(10th Anniversary digital graphic for Encyclopedia of the Harlem Renaissance by Postered Poetics based on original cover design by Facts on File with art by Jacob Lawrence .) “The story of African Americans was crafted anew into a poignant commentary on individual and group progress under great pressure, a story that over time became one of the most compelling of American narratives.” ––Dr. Clement Alexander Price September 2013 represents the landmark 10th anniversary of the publication of the groundbreaking Encyclopedia of the Harlem Renaissance (Facts on File, 2003) co-authored by educator Sandra L. West and featuring a foreword by Dr. Clement Alexander Price, founder and director of the Institute on Ethnicity, Culture, and the Modern Experience at Rutgers University, Newark Campus, New Jersey. Almost seemingly as if in honor of that event, on August 29 President Barack Obama announced his intent to appoint Dr. Price to the position of Vice Chairman of the Adviso

                                President Barack Obama on the cover of TIME Magazine . “Beneath the armor of skin/and/bone/and/mind most of our colors are amazingly the same.” --from ELEMENTAL, The Power of Illuminated Love (Aberjhani) Despite the Associated Press’s recent gloomy poll on racial attitudes in the United States, most Americans would probably agree that race should not have played as powerful a role as it did in the 2012 presidential election campaign resulting in the ultimate re-election of Barack Obama . But there are at least two good reasons that it did. First, consider the approximately one million African-American men and women currently either imprisoned, on parole, or rushing blindly down a path likely to lead to prison. Too many of them grew up, during any given decade of the last half century, believing they were either destined to go to prison as some form of rites of passage, or they should expect to die ––as Trayvon Martin and my brother

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

Reuters poll indicating viewer responses to the second 2012 presidential debate . “I really think that one of the profound decisions the American people have to make now is whether they want to be governed by a president, or a boss. And I mean a boss!”   ––Bravo Television’s James Lipton in conversation with Chis Matthews on MSNBC’s Hardball Show. Halloween is close enough to the date of the 2012 American presidential election that the idea of the country waking up to either a trick or a treat on November 7 serves as an appropriate metaphor for the intense anxiety that has characterized much of the current campaign for the White House’s Oval Office. Critics of Democrats have accused them of guerrilla decontextualization trickery in the form of a presidential administration that has delivered less that they believe it should have over the past four years. Likewise: critics of Republicans have charged them with attempting to force upon the country a potential leade

                        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 above. Please click the link to read the full article by Abe

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 to address what he

                                                  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 individual’s character or intentions in order to decrease any measure of influence or authority they might possess in either public or

                    Journalist, publisher, and blogger Eskinder Nega. (World News photo) “ I am Eskinder Nega. Like my hero Nelson Mandela, my soul is unconquered, my spirit unbroken, my head unbowed, and my heart unafraid.”—Eskinder Nega from I Am Eskinder Nega Change is one of the scariest things in the world and yet it is also one of those variables of human existence that no one can avoid. One may literally find the lessons of that simple observation all over the map at this halfway point in the year 2012–– and only a few months before Americans take their collective political fate into their own hands during one of the most intense presidential elections on historical record.  From such a perspective, it matters less whether you look at the U.S. Supreme Court’s recent decisions to skillfully dissect Arizona’s (and by extension similar states’) Illegal Immigration Law, and then largely uphold President Barack Obama’s Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act as vi

President Barack Obama toasting Queen Elizabeth II with actor Tom Hanks at 2011 celebration for the Queen . (photo by White House photographer Pete Souza) The British Prime Minister Winston Churchill during World War II reportedly quoted the great Harlem Renaissance poet Claude McKay’s poem “If We Must Die” when he addressed the joint houses of the U.S. Congress on the eve of America’s entry into the war. South African President Nelson Mandela recited “Invictus,” by William Ernest Henley, to fellow inmates while imprisoned on Robben Island and “The Child” by Ingrid Jonker when South Africa’s first democratic parliament opened in 1994. American presidents , governors, and mayors have often presented samples of some of the most luminous talents in modern literary history to provide moral and intellectual frameworks for their stated, even if not their actual, political intentions. Inauguration poets James Dickey, Maya Angelou, and Elizabeth Alexander are a few examples. H

