I am a fan of Danielle Steele...I meant Danielle LaPorte. LOL.The former name Danielle's blog WHITE HOT TRUTH caught my attention back in April 2010 after our lives got connected as contributors to an ebook honoring International Women's Day titled What's Dying to Be Born. Editor Lianne Raymond wanted to curate a womanist version of Seth Godin's What Matters Now for the new decade.

Last week, she released her latest book of sermons on word, life, love, cash, desire, time and soul. The Fire Starter Sessions is next on my list to buy...once I get the cash.

This morning I got my latest email from Danielle with one ask this morning:

ANSWER THE BURNING QUESTION: What money resentments do you have...that you could let go of?

How fitting! 

LETTING GO

The last three months I have been enduring a divorce and my biggest complaint since I left: my marriage sucked the life out of my cash flow. Following Brene Brown's lead in her 2012 TED Talk I am letting my vulnerability shine through storytelling. I found the love of my life. Married him. Discovered we were not compatible after all. And am divorcing him.

Believe it or not, that is a vulnerable story for me. Why? It didn't involve any drama. And there's been a lot of drama. Being straight and accepting the simplest truth is real vulnerability right now.

LOCATING YOUR AUTONOMY

Danielle insisted in her blog post this morning to listen to my inner voice of autonomy when she wrote:

Sisters doin' it for themselves, heard on high.

Whatever money thorn you might have in your side could be affecting your entire money flow. Locate it.

I've been blaming myself for failing at marriage. My ego at work. But that work can't change my cash flow. Never has and never will.

Resentment ruled 3 months of my life suffering from thoughts of failure and the perceived loss of love after a VERY public romance that started on Facebook. Time to let go.

NO THORNS. FIRE!

That thorn made me a victim in a really bad nightmare. And you know what? I am starting to realize the blessing it has been for me to start my life again. I am on a journey, a true discovery, unleashing my skills, my capacities and the best of what I bring to the party. My ego was suffering (so what!). I am a damn great teacher (ask my students) and that's what's so, baby!

My coach just impressed upon how humans' biology can shift:

"Language is physics. Say it and move in that direction. Freedom is there."

So today I declare in action my morality in motion. Moving past suffering to shift my own gears. I made a mistake. That's it. And what I do from here defines the morality of my existence. The past is ... just the past. I can bring no change to that. I can bring it to the future.

So what's next, you might ask? I'm not saying. Shut up and publish. Shut up and produce. That's my motto.

I am an amazing speaker (gave a successful talk for SAP Marketing event in March). I am an award-winning writer and a singer-songwriter. I got a P-H-and-D in hip-hop and anthropology. Oh, yeah, and I am a TEDFellow. And none of those accomplishments and the skills that led to them were ever sucked out of me by marriage or anything else. That was all simply action or no action, not a failure.

I am the best match for setting my world on fire.

WHAT'S YOUR STORY, MORNING GLORY?

So what's your answer to Danielle's burning question of the day: What money resentments do you have...that you could let go of?

What could you share right now that you could let go of today?

As the 2012 TED Conference in Long Beach approaches, I've been rethinking an idea about TED as the "new Harvard" --"the first new top-prestige education brand in more than 100 years," writes Anya Kamenetz for Fast Company. I've also been thinking about access to innovation as a paradigm of thought and action that keep passing over most communities of color, or most communities, in the world. If we can't upgrade the conversations of ideas for all people, how can we stop recreating the elite stratification of not only ideas but access to power, privilege and performance? Most of the middle class, not to mention the working poor and the unemployed, who seek education are being killed off by it at the same time. I left academia because it seemed to me that higher education was killing most people's possibility of greatness as great citizens, great parents or great participants in whatever culture moves them.

As a TEDFellow, I recently decided that its a key mission of mine to explore how to use my gifts, my connections and my actions to truly transform the gaps in our society here in the U.S. and our worlds. I've been asking myself:

• How might I play a role in that transformation as a TEDFellow?
  
• How could I be a catalyst in the learning revolution that TED represents through its talks and through independent TEDx events?
  
• How can I use my curatorial and pedagogical gifts as a blogger to inspire a new kind of social thinking among people from various ghettoes of class, power and privilege? 
  
