Every year in the spring the policy debate community is introduced to a new topic to be explored, theorized, deconstructed, revised and re-imagined.  Policy Debate is a rewarding and rigorous, high school and college activity that requires daily practice, diligence, intellectual stamina, a willingness to loose, access to resources like printing, coaches, and a fairly substantial travel budget.  Historically, policy debate has been a male, white and affluent dominated activity.  But recently, there has been a push to create a space where women and ethnic minorities can enter the arena, feel comfortable and thrive.  New accessible structures have been put in place by special programs called Urban Debate Leagues, that have popped up in many major cities like Atlanta, New York, Baltimore, Memphis, Milwaukee and about twenty others.  But these programs do not address the inherent debate cultural boundaries that still shut out certain students from the activity.

Spreading is a technique unique to policy debate that is strategically advantageous and heightens the level of competition unbelievably.  The reasoning behind the practice is that the more arguments a debater can deliver in an eight minute speech, the harder it will be for the opponent to successfully answer all arguments and present their own.  Spreading requires countless hours of practice to achieve, proper breathing techniques and advanced reading and critical thinking skills.  It is an exclusionary practice because it makes the entire debate experience incomprehensible to a layperson and it immediately intimidates a lot of students who do not have strong reading and critical thinking skills, which are usually students who are in low achieving schools, which more often than not are schools that are mostly comprised of black and brown students.

[youtube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dj4pQe11eZc[/youtube]

Further, policy debate introduces the gamut of old, dead, white philosophers, complex theories and mind tricks that are meant to confuse opponents and give teams a winning advantage. Counter-plans (an alternative to the plan presented by the affirmative team), Kritiques (arguments addressing flawed mindsets, social assumptions and established paradigms) and theory debates all are considered advanced forms of policy debate argumentation.   In order to run the complex arguments and successfully refute them both teams must have an understanding of the structure of the argument, what the specific argument says and how the argument relates to the yearly debate resolution. These intricacies of the game further alienate new debaters, who are often female and/or minorities.

But in the past two decades, the policy debate world has seen a kind of counterculture emerge that carves out space for the inclusion of gender, race, sexual orientation and other questions of intersectionality that allows traditionally underrepresented populations into the debate world, and gives them a chance to win.  There have been teams who play music, who remain silent during their speech time, and who deliberately refuse to spread, opting for a more realistic pace of argumentation. These new push backs are like welcomed new air to an old, stuffy, stale activity.  The HBO documentary, Resolved does a great job of chronicling this new shift in Policy Debate.

[youtube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EvNNtEVkckc[/youtube]

Tupac is one of my favorite musicians.  I admire him for more than his popular songs or his posthumous glorification or martyr status but because he was a complex man who allowed his audience to see all facades of himself.  He unapologetic when he ‘Got Around’ (in reference to Tupac’s song, “I Get Around”) nor did he lose his candor when he recorded “Dear Mama” nor was he unashamed to emphatically demand for black people to “Keep Ya Head Up.”

After his death a book of his poetry was released entitled, The Rose the Grew From Concrete.

A few years ago I wrote an interpretation of that poem for an Educational Studies course I was taking, which dealt with the shortcomings of schooling for inner city children. Here is a piece of what I had to say:
In the United States there is a cruel joke played on many minority inner city youth.  They live in a land overflowing with milk and honey, yet they are denied enough meager scraps to sustain themselves.  Temptations plague them worse than the apple that enticed Eve of Biblical times.   These students are the underprivileged and marginalized.  The ones cast in the shadows when company comes.  They are the dark stain upon America’s pristine image.  Yet, they are here.
These are the roses Tupac Amaru Shakur wrote about.  Daily, they defy the odds that are put up as roadblocks to their success.  They rise from gang ridden high-rise projects.  They rise from sewage-laden parks. They rise from drug addicted and alcoholic parents.  They rise from rape and molestation.  They rise through all the muck and mire life could possibly throw at them.  It is no wonder that their rose petals are rough and bruised in places.  In the midst of their miracle, America does not see that they are amazing for simply surviving.  America sees these flowers as defective; they do not bloom as full as others that were planted on fertile land.  They don’t have the thorns needed to protect themselves from the troubles life will surely bring.  We as gardeners have an obligation to nurture all our flowers, regardless of their physical aesthetic or where within our garden they may bloom.

Though my words were very incisive, I think they speak to a raw emotion I felt at that time, just leaving an inadequate public school education just months before I wrote this.  I share this because I think it most aptly speaks to the kind of world/head-space Tupac was most likely in when he wrote the poem a few decades ago. Further, the rose that he personifies typifies the magical nature that takes black art into the realm of Afrofuturism.  Tupac is imagining a world where young black boys and girls are able to overcome all of life’s unfair obstacles and are able to show the world their true beauty.

