Black to the Future: Reality checks from
the hip hop nation

Each generation must, out of relative obscurity, discover its mission, fulfill it, or betray it.

Frantz Fanon, 1964

February 17, 2005

The Executive Leadership Council Institute for Leadership Development & Research has compiled a census of the most comprehensive data available of African Americans on corporate boards. A briefing of the census data will be held Thursday, February 17, 2005, from 9:30 10:30 AM in the Holeman Lounge of the National Press Club, 529 14th Street, NW.

The Institute's 2004 Census of African-American Directors on Fortune 500 Corporate Boards of Directors benchmarks key findings related to African-American corporate directors. Census findings highlight:

- Fortune 500 companies and industries with the highest and lowest representation of African-American directors
- Geographic and regional trends
- Number and percentage of directors by Fortune rank
- Gender representation
- A listing of African-American directors on Fortune 500 boards

At the briefing, The Executive Leadership Council President Carl Brooks and Institute Executive Director Dennis Dowdell, Jr. will be joined by corporate leaders and Census researchers, Erika Hayes James, Associate Professor of Leadership and Organizational Behavior, the University of Virginia, Lynn Perry Wooten, Clinical Assistant Professor of Corporate Strategy & International Business and Management & Organizations, University of Michigan, and BP North America President Ross Pillari to present findings. BP is founding sponsor of the Institute.

The Census which will be updated every two years is the latest metric in The Executive Leadership Council's efforts to help corporations assess corporate inclusion efforts and make the business case for diversity. Pro Mosaic II, a diversity assessment tool developed by The Executive Leadership Council, has been affirmed by corporate CEOs and used by companies to benchmark diversity in five business and leadership areas.

The full report will be available the Executive Leadership Council website.

October 5, 2004

"Black voter registration breaking records."

July 21, 2004

Diddy Launches ‘Citizen Change’ Vote Initiative

Penn brothers want Bush in frat, not the White House: Frat boys debate who they would trust to assist in a keg stand. The republic is in good hands. But, hey, whatever it takes to good young folk interested in politics.

July 20, 2004

Hit the bricks, NAACP.

Kerry, Call Russell (Simmons)

June 7, 2004

Where Entrepreneurs Go and the Internet Is Free. "Linda Branagan would seem to be the ideal customer for entrepreneurs and telecommunications companies looking to make money selling wireless Internet connections. But, like thousands of business road warriors, Ms. Branagan often does not pay for the service because she gets it free.

At cafes, malls and downtown business districts, there has been an explosion of Internet access points, or Wi-Fi hot spots, that let computer users log on to the Internet for free. That growth is a fundamental reason - though not the only one - that technology start-ups, investors and industry analysts who had high hopes for Wi-Fi are scrambling to find sustainable business models.

Ms. Branagan, a director of a medical device research company, pays T-Mobile, a unit of Deutsche Telekom, $6 an hour for a wireless Internet connection when she is in airports if there are no free access points. But it is another matter when she is working outside the office in San Francisco.

"The Internet is free here," she said, as she sat doing research at The Canvas, an art gallery with a lounge and cafe setting in San Francisco's Sunset district. "Why would I pay T-Mobile?" she asked, when the cafe wners provide free Internet access to attract patrons."

Beats Ladies Night and 'drink free befo' midnight specials, don't it?"

June 5, 2004

STONEHENGE CAPITAL AND NATIONAL URBAN LEAGUE TO FORM $127.5 MILLION COMMUNITY INVESTMENT FUND. "Stonehenge Community Development, a subsidiary of Baton Rouge-based Stonehenge Capital Company, has received a $127.5 million allocation of New Markets Tax Credits to create the Stonehenge Capital / National Urban League Empowerment Fund. The allocation was announced today by Treasury Secretary John Snow in Racine, Wisconsin. The Empowerment Fund will make debt and equity investments in small businesses located in low-income communities nationwide. The Fund will be administered by Stonehenge, and will be operational and actively investing by year-end."

"...Of course, Disney was ready for them. The resort has always attracted families, but last fall it made a bid for larger family groups by starting Magical Gatherings, which rearranged restaurants, added personal travel planners and four attractions available only for groups of eight or more: a Peter Pan fireworks cruise, a private safari and dinner at the Animal Kingdom, an International Dinner at Epcot, and a breakfast with Disney characters.

Just as extended families like the Gallaghers have discovered the joy of traveling together, the travel industry has discovered extended families. Resorts, hotels and tour operators are courting them in ways that go far beyond "children stay free," with everything from baby-sitting and family yoga to reconfigured suites, free family portraits and personal concierges to plan events for large groups. Zagat, for example, is offering a new guide to family travel, with parent ratings and reviews on resorts, including categories like "tops for toddlers" and "strollers available." The Winnetu resort, with suites and cottages on South Beach in Martha's Vineyard, promotes its nonsmoking policy as family friendly, and offers grocery delivery to eliminate at least one headache that comes with renting a house with extended family."

June 4, 2004

Entrepreneurs redefining notion of black power, by JABARI ASIM, News-press.com. "E. Stanley O’Neal is often in the news. As chief executive of Merrill Lynch, his maneuverings attract nearly constant scrutiny. Recently, his name surfaced when he set a record among George Bush’s fund-raisers. After O’Neal wrote a letter urging his executives to open their wallets on behalf of the president, they coughed up $279,750 in less than three weeks. As one of nine Wall Street “Rangers,” a name given to individuals who have raised $200,000 or more for the Bush campaign, O’Neal is virtually guaranteed access to the highest levels of government. Rare among Rangers, he is African-American"

Harold Ford Jr., Prince of Memphis: The Memphis congressman, a poster boy for New Democrats, is eyeing the Senate in 2006. by Roger Abramson, Special from the Nashville Scene. " If Harold Ford Jr., U.S. congressman, rising Democratic star and national co-chair of the John Kerry for President campaign, could make one wish for this election season, it would be for all fuming mad Democrats to take a deep breath, relax and start getting in touch with their inner undecided American voter.

