brown vs. board of education is dead.

_posted in education | news | 01 July 2007

i spent all day thursday at work creating a website for the supreme court's recent decision on voluntary integration. they struck down the seattle school district's use of race to to determine where a majority of students will attend school. this was their way of fighting segregation in their schools. it is no doubt a blow to brown vs. broad of education.

the "cruel irony" as justice stevens writes in his individual dissent, is for chief justice roberts to evoke brown vs. broad of ed. to justify his decision to strike down seattle's method of desegregating schools. roberts also stated, "the way to stop discrimination on the basis of race is to stop discriminating on the basis of race."

i call bullshit. when you have schools that are 80-90% one race and 20-10% another race you have serious issues. how can our young people function in an ever changing world having never interacted with other races? the only white faces some of these kids see are teachers, who in their world are examples of power and dominance. they never interact with peers or families at their level from other races.

i've been doing my documentary at a school that is 80% latino and 20% black. from what im told there are about two white kids, and no asian students. this school has about 5,000 kids in a school meant for maybe 2,000 kids. needless to say these kids are at a disadvantage from day one. the resources at their school are sorely lacking. there is a clinic on campus that is about to be shut down due to lack of funds. so the students and teachers have to fundraise in order to keep it open. there are teachers who pay for books with their own money or who are regulars on donors choose.

brown vs. broad of education died a long time ago. and this week the supreme court put the final nail in that coffin. it rests quietly next to thurgood marshall at arlington national cemetary. a 5-4 split down party lines is just another example of how we still make decisions based on our belief in our party's ideologies, not our children's future. but the truth of the matter is how many of these justice's liberal or not, have kids in these schools effected by this decision; none. when people of power believe that all children can get the same education without needing the backing of our legal system then we as a country, and as citizens of the world, lose out.

so does moving from a race-based system to an economic-based system make things better? you'll still be on the race-based track. historically minorities have been the poorest in this country. either way, schools in neighborhoods where parent(s) are working two or three jobs are the losers in thursday's decision. neighborhoods where 50% of the students drop out of school,which by the way are the numbers nationwide for black and latino students, due to the lack of resources or even just decent resources are the losers. i'm not saying the majority of these kids who drop out will end of up the legal system, but remember, its cheaper to educate a child, than house an inmate. just something to think about.

_soundcheck: ahmad jamal: ahmad's blues

tipping the point...

_posted in education | news | the world | 08 June 2007

malcolm gladwell talking about genius

malcolm gladwell talks about genius at a new yorker conference. he starts off by suggesting that we "abandon our romantic notions of the importance of genius." that even within genius and its three steps; obsession, isolation and insight, there are two types of genius; premodern and modern. michael ventris is his example of premodern genius while andrew wiles is a "modern genius and problem solver we need now and in the future."

ventris is an ametur who has a gift who mastered a subject. he takes a huge amount of acquired knowledge and solves an unsolvable problem. he sequestered himself to achieve his goal.

wiles' insight is seen as modern since he has a social approach in his knowledge seeking. for ten years he focuses on this problem, researching other mathematicians and the collaborating with those working on various theorems. his approach is about "effort and training" and educating himself.

gladwell goes on to talk about the ten thousand hours rule which more or less means it would take about 10 years to obtain the special expertise to master a field. it really puts things into perspective. the process has always interested me when i come across the work of my favorite filmmakers, artists and writers. i always wonder how much time and effort it took for them to get to their present state, to master their craft.

he again uses wiles as the best example of genius and what makes him unique is his "willingness to set everything aside and focus on one specific problem." to find collaborators to reach his end goal. the one genius vs. thirteen smart guy problem; quantity over quality. a large number of smart people will solve a problem more easily than one genius. modern problems require persistence and stubbornness.

"are we actually selecting people for stubbornness?" are we taking the potential to do something vs. those who actually do something seriously?

gladwell touches on education and how we as a culture see genius. when thinking about our schools, we do push that idea and competitive nature of those high above the curve while leaving the majority behind. i remember high school being exactly like that. there were some of us treated really well due to our gpa and accomplishments, while the others were barely paid attention to, barely seen as viable; students or future problem solvers. it's the same at the university level as well.

when we begin realizing that educating a large number of people to be those stubborn problem solvers; to educate themselves in order to solve our various problems, to become social (collaborative) thinkers, we could actually find answers to a lot of our woes.

_soundcheck:andy palacio & the garifuna collective: watina

rest in peace ali farka toure

_posted in africa | dayedayerocks | news | 07 March 2006

this morning started off well... but this made me sad! ali farka toure has died... and if you dont know this amazing musician then you need to get to know him... he was one of the musician who help mold the blues (african blues not less!) for me over the years... so in honor of this beautiful man, its an all blues day... muddy waters, toure, john lee hooker, robert johnson, blind willie jonson, johnny guitar watson, johnny taylor, son house... shit its time for a new playlist... the blues!

alright people... stay up and find some inspiration... death can take your hand at any time... i suggest you have your hands full so that mofo cant get a good grip...