Southern rap duo, Outkast has made a lasting mark on the HipHop scene for both their innovative and futuristic music and their eclectic, unapologetic style.  In their sophomore release Andre 3000 and Big Boi push the bounds of Afrofuturistic sound production.  The album title, ATLiens, pays homage to their cultural roots in the great city of Atlanta while also denoting thier seeming misplacement in the rap mainstream.  At the time of the album’s release, 1996, HipHop was all about glorified drug culture and the glamorization of the street hustler.  But Andre and Big Boi chose to focus on existential introspection, and extraterrestrial life.  They intersected these futuristic notions with a southern, relaxed, ‘player-like’ persona.  Outkast is a cornerstone in the futuristic realm of HipHop and rap music.

In the video for their album titled song, ATLiens, Big Boi and Andre 3000 are searching through hieroglyphs and climb through a narrow passageway that can be said to look very much like the entrance to a Utopian enclave.  The hieroglyphs are clear allusions to an Egyptian past that can be viewed as the recursiveness of the blutopic, as it points to an ancient past and futuristic present.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZkgMv6Z8jxs[/youtube]

In her first novel, The Third of Grange Copeland, Alice Walker introduces a family of characters with a peculiar type of social interaction and the capacity to perform some of the cruelest acts against one another, including child neglect, infidelity and murder.  She takes the reader through the three lives of the main character, Grange Copeland.  Her ability to wrestle with the complex idea of generational stagnation due to certain socio-economic status circumstances that leave the impoverished with no personal agency to change the situation for their offspring is skillful.  Walker does an excellent job of examining how the theory of Social Reproduction can be applied in other areas besides its’ original educational context.  She does this through the similarities between Grange and his son Brownfield.    In the same story she weaves in a negation to Social Reproduction, which ultimately blames systems of oppression for all problems the oppressed face, by giving all her characters the burden of choice. Grange, in addition to being a part of the example advocating Social Reproduction, is the counter-narrative by ensuring Ruth, his granddaughter, is able to lead a different life than all the other Copelands.

In The Third of Grange Copeland, Walker is able to carve out three distinct lives for Grange Copeland, without reincarnation.  In each of his lives, Walker creates new space for Grange which also alters his attitude.  Walker’s ability to imagine Grange as a multifaceted character across space and time puts her squarely in the trajectory of Afrofuturistic writers.  Though her novel is set squarely in the Southern United States and New York City, there are elements of futurism and un-realism that are found in this griping novel.

Spike Lee has made films pertaining to the African American experience for the past thirty years.  He has grown into prominence as one of the defining voices of modern Black culture.  One of my favorite films by him is Crooklyn.  The movie is a coming of age story about a young black girl, Troy, living in Brooklyn, New York in the 1970s.  The movie is best known for its musical score with songs like “People Make the World Go Round” and “Everyday People.” The semi-autobiographical tale is the creation of another world that resembles Brooklyn, where Spike Lee grew up.  The title of of the movie denotes this new space creation, otherwise the movie could have been simply titled Brooklyn.  Significantly, there are no white Americans prominent in the film, there is hispanic or otherwise ethnic representation in the film with Troy’s neighborhood friend, Gloria, and the owner and operator of the local corner store. Lee is able to recreate remnants of his world in black and brown hues.  He chooses to tell a story about a black family that is positive, entertaining and realistic that does not involve an outside white world.  In this film Lee is able to create an all black space, which is not utopian.  But nonetheless, it is a space for black people, created by black people.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M4ivoM-19yA[/youtube]

Earlier this semester we discussed Frederic Jameson’s “Archaeologies of the Future” and from that discussion arose an idea of the suburbs being the middle space he describes as being between the city and the country.  The long running Showtime series Weeds provides support for this notion of suburbia being this almost utopian space.

The beginning of every episode begins with a song called “Little Boxes” which describes how all the houses, cars, and people all look the same in a fictitious California suburb called Agrestic. The premise is that Agrestic looks like any other suburban enclave in the United States, with its exercising fathers, coffee drinkers and stay at home mothers.  Upon watching the show, one realizes the show is more about debunking the myth of the monolithic ‘middle America’ experience.  Nancy Botwin, the main character, must find a way to take care of her family after her husband dies.  Instead of getting a job Nancy decides to start selling marijuana illegally.  Nancy’s life before her husband died was pleasant and simple and his death took her from her happy/utopian space and into a harsh world where bills were piling high, her two boys are in desperate need of guidance and financial support, Nancy has very few lucrative job prospects.

What starts off looking like Utopia is quickly turned into a struggle to maintain what society tells Nancy she should have and the madness that ensues.  Nancy Botwin’s life typifies why Utopia cannot exist in reality.  What happens when tragedy strikes? [youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u4KfJztaJ5I[/youtube]

From our conversation this week about Hip-Hop and its connections to Utopian thought, there is a burgeoning group of black rap artists who are working to get to a more (or back to a) conscious state of HipHop while maintaining a mainstream audience. These rappers include the likes of Kendrick Lamar, B.o.B., Big K.R.I.T. and, my personal favorite, J. Cole.