President Barack Obama greeting military personnel at Pensacola base in 2010 . (White House photo) Prior to leaving Washington D.C. on December 23 to join his family on Christmas vacation in Hawaii, President Barack Obama spent the week advocating for passage of the Payroll Tax Cut Extension, finally achieving a last-minute victory in the kind of intense political tug of war that characterized much his presidency in 2011. His endurance in his third year as the “leader of the free world” and the often-debated advances he has achieved on behalf of the U.S. in the face of economic and political upheavals that shook the world place him at number 2 in the current countdown . To read more of the article by Aberjhani please click this link : Countdown of 10 amazing moments from the year 2011: No. 2 President Obama - National African-American Art | Examiner.com

( Photo of Barack Obama and Michelle Obama by George Burns and Harpo Studios ) Until late Sunday evening on May 1, 2011, the big news in discussions focused on President Barack Obama throughout the weekend was that he and First Lady Michelle Obama were scheduled to appear on the Oprah Winfrey show on May 2. Then TV journalists interrupted regular television broadcasts at approximately 10:45 p.m. with the news that al Qaeda leader Osama Bin Laden had been killed and President Obama himself came on the air about an hour later to confirm the news and provide details on the end of a quest for justice that has taken nearly a full decade to achieve since September 11, 2001. Delivering an address that evoked the unhealed “gaping hole” left in the heart of Americans following 9/11 along with the heightened sense of patriotic unity that followed, Obama made his purpose for being on television at such an odd hour clear from the beginning: “Tonight I can report to the American people and to t

Cover the NUL's annual State of the Black Union publication . Please click here for the complete story: Countdown of 10 great moments in 2010 (part 7): Barack Obama and The NUL - National African-American Art | Examiner.com

To join the discussion please click the link: Countdown of Great Moments in African-American History 2010 Set to Start | Examiner.com

President Barack Obama on cover of Rolling Stone Magazine. Barack Obama rarely speaks of would-be political opponents as enemies but rather as representatives of specific interpretations of Americans’ shared human condition. Speaking with Jann S. Werner in the October 15 edition of Rolling Stone magazine, he pointed this out about his most vigorous critics... For more please click link: Obama, the Tea Party, and the art of political persuasions (part 3): Reality Gap - National African-American Art | Examiner.com

First Lady of the United States Michelle Obama The racial aspect of the Tea Party movement––despite African-American and biracial Tea Partiers who tote signs that advertise their opposition to Obama–– has proven particularly disturbing for many people. Members have defended themselves many times over against charges of racism and claim that Democrats are simply “playing the race card” in order to avoid confronting the real issues. For more please click the following link: Obama, the Tea Party, and the art of political persuasions (part 2): Signs - National African-American Art | Examiner.com

Obama, the Tea Party, and the art of political persuasions (series part 1): Cool - National African-American Art | Examiner.com

The election of Barack Obama to the United States presidency represents more than one man’s personal political victory. It also in part represents the triumph of the cultural values, diverse spirituality, and enduring legacies of a people who survived centuries of slavery to emerge as a globally influential and celebrated community. Stocks in products exploring and documenting African-American culture have ebbed and flowed since the 1920s-1940s Harlem Renaissance which helped generate and coincided with America’s famous Jazz Age. Interest surged forward again during the 1960s Black Arts Movement and yet again with the more recent boom in Afrocentric literature, in both traditional publishing houses and among independent authors turned publishers, from the 1990s to the present. The impact tends to be a cross-industry one that enhances the quality, productivity, and profitability of different institutions. Universities, high schools, museums, libraries, the film industry, and