• How can my role as a TEDFellow expand to voice the unspoken within TED and other organizations and communities through song, scholarship and social media?

This video by the artist formerly known as Mos Def came across my FB radar this morning. I watched it five times in a row captivated by its construction, its message and its messenger. Remember, I am an ethnomusicologist by training who teaches anthropology, the empowerment of emerging adulthood, and conversations in race/racism that could change the world right now.

Mos Def came out of the rich, vibrant communities of Brooklyn. Poet-by-nature. Sonic-healer-on-earth. Underground-hiphop-activist-turned-Broadway-then-Hollywood-star. Holy-occupier-from-rap-to-jazz in a mad sonic industry struggling to see-into-we.

This brilliant video by Yasiin-Bey represents a TED-moment-waiting-to-happen. Writer and contributor to Post-Bourgie Victoria Coates, aka @djjalen on Twitter, passed this along on the Huffington Post 2/23/2012. It's titled "N*ggas in Poorest".

The video was directed by Yasiin Bey & Set Free, edited by Andre Cole and produced by Yasiin Bey, Set Free and Andre Cole for Fellowship Mission.

N.I.P. (N*ggas in Poorest) is:

the first piece from his Top 40 Underdog series. Similarly apt, the video--largely made up of footage compiled by Bey--arrived on the 21st of this month, forty-seven years after Malcolm X was assassinated. Spit over the beat for "N*ggas in Paris" from Kanye West and Jay-Z's Watch the Throne album, Bey's message touches on the violence (structural and otherwise) that comprises many people's everyday while he, arguably, manages to reflect the people better than Jay and 'Ye did. (Coates).

If you watched the video, you might not hear and see what I see as an ethnomusicologist and social media activist. As the hook line in Yasiin Bey's video repeats, "That $#!+ CRAY" (translated: "That sh*t is crazy"); this is brilliance!!

Speaking as an ethnomusicologist who writes about hip-hop, the editing by Andre Cole in this video is awe-inspiring from a sonic-visual standpoint. The reconstruction of beats, the manipulation of phonics and the linquistic swagger, as well as the sonic signification particularly at the break (listen at 3:00 - 3:12") where white noise from analog black-and-white TV becomes the snare to a kick-drum in a funky breakbeat over a Bey-voiced low-end-drone. This $#!+ is f*ckin' brilliant (and I never curse in my posts..) and surely all this tends to be missed by non-musicians and non-ethnomusicologists alike.

From my POV as a TEDfellow looking for ways to bring the power of innovation to the people--both the 99% and the BoP (the bottom of the pyramid as its called in econ) as well as the innvoation people in positions of social, economic and politic power cannot see--TEDsters for instance--we need more links between what we often see on the TED stage and what artists like Yasiin Bey bring from another stage of idea generation. There continues to be a certain kind of blindspot around TED curation to this kind of innovation. U.S. based artists like Bey or M.I.A. (watch the vernacular brilliance of her video Born Free), who are just as influential to the world in my mind as Julian Assange; whose social power in sub-altern (read "not mainstream") communities mediated by music and video is as influential (or should be) as WikiLeaks has been to the world, they rarely grace the mainstage of TED. They make us uncomfortable with ourselves, which is another kind of inspiration at the level of ideas worth spreading.

This video is brilliant critique of governments, of institutions, but it is also self-critique, offering its internal dialogue within hip-hop cultures and its black, Muslim, male and everything-not-that communities in this mediated performance.

Hell, I could go on, and on, and on-an-on about Yasiin-Bey and the way this video represents and speaks to the unspoken innovation or in-yo'-face-shun of brilliance that connects Hollywood and the hood, holiness n' holleration, in less than four minutes and seven seconds. Just sayin' that $#!+ CRAY!!

We need more of this kind of representation in, TED, at TED, from TED and from independent TEDx activites. Guess that will be me.

"It's hard to be what you can't see."  - Yasiin Bey (weareblind.tv)

Kyraocity of the Day: How are you celebrating the contributions of African Americans throughout U.S. history better known as "Black History Month"? How's it going out there?