J. Cole is signed to Jay-z’s RocNation and is in many ways expected to carry on the lineage of Jay-z and Kanye West and the Roc-a-fella dynasty.  But J. Cole has a story that is worlds different from Jay-Z’s grimy, street drug narratives and Kanye West’s word images Chicago through the lens of a cocky black man. Jermaine Cole was born in Germany to a white mother and black father.  He was raised in Fayetteville, North Carolina, which he chooses as the backdrop to majority of his lyrical tales.  Cole believed he would have a better chance at securing a record deal in New York City and thus attended St. John’s University.  His rap career did not take shape until he graduate magna cum laude of his class. As a HipHop artist, Cole is arguably in a different world than majority of his contemporaries and even further away from his predecessors, as he quite often chooses college as the subject of his rhymes and makes allusions aspects of the black collegiate experience.  Further, Cole considered (and is still considering) graduate education as an alternative if his rap career had not rocketed (now: as another avenue of creative ingenuity and true knowledge acquirement, rather than as an alternative to his rap career) .  Education, especially higher and professional education are not mainstay topics in mainstream HipHop and popular rap music.  Further, he occupies a unique space being from North Carolina that is not dirty South rap nor is it East Coast rap but somewhere in the middle, with a little college kid/backpacker mixed in.

J. Cole constructs various spaces that are both utopian and dystopian, or (maybe Nathaniel Mackey’s Bluetopic is a better term) influenced.  Since his debut mixtape, The Warm Up, Cole references three distinct terms that he uses to build imagined, lived and perceived worlds for his fans to enjoy, learn and grow from.  These terms are Dreamville Fayettenam, and  Cole World. He often references Dreamville and Fayettenam in his ad-libs, these two ‘places’ (they do not occupy a physical space but are derived from reality so I suppose metaphysical places is a better term) can represent an imagined future and the woes of the present respectively.  Dreamville is a place where J. Cole envisions a better place for himself and the people he knows, mainly Fayetteville, NC inhabitants. Cole actually attempts to bring this imagined world to fruition through the establishment of a non-profit organization, aimed at helping inner city youth in North Carolina. Dreamville is a liminal space between his lived experiences growing up in Fayetteville and a better imagined dream place.  In my opinion, Fayettenam is the combination of Fayetteville and the horrors of 1970s wartime Vietnam, as Cole views his hometown in a perpetual war space that injures both mentally and physically, its inhabitants. The imagery of a war ravaged place that is in need of healing but no help is on the way appears in my mind when I am rocking out to his music (which is probably far more to often than I care to admit lol).   In his stories about Fayettenam he illuminates the dregs of his hometown. Last, he often talks about Cole World which, can be phonetically heard as cold world.  Cole World is used to describe his lyrical dexterity and prowess while adding color to the ways in which he views the beauty and ugliness of this world.

It is through these unique terms that J. Cole accesses Nathaniel Mackey’s Blutopic.  Mackey describes Blutopic as  “This thirst or demand or desire sounds a sometimes dark note, a note whose not yet fulfilled promise bends it and turns it blue.”  Mackey goes on to explain that the Blutopic is serial in nature due to repetition of attempted advance, the reaching of a limit and then the need to start again.  For his die hard fans, Cole’s artful ability to keep us on the edge of our seats patiently (and times agonizing and impatiently) waiting for another drop, twit, interview or any ripple in the universe to signal that he hasn’t forgot about our hunger for his art is that thirst, demand and desire Mackey is describing. (J. Cole often pushes back his release dates, vanishes from social media for months at a time and is unlike other artists who are usually featured on other records while recording their own to remain relevant.) Further, J. Cole represents Mackey’s seriality or recursiveness through both the a fore mentioned unique J. Cole terms and his self-description is of having both a horn and a halo (Check the image above both are present in the spelling of his name).  Dreamville and having a halo, or being able to articulate the beautiful and wondrous aspects of existence represent the attempted advance or, for Cole, the attempt to leave Fayettenam and enter Cole World; or a genuine journey to be a good person. Dreamville can arguably be viewed as the space where Cole reaches the limit, as it is that middle space between where he came (Fayettenam) and where he wants to be (Cole World).  It is in Dreamville where he reaches the limits society places on him and then must begin again in Fayettenam on his quest to find his Cole (cold) World.