“We cannot win by being angry,” he says, moving his arms in smooth but tightly controlled gesticulations within his dark tailored suit. “You have to understand, people like George Bush,” he says. “He’s a nice guy. We need to learn from him. Remember what Bill Clinton did: He figured out what Republicans were doing well, and instead of complaining about it, he figured out a way to do it better.”

A Leap of Faith, By BOB HERBERT, NY Times. "Remember the name Barack Obama. You'll be hearing it a lot as this election season unfolds.

Mr. Obama, a Democrat, is tall, thin, youthful and very smart, and he's running (sometimes literally, depending on the schedule) for a U.S. Senate seat from Illinois.

He's got a million-dollar smile and he's charismatic. At the moment he has a substantial lead in the polls. If that lead holds and he wins in November, he'll be only the third African-American to take a seat in the Senate since Reconstruction.

His partisans describe Mr. Obama as a dream candidate, the point man for a new kind of politics designed to piece together a coalition reminiscent of the one blasted apart by the bullet that killed Robert Kennedy in 1968."

May 25, 2004

"Hip-Hop Summit storms in, slips away: Despite lofty talk, event has a built-in dilemma

Stick the Beatles and shrieking fans into the Democratic convention, add steely-eyed security worthy of the Secret Service, toss some Ecko wear in among the suits, and you'd get something that looked like Saturday's Hip-Hop Summit.

50 Cent was a no-show, D12 was all show, and Eminem kept it low-pro at the Fox Theatre, where VIPs gathered before more than 4,000 young folks. The summit describes itself as a nonpartisan national coalition using hip-hop's influence to get out the vote."

May 21, 2004

"Prisoner abuse has been longtime topic of hip-hop. Since the photos and reports of abuse at Abu Ghurayb prison in Iraq surfaced, issues involving the treatment of prisoners have moved front and center in the public consciousness.

In the hip-hop community, the issues resonate deeply, underscoring important work that has been done for years to end prison abuse right here at home.

During hip-hop's early days, pioneers such as Afrika Bambaataa regularly spoke out about prison abuse and made it a point to reach out and try to employ those who had been recently released from prison. Over the years, artists and groups ranging from X-Clan and its Blackwatch Organization to Ice-T and MC Hammer followed suit."

"Hip-hop mayor's goal: Further Detroit's image as a music mecca Detroit's mayor didn't ask for the nickname. But he certainly didn't turn it down.Kwame Kilpatrick: America's hip-hop mayor."

"Hip-Hop Power: Summit aims to smash not-cool-to-vote thinking. Hip-hop has dominated popular culture for the last decade, bringing a new flavor to fashion, advertising and marketing. Rap mogul Russell Simmons, who brings his Hip-Hop Summit Action Network to Detroit this weekend, is trying to use that power to get young people to vote and become politically active."

Rap fans are harnessing their political power to take on the issues they care about. Newspapers are buzzing about recent attempts to harness the potential political power of hip-hop. Here's Bill Clinton chatting up OutKast at a fund-raiser in Washington, D.C. There's the Rev. Al Sharpton reaching out to Russell Simmons, P. Diddy, and Jay-Z at a club in New York. But some members of the hip-hop crowd refuse to get caught in the Democratic web.

"It's [politicians] getting the vote so that they can put the people that they want in office, so they can get the things that they want to get done," says Bakari Kitwana, author of last year's "The Hip Hop Generation: Young Blacks and the Crisis in African-American Culture."

"The Hip Hop Generation: Young Blacks and the Crisis in African-American Culture. One thing that has given me hope in a very grim year is the flourishing of youth activism. While bombardiers demolish schools abroad and choke their funding here, subjecting them to a slow living death, the movement continues to build. One sign of this is a growing body of literature that seeks to explain youth concerns and the distinct political forms they’re taking, to people who won’t believe the movement has arrived until it sings “We Shall Overcome” just as they once did.
In other words, there’s a growing body of youth literature that seeks to address the generation gap in political dissent on its terms. For Bakari Kitwana, “the divide between the hip-hop generation and that of our parents (the civil rights/ Black power generation) is as vast as the one that separated white America in the 1960s, as radical white youth culture broke from the mainstream and swept across the country.” Kitwana examines the paradox of late 20th century Black America, in which “the monumental achievement of our parents’ generation” has been established, while the “inalienable rights” and concrete gains of the civil rights era are rolled back. Neither these gains, nor an understanding of the role of slavery—and what others call the neo-slavery of prison—in American life has been secured. Kitwana maps the ways in which times done changed, arguing our movement can’t be our parents’ movement, while attempting to narrow the gaps in understanding between them."

May 20, 2004

"Turning Rhymes Into Vote: Political power and the hip-hop generation

It’s difficult for most people to come up with positive social attributes for hip-hop. Mainstream America views it largely as a disruptive force, one that represents a litany of social ills perpetrated by young people: disrespect for authority, glorification of violence and misogyny, ghetto-to-glamour materialism, and rampant drug dealing and abuse. When a teenager cruises by in a low-riding, tricked-out car, rattling and thumping with bass beats, few people see in him or her the bright future of American politics.

But Bakari Kitwana does. He sees enormous potential for a powerful voting bloc among the "hip-hop generation," those born between 1965 and 1984. He believes young people, and young black people in particular, can turn the tide of social and political neglect that has limited their options since the civil rights movement—if they can get themselves organized." From Sojourners.