Seriously, I could tell you a great story of a white student of mine, a senior, female music major at the University of Virginia, who upon discovering there was a Negro National Anthem, better known as "Lift Every Voice and Sing," was offended that black people had their own anthem. It wasn't American. We were denying our part as American citizens. I had her do research on both anthems. She discovered that the Negro National Anthem, also known as the "Black" or "African American" national anthem, was written in 1900. It was a song written as a poem by James Weldon Johnson (1871–1938) and set to music by his brother John Rosamond Johnson (1873–1954) in 1900. "The Star Spangled Banner" didn't become the national anthem until President Woodrow Wilson deemed it so in 1916 and a congressional resolution acknowledged it in 1931. She was appalled. This still didn't alter her view that it was wrong that African American students stood for their national anthem. It should be gotten rid of. So much for education.

I've been on the front lines of such resistance to accepting black history and culture as a professor. But this year, the year 2012,  marks the first time was invited by a non-US based group to speak in African-American History month. Over and over again in the last 10 years I have been learning about schools in Scandanavia teaching black music as a primary part of young education. And young people in Japan embracing hip-hop culture particularly its innovation and making a living from it. That's not happening here.

If my invitation to Skype with the American Studies Center of Moldova in any indication, Moldova is currently one of the poorest countries in Europe, black culture is not to be feared or avoided. I'll be speaking in an international seminar by Skype titled “Black Women in American History: Social and Cultural Issues.” They are celebrating the 2012 African-American History Month organized in collaboration with IREX/Moldova.

"What makes the event special is the possibility to learn more about less known pages of African
American history and share the ideas about personal contributions into the nation building."

[photo by Hans Gedda/Corbis in Mandela: The Authorized Portrait; edited by Kyra Gaunt-Palmer with picnik.com]

Kyra Gaunt-Palmer, Ph.D. | KyraocityWorks
Voicing the unspoken through song, scholarship & social media
2009 TED Fellow, Author, Tele-Coach, Singer-Songwriter and Professor of Listening
Tweet Me!   Friend Me!  Become a Blog Fan!   Email me!  http://kyraocityworks.com

KyraocityabtRacism #51: How can you be different without changing a thing?

The answer is in the video recorded by my dear friend from Brooklyn, artist Hanifah Walidah.

I invite you to read the whole of Cheadle's comments and perspective on "gangster" but I am interested in what happened when the dialogue, the actual moments of social media, ensued in the comments on the post relative to being for/against Obama and how we choose to represent what is good or productive dialogue and engagement. It surely might go a different way if greatness was law in the universe.

Cheadle was articulate...why do we feel the need to say that about black folks still...and brought some breakthrough insights to the table in my book. After posting the link on my Facebook wall. I got a couple of immediate comments:

Stephen (an African brother wrote): I love that line at the end "I'm glad he's at the wheel and not me. I would have swung at someone by now." I totally agree Don Cheadle. How President Obama maintains his cool in the face of such vehement opposition baffles me and should be a college course by itself.

I enjoyed Cheadle's unapologetic response to his use of "gangster". He called attention to some key issues particularly the lack of attention to the economic struggle of ordinary folks out there today that is not part of public debate in any significant way...which leads to the idea of why POTUS ain't going gangster yet. Cheadle wrote:

I still have a fevered dream of the POTUS smacking up John Boehner in a public forum in middle America and making him defend support of tax cuts for the super rich. I want to see somebody go to jail over the financial crisis and not just black, brown and poor whites over humbles and minor drug beefs. I want the president to bail out homeowners who fell for the okey doke from predatory lenders and are two seconds from living on the streets or are already there. I want to see industrial polluters who are killing all of us slowly by poisoning our fragile environment swap places with the kid doing 15 years in Chino for shoplifting shoes. I want him to stand in front of the haters and go all Bill Duke on them and say, “You know you done fucked up now, don’t you?” I kinda want a gangster president.

The comment section featured its own smackdown by bondgirl with Cheadle signing in as "Troy" with his own comebacks. The two had a heated exchange which called my attention further to how we do democracy as individuals around our elections esp. in this case expressed by #blacktwitterati.  I follow them both Cheadle (aka Troy) and bondgirl on Twitter:
 

• Troy | January 3, 2012 

  What the he'll is @bondgirl talking about? Every opportunity I had to speak in public about my support for him, I did and still do. He is the clear choice in my opinion for 2012 and I will again support his re-election but those facts doesn't mitigate what I earlier expressed about gangster, they coexist side by side. The last time a black actor demanded something on the Iron Man set he was replaced.