I leave you with a song from his Friday Night Lights mixtape which is derived from Nas’ popular and critically acclaimed, Illmatic. It is an appropriate way to highlight how Cole is both taking HipHop back to the space of the ‘Golden Era’ and advancing in a new direction and time.  Villematic

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FbM4-RgOI8A[/youtube]

The popular HBO series, The Wire, is a glimpse into the dregs of society in Baltimore, MD. The series focuses on drug culture, public school failures, labor racketeering and the methods Baltimore city employed to deal with these situations through politics and law enforcement.  In season 3, Major Howard ‘Bunny’ Colvin implements a radical concept to contain the drug culture of the Western District, one of the poorest and most dangerous areas in Baltimore.  One area of the Western District becomes a a safe drug zone where people are free to sell and buy illegal narcotics.  The only rule Colvin mandates for Hamsterdam, the safe drug zone, is no violence.  This enclave acts as a haven for drug dealers and users to indulge in their illicit behaviors without reproach and there are even resources like clean needles and condoms for prostitutes and drug users to carry out their deeds ‘safely’.  Furthering the utopian feeling, the other residents of the Western District are able to live without fear of gun violence, theft and gang activity.  Seemingly, Major Colvin creates an urban Utopia in the Western District where drug use is legal and residents are free to live without fear.  But, Major Colvin’s experiment creates a chaotic space where children of drug abusers are neglected, drug users are not getting help to end their habits and the dregs of inner-city poverty-stricken society are at play, creating a sense of dystopia.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BoiJRKwiC1Y[/youtube]

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_9tuxxkgFME[/youtube]

In the fifth chapter of Zora Neale Hurston’s 1937, New Negro Renaissance work, Their Eyes Were Watching God, the main character, Janie and her new husband Joe Starks seek out Eatonville, Florida the first all Black town in America.

“On the train the next day, Joe didn’t make any speeches with rhymes to her, but he bought her the best things the butcher had, like apples and a glass lantern full of candies.  Mostly he talked about plans for the town when he got there.  They were bound to need somebody like him.  Janie took a lot of looks at him and she was proud of what she saw.  Kind of portly like rich white folks.  Strange trains, and people and places didn’t scare him neither.  Where they got off the train at Maitland he found a buggy to carry them over to the colored town right away.

It was early in the afternoon when they got there, so Joe said they must walk over the place and look around.  They locked arms and strolled from end to end of the town.  Joe noted the scant dozen of shame-faced houses scattered in the sand and palmetto roots and said, ‘God, they call this a town? Why, ‘taint’ nothing but a raw place in de woods.’

‘It is a whole heap littler than Ah thought.’ Janie admitted her disappointment.

‘Just like Ah thought,’ Joe said.  ‘A whole heap uh talk and nobody doin’ nothin’. I god, where’s de Mayor?’ he asked somebody. ‘Ah want tuh speak wid de Mayor.’

Two men who were sitting on their shoulderblades under a huge live oak tree almost sat upright at the tone of his voice.  They stared at Joe’s face, his clothes and his wife.

‘Where y’all come from in sich uh big haste?” Lee Coker asked.

‘Middle Georgy,’ Starks answered briskly. ‘Joe Starks is mah name, from in and through Georgy.’

‘You and yo’ daughter goin’ tuh join wid us in fellowship?’ the other reclining figure asked. ‘Mighty glad tuh have yuh. Hicks is the name.  Guv’nor Amos Hicks from Buford, South Carolina.  Free, single, disengaged.’

‘I god, Ah ain’t nowhere near old enough to have no grown daughter. This here is mah wife.”

Hicks sank back and lost interest at once.

‘Where is de Mayor?’ Starks persisted. ‘Ah wants tuh talk wid him.’

‘Youse uh mite too previous for dat,’ Coker told him. ‘Us ain’t got none yit.’

‘Ain’t got no Mayor! Well, who tells y’all what to do?’

‘Nobody. Everybody’s grown. And then agin, Ah reckon us just ain’t thought about it. Ah know Ah ain’t…”

Joe Starks goes on to purchase two hundred acres of land, build a town store, incorporat the town and make a small fortune by selling parcels of land to Black people when they move to Eatonville. He became the first Mayor of Eatonville.

Hurston makes no mention of crime in Eatonville.  The poorest of the poor are feed.  The entire town lives in harmony through agriculture and leisure activities.  Even a mistreated mule in Eatonville is set free to live out his last days free, happy and unencumbered with hardship.  But even in Hurston’s construction of this Utopian space, there are traces of dystopia through the harsh gossip that emanates from the mouths of its civilians, its acceptance of domestic violence and the pure envy that manifests in many women towards Janie for being Mrs. Mayor Starks.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_BynXfREPG8[/youtube]Here is the full length movie from the class presentation on February 5th. The movie is an adaptation of Sam Greenlee’s Black Arts novel by the same title.  In the story the main character, Dan Freeman, enacts an elaborate scheme to reclaim the south side of Chicago and eventually all ghettos in cities across the United States.  These urban enclaves Greenlee imagines are arguably a Black man’s Utopia in America.