_soundcheck: ali farka toure, african blues

money does a soul some good...

_posted in dayedayerocks | education | news | 11 January 2006

last night i finally got this freelance check ive been waiting on for a minute... not just waiting on passively, but actively making LISTS of things to buy... i mean serious lists, people... not just random shit i've wanted for awhile, but a notepad file filled with links to specific items i didnt need until now, now that i have extra paper to burn...

it's funny how moving to l.a. and being on the edge of broke every month changed my need list. how things that were a mandatory at home; a new cell phone every year, comic books, gadgets and tons of magazines were the essentials. i can't remember the last magazine i bought, or book for that matter. sitting in the bookstore reading a magazine from cover to cover is not a shameful thing and hell what else is the research library for, but to check out all the books i thought i needed to buy.

and after opening that letter and seeing that check, i really dont want to spend any of it... but i know i have to, cause not having furniture is no longer an option... and my ikea short sofa is killing my fucking neck... so it's off to spend a chunk of change on furniture and other needs.

_in other news

i missed seeing jonathon kozol speak at antioch university, cause i was trying to pack for my trip home the night of the event back in november... i love this man on so many levels. if you havent read his essays or his books, you're missing a lot of great information. kozol is an amazing force when it comes to the commentary of america's educational system. his criticism of the educational system and his very honest dialogue of race in the system is very necessary for a bureaucracy that needs to be torn down completely and rebuilt from the ground up.

i found this great mp3 from a counterspin interview over at fair.org... take a LISTEN!

_soundcheck: michael rose & sly & robbie, x uhuru

damn!

_posted in news | 11 December 2005

richard pryor is dead... i dont even have words for this... seriously...

all i can say is pryor was a pivotal part of my childhood... i remember sneaking into the living room in the middle of the night to listen to richard pryor records my grandparents hid under the living room sofa... i learned most of my curse words and other wonderfully worldly phrases from pryor...

rest in peace man... with your crazy ass...

_soundcheck: sam cooke, the rhythm and the blues

i'm back home in los angeles

_posted in art | dayedayerocks | film | interactive narratives | music | news | photography | the temple | web | 15 November 2005

well, on a bed of california stars is back, since ive been told several times i need to start it back up and i am tired of sending out emails, so here it goes...

two week vacations are freakin' long! i feel like i was in georgia for a whole month. re:birth, my first exhibit, was a blast! pictures are up… hoping to add more once i can track them down.

finally finished reading, on photography by susan sontag, while sitting in airports on saturday (as in the whole day saturday). previous to sontag's passing in 2004, i had only read one of her writings, notes on "camp," which i found to be very entertaining.

there are tons of passages from on photography that do it for me, but i think these are the most interesting...

_first quote

Nobody ever discovered ugliness through photographs. But many, through photographs, have discovered beauty. Except for those situations in which the camera is used to document, or to mark social rites, what moves people to take photographs is finding something beautiful. (The name under which Fox Talbot patented the photograph in 1841 was the calotype: from kalos, beautiful.) Nobody exclaims, "Isn't that ugly! I must take a photograph of it." Even if someone did say that, all it would mean is: "I found that ugly thing. . . beautiful."

if any photographer made the ugly beautiful, it was diane arbus.

_second quote

A photograph that brings news of some unsuspected zone of misery cannot make a dent in public opinion unless there is an appropriate context of feeling and attitude. The photographs of Mathew Brady and his colleagues took on the horrors of the battlefields did not make people any less keen to go on with the Civil War. The photographs of ill-clad, skeletal prisoners held at Andersonville inflamed Northern public opinion-against the South. (The effect of the Andersonville photographs must have been partly due to the very novelty, at the time, of seeing photographs.) ... Photographs cannot create a moral position, but they cnn reinforce one -- and can help build a nascent one.

regardless of one's views on the war in iraq, final salute is a very touching piece, and most definitely an "unsuspected zone of misery." there is a great deal of "appropriate context of feelings and attitude" on both sides of the debate on iraq.

_another quote

Photographs may be more memorable than moving images, because they are a neat slice of time, not a flow. Television is a stream of underselected images, each of which cancels its predecessor. Each still photograph is a privileged moment, turned into a slim object that one can keep and look at again. Photographs like the one that made the front page of most newspapers in the world in 1972 -- a naked South Vietnamese child just sprayed by American napalm, running down a highway toward the camera, her opens open, screaming with pain--probably did more to increase the public revulsion against the war than a hundred hours of televised barbarities.

(nick) ut cong huynh's image of a "a naked South Vietnamese child just sprayed by American napalm, running down a highway toward the camera, her opens open, screaming with pain." Winner of the World Press Photo, 1972. a portion of the "hundred hours of televised barbarities."

_in other news

the uc system's investment committee voted to divest from sudan! the recommendation goes to the board of regents in january for an up or down vote.

well it's started... i have no idea where this damn thing is suppose to go or exactly what it's suppose to be... but hey... who doesn’t want lay their “heavy head tonight on a bed of california stars”

_soundcheck: cat power, the covers record