President Barack Obama standing with the Red Cross and the nation in the face of Hurricane Sandy's historic devastation . (Reuters photo by Larry Downing) As much as many of us prefer to believe we now live in a “post-racial America,” fairly staggering evidence continues to accumulate to the contrary. Former President Bill Clinton, Reverend Al Sharpton, the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, Huffington Post bloggers, and other public figures have spent  much of their time during the 2012 presidential election campaign sounding alarms against voter suppression targeting African Americans and Latinos. These proposed types of suppression have taken the form of newly-required photo IDs, the cancellation of early voting on the Sunday before the election , the requirement of a long-term address over a given period of time, and other recently-invented criteria. Moving beyond the immediate political implications of these attempts, Clinton has asked th...

President Barack Obama and NJ Governor Chris Christie survey damage caused by Hurricane Sandy and comfort victims . (Reuters photo by Larry Downing) Was it a matter of political irony or plain old-fashioned racism that prompted the lack of definitive media headlines proclaiming President Barack Obama ––currently immersed in managing the United States’ recovery from the impact of Hurricane Sandy––the overwhelming winner of the third 2012 presidential debate? Instead of headlines such as “Barack Obama Triumphs with Second Consecutive Debate,” or “Obama Slams Romney in Debate Showdown,” readers were treated to the likes of these from FOX News: “Third debate sets tough tone for campaign’s final stretch” and “ Obama scores hollow victory against Romney (if that's what it was).” Among the few bolder as well as more accurate announcements was: “Sargent: A pummeling for Mitt Romney in the final debate.” In addition, although the New York Times did not put it in the headlin...

                        Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney . (Reuters photo by Jim Young) Supporters of Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney at this point can claim with some justification that the media’s treatment of his “47 percent” comments, made at a private fundraiser in May in Florida, fall solidly in the category of guerrilla decontextualization. Yet, of all those powerful men and women who might have flocked to Mr. Romney’s defense in the wake of the PR nightmare that followed, only his running mate Paul Ryan did so with any kind of half-way convincing persuasive immediacy. Many former allies of Mr. Romney are now in fact performing that odd horizontal shuffle called “distancing” that politicians sometimes do so well when the word “stigma” threatens to attach itself to a colleague.  Such tends to be the case whether said colleague is wealthy, powerful, handsome, ugly, or none of the...

President Barack Obama with 1 st Lady Michelle Obama and other U.S. political leaders at 1 WTC in New York (photo by Jewel Samad and AFP Getty Images) “Democracy does not have to be a blood sport . It can be an honorable enterprise that advances the public interest.”      ––f ormer U.S. President Bill Clinton When former U.S. President Bill Clinton made the above statement at the 2012 Democratic National Convention on September 5 in Charlotte, N.C., he was referring to the intensely negative elements that have made their way into the current presidential election campaign. He could, however, have been discussing almost any kind of attempt to resolve major differences where individuals choose to rely on brutality or guerrilla decontextualization as opposed to civility and communication. Imagine the many possibilities of what life might, could, or would be like for so many today if Osama bin Laden had developed a different perspective on how best ...

                                                  Rev. Jeremiah Wright (press release photo) “…Y ou are looking at the miracles and missing the meaning behind the miracles.” --Rev. Jeremiah A. Wright Guerrilla decontextualization is a somewhat ungainly term that falls more out of line than in line with similar coined phrases such as: guerrilla marketing, guerrilla filmmaking, or guerrilla street artist. These comparable terms have in common ideas of creative expansion or independent expressiveness. Guerrilla decontextualization on the other hand belongs on the more sinister lexicon family branch of the term guerrilla warfare. It can be defined as the practice of extracting such elements of media technology as video clips, sound bites, and manipulated images for largely two purposes.  One would be to intentionally misrepresent an indivi...

Cover of National Urban League's "State of Black America." Just as the previous two annual countdowns from the National African American Art Examiner contained people and events some found debatable, this one for the year 2011 is likely to do the same. The point, however, remains unchanged: to highlight known as well as largely ignored moments that have added significantly to contemporary ongoing African-American culture and history, and thereby adding the same to current American and world history in general. At one end of the continuum known as history are first-time events that have generated notable measures of public recognition due to either a positive or negative impact. At the other end of the spectrum are individuals, organizations, and occurrences which have earned acknowledgment due to their enduring longevity and lasting influence upon humanity. This countdown list includes both and will be presented in ten separate posts starting Wednesday, December 14. Abou...