, she
reveals how both the move toward
colorblindness and affirmative action
may blur our vision of injustice: most
Americans know and don't know the truth
about mass incarceration—but her
carefully researched, deeply engaging,
and thoroughly readable book should
change that.—Publishers
Weekly |
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posted 6 December 2008
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