• bondgirl | January 4, 2012

  No Troy (aka Don), they don't coexist side by side. You either support him or you don't. Snide remarks to a national publication is support he can do without, thank you. Save it for pillow talk with your baby's mama, not Jet Magazine where the GOP can snicker and use it against him at their TeaBagger rallies to show his own people can't decide if he's doing what's right. Liberals try and use freedom of speech to shroud their own turncoat behavior and I'm not buying whatever you're selling... Don has plenty of opportunities to do exactly what he is asking POTUS to do, with Stan Lee or the Showtime producer who didn't hire a black actress to play co-lead. So I'm gonna need him to take the buckshots first before telling someone else to do so.

I often used the academic writing of Deborah Tannen, a colleague in linguistic anthropology, on the discourse of battling in U.S. cultural and political debates. We US folk are so prone to getting personal to make our points. But Cheadle and bondgirl left me with something I had to comment about. I chose to share my comment here because I think we TEDsters could share more about the structural inequities that lead to so much of the armed political and socio-economic conflicts we love to be privy to in a great TEDTalk from afar.

I wrote:

I went looking for a quote to sum up the ambivalent reaction I had to @bondgirl's comments or moreover her venom towards Cheadle aka Troy. There seems to be something off IMBHO with not being allowed to voice criticism, a critique, or offer your POV as part of your being human as well as citizen. It seems to me that's not only what makes participatory democracy work for each and every one (not agreement or absolute consensus -- an oxymoron if ever there was one).

Cheadle is not one part of himself (an actor or a "husband"). He doesn't sell out or [sell] off his power to speak his truths because others don't like his grind or his beef. He speaks his truth and for that Obama would, I hope if he's got any gangster in him, accept it as one citizen's view and even perhaps take head that one man's POV [could] resonate [with many others] in [some] way (good, bad or indifferent). [It could resonate] with the bottom 99% like me who is recovering from bankruptcy (for the first and hopefully last time). There is no shame in my game and none in Obama's or Cheadle's. But, if we cannot agree to be offended and stay connected not just to Obama [AND] to Cheadle [all of who he represents and all he doesn't], then what I see is a failure to freely participate in [our] democracy.

[I have learned something here at Occupy Nashville about consensus building.] "Consensus is a process designed to create better ideas together not to compromise on mediocre ideas; modified consensus is an attempt to hear all voices while working strategically toward concrete solutions") [http://occupynashville.org/principles-and-practices/]

There is/was something brilliant in Cheadle's incorporation and signification on a trans-local black concept like "gangster" not just to inspire thoughts about Obama but about ourselves as citizens. We need everything we got to inspire each other to take actions to empower a great citizenry. And we also need not diminish the power of linking those actions to a voting process that is and never has been ideal. I appreciated Cheadle's clarification and his stance for re-election. I for one have been wavering in my support. But Cheadle's comments and response has inspired me to rethink my lack of support as the glow of electing someone like "us" whatever that meant dimmed [significantly for me]. I have been mad at the lack of attention and interest in generating a GANGSTER move like MLK did with the Poor People's Campaign. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poor_People%27s_Campaign [I'd be for us...all people...each and every one of us...considering what that would mean in the next election.]

So ultimately I [reposted] my own words ...to own up to my own smallness around quitting as @bondgirl [implied, quitting on Obama]. I think bondgirl was talking to someone like me, not Cheadle. Can't always judge [an actor by his appearances], baby... I can truly say I got something from [Cheadle and bondgirl's] conversation that wouldn't have been available without [social media like Twitter and] Facebook, [without] posting the Cheadle event on my wall, [without] reading the comments ... [which] finally [led me to take] 30 mins to reflect on my own position.

