FORWARDEVER MEDIA CENTER
Writer Alex
Haley writing The Autobiography of Malcolm X with Brother Malcolm.
"The
media's the most powerful entity on earth. They have the power to make
the innocent guilty and to make the guilty innocent, and that's power.
Because they control the minds of the masses."
- Malcolm X
Mission
The Forwardever Media Center is 100% committed to providing unconventional writing workshops and media literacy training to "at-risk" Black youth, particularly males, ages 14 through 24. Working in partnership with The Mentoring Center in Oakland, CA., the Center's writing workshops, website internship, and film forums, help students develop critical thinking skills and discover their creative talents. We recruit youth for our programs from the California Youth Authority (the state's largest prison for youth) as well as from universities and high schools. This cross-pollination of young minds creates dynamic shared experiences.
Programs
Whatchusay Cinema–A monthly film forum hosted at schools or community centers in Northern California that explores issues such as race, class, gender, and society. Students are joined by a panel of activists, educators, athletes, entrepreneurs, etc. to rate the films and convene roundtable discussions about corresponding relevant issues in society. For info about film screenings and schedules contact: cheo@whatchusay.com
Writing Workshops–We offer intensive seminars in journalism, creative writing, cultural criticism, new media, film production, etc. These seminars are taught at the center, located at 1224 Preservation Park, Oakland, CA, 94612. They are also available on location, at schools, community and detention centers, churches, etc. For info about class schedules contact: cheo@whatchusay.com
Internships–Whatchusay.com offers competitive internships to young writers who have clearly demonstrated a passion for the craft of writing or media production. The 3-month internship covers news writing and reporting, feature writing, creative writing, media literacy and new media. Working in partnership with community based organizations, universities and international and national media outlets, we produce a pipeline of informed journalists of color who will go on to create their own independent media organizations or work for major media organizations.
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New African Americans? Nope. Blackfolk? Yep.
credit: Lola Adigun. Lola Adigun (far left with dreadlocks), a Nigerian
immigrant living in Atlanta, hangs out with a close
knit group of Afro-Caribbeans and African Americans.
With America's never-ending commodification of culture and oversimplification of race (read: "the one drop rule") its no wonder people of African descent don't want to be lumped into the simple category: "African American." The wave of Carribbean and African immigration early in the last century, established a set of tensions between West Indians and native born black that some believe persist to this day. But these days, blackfolk are too sophisticated in thier understanding of age-old divide and conquer tactics. Whatever differences existed seemed relatively minor in the face of our common history of slavery, colonialism, racial segregation, and economic struggle. Several Caribbean immigrants and Caribbean Americans -- Marcus Garvey, Claude McKay, Harry Belafonte, Sidney Portier, Paule Marshall, George Padmore, etc. -- rose to high profiles in black America and remain icons today.
According recent U.S. Census Burea data, there has been a 67 percent increase in the number of US residents, who identify themselves as Caribbean-born and a 167 percent increase in those who are "African-born." Despite the fact that foreign-born blacks remain a small segment of America's overall black population -- two percent for Africans and four percent for those born in the Caribbean -- their pattern of concentration make for disproportionately large impacts in certain places.
Increasingly, black people born in the U.S. are forced to confront black cultures very different from their own. In past generations and even now to a less extent, his has made for some perpetuation of stereotypes, tensions, and petty rivalries.. but as any forigen-born black person soon learns, this country holds firm to its conception of race. If you look black (regardless of your complexion or accent) you are "Black" and will be regarded as such. When you walk into a courtroom, bank, or even an upscale handbag store in Paris (ask Oprah), no one checks your passport to see if it says London, Paris, Jamaica or Johannesburg.
Let's celebrate our various African-derived cultures, be they from Barbadoes, Trinidad, South Carolina or Soweto, Lagos or London. We melanin-blessed poeple share the same root.
Let's nourish it. Whatchusay?
Posted on February 20, 2007 10:06 AM
