NYU Black Renaissance Noire Spring 2011 | Page 6

003-editorial.indd 5 women — want to get rid of Planned Parenthood, nor take away workers’ rights for collective bargaining. All the devastating cuts proposed by narrow minded Republicans have a political agenda in mind: to cut the legs from under the Democratic Party’s voter base, just as Republicans did when they falsely smeared acorn and defunded grassroots organizations two years ago. The goal, after all, is to win back the presidency and the Senate in 2012. It’s all so very transparent, but it’s also a very well organized effort to bring political power back to the overwhelmingly white and aging Republican Party. As a recent survey re-confirmed, the top leadership of the American military establishment, banks and Wall Street, most corporations, owners of sports teams, the media, Hollywood, to mention a few, are all dominated by old white men. To maintain this trend is not an option and I believe Democrats will be swept back into office with a vengeance in 2012. There is a reason Republicans were out of power for over 40 years before they regained it in 1994: they didn’t know how to govern then and they still don’t know how to govern. As Malcolm X once said, “time will tell” whether right-wing Republicans will succeed, or not, in convincing Americans that they know what’s best for the country. I think they will fail, but on the other hand, many initially thought Hitler would fail in Germany and in the end it took Germany over 50 years to recover from his mad hubris. In this new issue of Black Renaissance Noire, we are proud to publish a special section on the work of Ishmael Reed, non-fiction prose by Greg Tate and Julio Marzán, an interview of the great musician, David Murray, and the Turkish poet, Nurduran Duman (along with a few of her poems), poetry by Tim Seibles, Janice Harrington, K. Curtis Lyle, Sheri D. Wilson, Mervyn Taylor and M. L. Liebler, and visual art by the inimitable photographer, Adger Cowans, the Congolese artist, Aimé Mpané, the French photographer, Marc Chamaillard, and the Peruvian artist, Cecilia Paredes. I must also add that brn are republishing a photograph of the actress, Diahann Carroll, by Adger Cowans, because we mistakenly believed Ms. Carroll was dead: she is not, so we place her here amongst the living in the sequence of Mr. Cowans great work and apologize for the mistake we made. We are also sad to report the deaths of some great artists: the poet, novelist and philosopher, Édouard Glissant, from Martinique, the American musician and saxophonist, James Moody and the American painter, Ellsworth Ausby. Again, as always, we hope you enjoy the issue and we would like to hear from you, pro or con, about how you think the journal is progressing. Thank you for your continued support of our efforts in the past and we welcome it in the future. n BLACK RENAISSANCE NOIRE Act, Pell Grants, the Department of Education, the Head Start Program, the Community Services Block Grant Program and the Low-Income Home Energy Assistance Program; they don’t want to fund high-speed trains or rebuild highways and bridges; they want to end collective bargaining everywhere for public sector workers, curb Planned Parenthood, privatize Social Security, mess with Medicare and Medicaid as they have already voted in the Republican-led Congress to repeal President Obama’s health care law and the list could go on and on. But the questions remain: how can a nation be enlightened without art, music and literature? Where are the jobs? All that Republican and Tea Party activists seem to want to do is cut taxes for businesses and the wealthy while investigating and slashing government programs. They are shortsighted, greedy and narrow-minded people, who are indeed against the arts and the humanities. Their views are stupid, usually pro war, and they endorse or represent an economic, social, cultural and political philosophy that is exactly what Naomi Klein identified in her enormously insightful book, The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism, published in 2007. As a nation we have moved backwards into the dark days of our past. Conservative citizens called “Birthers” and some of their Republican congressional leaders — add to the growing list Donald Trump, who says he might run for president — even doubt President Obama was born an American citizen and regularly call him, his wife and children horribly racist names; they even talk openly of shooting him! These people live in a fact-free world, void of compromise, but full of virulent hatred, and they haven’t suffered any consequences for their actions. To say the least, it is dispiriting to live in a place and space of such hatred. However, after saying all of the above, I believe that the Republican Party led by members of its Tea Party will be overzealous in their push to slash and burn budgets and agendas. The recent protests in Wisconsin, Ohio and Indiana show that they have misread, yet again, what white American people — a confused group, if I may say — really want. I don’t believe people truly want to scrap what many on the right call “Obama Care,” but in fact they do want more and better health benefits, even a public option. I don’t believe people in this country want Republicans to mess with or cut Medicare and/or Medicaid or Social Security, but instead they want these programs to become stronger; they don’t want to get rid of the white dominated institutions of the National Public Radio, the National Endowment for the Arts, or for the Humanities either, but would rather want these programs to be stronger, and more diverse too. I don’t believe American people — especially sensible 5 All these changes seem to have come about in the blink of an eye, but they were in fact a long-time coming. It is nevertheless a stunning development and an almost unbelievable, ominous change for the worst. If we look closely at the tran