BACKWARDNESS IN BLACK?
WHAT’S REALLY BEHIND THE AX’ING OF LISA DURDEN?
A View From The Street
by ‘Bro. Zayid’
Many are rallying around recently
suspended media personality Lisa Durden after her abrupt suspension from an
adjunct teaching position at Newark’s Essex County College (ECC).
For those who don’t know, an adjunct
teaching position is simply put a part time teaching post with low pay, usually
no benefits and certainly no security.
Durden is a well -known media
personality who has done work in national mainstream media settings for years
including a history of appearing as a commentator on Fox Five.
So what’s the big deal?
At issue, so says ECC’s
administration, was Durden’s most recent appearance on Tucker Carlson Tonight several
weeks ago when she had a heated dialogue with Carlson, who criticized a Black
Lives Matter event seeking to privately honor the African-American origins of
Memorial Day.
ECC says that they received “complaints”
about Durden’s appearance and that she wrongly represented the College without
the authority to do so.
To date, the complaints have never
been specified and an examination of the segment clearly shows Durden
representing herself alone on the issue. She even made a point to say so in the
segment.
Further, Durden had a supportive and
impactful history with the College ‘before’ she even took on the part time
teaching post, appearing at forums and offering mentoring support and advice to
students interested in the industry. Her engagement with the students has even
helped some of students receive meaningful internships.
Just last week, in response to the
suspension, other faculty and students came out at a press conference in
support of Durden demanding her reinstatement.
So why we do call all of this ‘backwardness
in Black’?
For several reasons…
One, there is an African American origin
to Memorial Day that can be traced back to May 1st, 1865 in Charleston,
South Carolina. It is not Memorial Day’s only root or point of origin, but it is
genuine and it indeed exists.
Second, Durden’s professional
profile and established impact on the campus is something that a vibrant school
like ECC claims to be ought to build around! Not isolate and push away!
Third, if anything, the college
should have complained to Fox Five about Carlson, calling Durden a ‘Nazi’and
calling Black Lives Matter ‘segregationists’!
By the way, Fox Five, the mainstream
corporate propaganda arm for the racist right wing, and Tucker Carlson have
profiles that reveal them having far more in common with the Nazis than Durden
and I put together could ever have!
Further, the last time I looked
segregation dehumanized, isolated, hurt, raped, maimed and killed people for
nearly a hundred years!
Black Lives Matter hasn’t done
anything to anybody but use nonviolent direct action to get on racists’ nerves
over their racism!
So what does ECC do?
They chose to harass Durden in
spectacle fashion. They couldn’t even wait until the session was over to invoke
their discipline! She was therefore not at all off when she dared assert that
her treatment was like unto a ‘lynching’. Thankfully, we are just talking about
a part time job and not her actual head because once upon a time, in my
lifetime, this place called America had no problems lynching its ‘uppity n*ggas’
like Durden!
There’s more background to peep and
more questions that need to be asked.
This incident comes on the heels of
the recent dismissal of an African American female president, Gale Gibson, who
was becoming popular with both the students and the surrounding community to
the dismay of the County machine boss Joseph DiVincenzo, better known as ‘Joey
D’, at the time of her dismissal. As that incident unfolded, the school’s
attorney, a solid and much respected lawyer Rashidah Hasan, was also dismissed
when she warned the school of the inherent legal problems with that dismissmal.
So who does the college bring in in the
aftermath of the Gibson spectacle and what drove that madness in the first
place?
Enter its new president, Anthony
Munroe.
He is called in educational circles
a ‘turnaround expert.’
Pay attention.
How do turnaround experts turn
things around and who do they turnaround institutions for?
Turnaround expert is a euphemism for
corporate hack, someone who comes in and cleans house for a corporate dominated
agenda control.
Newark heads, remember Cami
Anderson? Of course, who was she? Chris Christie’s ‘turnaround expert’ who came
in and attacked progressive principals, gutted Newark’s schools’ budget to
favor the Charter school agenda of the corporate establishment!
All power to the people, the people’s
movement exposed and mobilized for Anderson to be gone!
She is.
But she did her damage first.
So is the emergence of the Anthony
Munroe, a black ‘turnaround expert’ to lead ECC who is rubberstamping Durden’s
suspension, by the way, the same thing Cami Anderson’s hatchet job was? But one
who is intended to be more difficult to mobilize against because he’s black? So
the people can’t say its racist?
By the way, did you know that Essex
County New Jersey has both some of the wealthiest people in the country and at
the same time, some of the poorest, and the class divide is sharp and clear
from its Livingston luxurious suburbs to its foreclosed crushed black majority
cities like Newark, East Orange, Irvington and Orange? Newark is its center and its gateway, and is fighting
for an identity and for services to make sure that it is not consumed by an
agenda for gentrification that turns Newark into a corridor of ‘ethnic
cleansing,’ the real term for gentrification in the language of international
law. Right in the middle of all this is Essex County College!
Will Munroe ‘oversee’ a purge of
progressive faculty, gut union jobs on the campus and take a huge chunk of its
Black and Brown students from Newark, East Orange, Irvington and Orange, out
through support service cuts and tuition hikes, in order to make it ‘safe,’
another gentrification euphemism, for more white students from the more its affluent
suburbs, for ‘Massa, or will he show some spine and stand up to the county and
corporate gangsters, reinstate Durden, recruit professionals like her and make
the school an example of urban dynamism that offers our Black and Brown young a
way out of poverty, them makes them and the school a vibrant ‘x’ factor in the
most dynamic metropolitan area in the world?
Time will tell.
But what I’m smelling so far is
funky.
As our young Black Lives Matter age
warriors say, ‘Stay Woke’ yall.
As the Black Panther Party taught us
all, we must always see the ‘Big Picture’ when confronted with challenges like
this.
Finally, remember what the world‘s most well-known political
prisoner
revolutionary journalist Mumia Abu Jamal, taught
us many years ago, beware of ‘Colored Tools’!
‘X,’ as in Malcolm, is the Answer!
“Back
during slavery,…There were two kinds of Negroes. There was that ol’ house negro
and the field negro…”
Malcolm
X, Speaks to SNCC, Feb. 3, 1964
©2017
‘Bro.
Zayid’ Muhammad is the founding press officer
for the Malcolm X Commemoration Committee, the press officer for the People’s
Organization for Progress and a founding elder member and media advocate for
the Newark AntiViolence Coalition, a People’s performance artist and a proud
cub of the legendary NY chapter of the Black Panther Party…babazayid@gmail.com…