I am not as active as Cheadle was though I did my part for the election with my students. I am not as active as bondgirl is on a many a Twitter tip AND YET I thank [them] both for reminding me of my responsibilities to my own citizenship. This could only happen this way [through] the power of social media--the 21st century version of the grapevine.
Peace, Power and Votes!!  Signed kyraocity

Martha Runette, a friend of mine who joins me in a commitment to transforming conversations of race and racism as someone who is white, said this of my comment:

Martha: I liked how you used the string of comments as an opportunity to look at your own participation, @Kyra. IMHO, both Cheadle's and Bondgirl's comments were valuable, and I'd like to see more even more sides to it. Will be tracking back to see how the convo develops. Thanks for sharing. :)

What if the inquiry mattered more than being right? What kinds of conversations would truly make a difference in being in action (rather than thinking) about the next presidential election. Finding agreement or standing in complete disagreement is getting us nowhere. Faith in Obama without acts as citizens ain't gonna do, either.
 
So back to the top question: Is it wrong to question and challenge President Obama's administration if your black and/or a democrat? And what are the limits of our democratic participation as citizens if we cannot critique those we support in our own words, and in our own ways?

I don't have the answers...not for anyone else. But I did find some quotes to reflect on it all that might assist you in your conclusions, if any:

When I am abroad, I always make it a rule to never criticize or attack the government of my own country.
I make up for lost time when I come home.” -- Winston Churchill

 "...i wanted to be a new person
and my rebirth was stifled not by the master
but the slave." - Nikki Giovanni

Discover the power in one question.
Kyraocity Works

Kyra Gaunt-Palmer, Ph.D. | KyraocityWorks
2009 TED Fellow, Author, Coach, Singer-Songwriter and Professor
Voicing "the unspoken" through song, scholarship & social media
Tweet Me!   Friend Me!  Become a Blog Fan!   Email me!  http://kyraocityworks.com

SNEAKING INTO PRIVILEGE - LEARNING MACINTOSH

In 1987, the computer lab at SUNY Binghamton was a setting that had an unspoken segregated code in my music major world -- this area is off limits to anyone but geeks in math or science. A clunky, second-hand electric typewriter I inherited from my grandfather was my word processor. He found it during his days as a janitor working in upscale Chevy Chase, MD. while throwing perfectly-good "trash" into the incinerator. All my life, I seemed to inherit or luck upon "new" technologies second-hand incl. finding a SONY cassette walkman in 1979. 

Remembering my first day with a personal computer is not hard. I snuck into the lab. Was surprised that all I needed to enter was my student ID. (Students off don't go beyond what they already know. Such a shame.) The other students there were so engrossed in their MacIntosh that my entrance didn't even register. Plus they knew nothing was wrong with being there. Something was wrong in my silence. I didn't even know it was a MacIntosh. Had to ask a neighbor how to turn it on after minutes of hesitation. 

Dear Professor Gaunt,

I heard your name for the first time a few weeks ago while I was teaching <music> in Haiti. The girl who I was rooming with studies ethnomusicology at <a-prestigious-university-not-to-be-mentioned here> and had been very inspired by you, and so I looked you up as soon as I was back in the States with a reliable Internet connection.  I am twenty-five years old. I graduated in 2008 with a degree in music. After that, I studied in Rio on a Fulbright scholarship. I realize that I probably sound very successful, but things have not been so great since I got back.

I couldn't decide whether or not to go to graduate school (in fact, I was quite disappointed with my undergraduate education, and I have really enjoyed watching your TEDx talks and blog videos about how you think higher education could be different),

I couldn't decide whether I should go back to school for music performance or ethnomusicology...so I wound up working at Kinko's and living at home. Working at Kinko's was easily the worst experience of my entire life...so when I was invited to go teach music in Haiti for two months, I decided to use that as my launchpad to get out of Kinko's. Now I am back in the United States faced with the same dilemmas that were facing me when I left, and as much as I am a little bit embarrassed to be seeking success coaching, I really need some transformation, and at this point I don't know what else to do.

So, here's to the new Jobs we can collectively create!

I'll let one of my students have the last word. He was one of 95 students in my anthro course last Fall. He speaks to what can be accomplished in a nonlinear, divergent thinking context where the students are the books to be learned:

She has an entirely different, yet, peculiar teaching style. I was skeptical. But without a doubt it works! It was absolutely striking how many students raised their heads from the boredom, the sleep, and the frustration they have been accustomed to. To my eyes, I saw a work of art. –– Michael Thai (Baruch College-CUNY, Fall 2010).