Panel Presentation

Last month I was fortunate to be a panel member of the Dark Matter Think Tank discussion “Historical, Societal, Generational Trauma…Why Is Rape So Prevalent?” The event took place at the Leimert Park Vision Theatre in Los Angeles. The panel was facilitated by Denise Davidson, of the Village Health Foundation and the Founding Executive Director of Village Mindful-Wellness Counseling (VMWC).

The afternoon was an informative event with fellow panel practitioners and audience members contributing to the sensitive and emotional discussion regarding the historical, societal, institutional, and cultural forces that contribute to the devaluation of the African American female body and sexual assault on the African American community.  The panel concluded with audience and panel members participating in a percussion and guitar Music Therapy Session led by Staci Aamon Yeldell.

How Important are Fathers in their Children’s Lives?

On May 19 I spoke at Antioch University in Los Angeles on the importance of fathers in their children’s lives.

The Strength of Mike Tyson

Real Sports, the award-winning HBO series hosted by Bryant Gumbel, recently aired an interview with Mike Tyson regarding his new one man play, Tyson. Several weeks ago I happened to attend  Tyson’s performance in Los Angeles. The audience loved it.  They laughed easily as Tyson told several anecdotal tales about his early life as a street thug and later escapades in and out of the ring. They sat quietly as he recounted his poverty stricken early childhood and the tragic life of his mother. He had vague memories of the man he was told was his father, a pimp. Tyson’s performance was real, down to earth, animated and physical. I experienced mixed emotions of laughter, surprise, pride and a deep sadness.

I remember following his remarkable journey when he burst into public consciousness in the early eighties. His relationship with his trainer Cus D’Amato and sense of loss after his death. His strange and brief marriage to Robin Givens. Provocative tirades in pre fight press conferences.  The debacle in the Evander Holyfield fight. The rape conviction. The tragic death of his daughter.  Financial difficulties. Thespian rebranding in the Hangover films. Needless to say I’ve cheered for Mike Tyson’s recent soul-searching attempts to find himself and make sense of his life.

The intimate performance was full of surprises. I didn’t know about his unintended encounter with Brad Pitt years ago  (I won’t spoil it for those who want to see his performance). I wasn’t  aware of the ambivalence and push and pull of the street life while training in his teen years with Cus D’Amato. Who knew the real 411 about his infamous after hours brawl with pugilist Mitch Green?  I laughed with everyone else as Tyson recounted stories of his children commenting on his lack of coolness.

While I laughed at the “funny” parts I experienced an almost overwhelming sense of sadness as he riffed on the more tragic events of his life. But I also experienced a huge sense of pride. Not everyone can maintain a sense of dignity, resilience, discipline and resourcefulness when faced with what appear to be virtually  insurmountable financial, legal, and emotional obstacles that confront Mike Tyson.

Dr. Joseph White, a pioneer of the Black Psychology movement, and known as the “Godfather of Black Psychology,” coined seven psychological strengths of African Americans: improvisation, resilience, connectedness to others, spirituality, emotional vitality, gallows humor, and healthy suspicion of “you know who.”  Each strength is born out of the unique and sometimes challenging cultural experience of being African American. Tyson possesses an abundance of most, if not all of these crucial psychological survival strengths.

So the next time you find yourself in a conversation with someone about Tyson’s crazy life remember this: That was the “old” Mike Tyson. According to Dr. White the “new” Tyson is becoming more emotionally and psychologically healthy everyday. Oh and one more thing. He loves being a dad!

Cultural Rip Off

The Harlem Shake viral craze has me perplexed. What I have seen depicted in the videos is not the Harlem Shake that my daughter used to do several years ago. I was always more than a little ticked off growing up when popular culture (white america) would finally acknowledge, and emulate the lingo, dance, styles, etc., of African Americans, months and sometimes years later. Cultural appropriation can be viewed as acculturation or assimilation. This description is tolerable if it stops there. I have great difficulty accepting it when implicit in embracing those styles and behavior is that it originated with the majority culture and it becomes theirs alone.

Melissa Harris-Perry, college professor, and MSNBC host, featured a story about the true origins of the dance in February.  You can view it here.

As of last month, the “Harlem Shake” can now refer to two very different things. One is the viral video craze that started in February, reproducing the style of a video released by YouTube comedian Filthy Frank. The other is the actual Harlem Shake, which originated in New York City over 30 years ago and is intimately tied with the history and lived experience of the neighborhood.

The Harlem Shake began in the 1980s at Rucker Park in Harlem, where the late Albert Boyce would dance during the halftime of basketball games. Boyce’s mother recently described what became known as “The Al. B.” by noting simply that “he would dance, and twist his shoulders.” Dance crews like Crazy Boyz adopted and evolved the dance, and it became known as the Harlem Shake, filtering into mainstream hip-hop, most notoriously in the music video for G-Dep’s 2001 track “Let’s Get It” featuring P. Diddy and Black Rob. Today younger crews like the Original Harlem Shakers continue the evolution of the dance that is unique to their neighborhood.
Harlem residents have been quick to point out the new viral videos bear no relation to the actual dance or its origins, and some have voiced that they find the meme’s use of the Harlem Shake name to be disrespectful. Host Melissa Harris-Perry reminded us that that this is no small point in her Sunday “Footnote,” which she used to debunk the notion that people violently shaking themselves before a camera bears any relation to the actual dance named the “Harlem Shake.” More than the designation of a popular dance, this is a matter of cultural appropriation. “When communities create original art,” she said, “they have a right to some creative control over its definition.”
Filmmaker Chris McGuire of Schlepp Films went to Harlem to document neighborhood residents’ reactions to the videos. Residents described them as “an absolute mockery,” “making fun” of the real Harlem Shake; “taking our dances and making a joke of it.” One man explained, “It’s an art form, an actual art form, that doesn’t have the respect that it deserves.” Another resident predicted that the meme would become a “vehicle [for someone] to take off on and make money on.”
That “someone” is Bauuer, the 23-year-old Brooklyn-based trap producer who released the song “Harlem Shake” last June to little fanfare. After the YouTube versions went viral, Bauuer’s track jumped to the top of the Billboard 100 and has claimed the number one spot for the past two weeks. The song amassed 98 million streams just last weekand has been purchased 297,000 times. Billboard reports that while “Harlem Shake” was originally released by Mad Decent, the much larger Warner Bros. label has now teamed up to promote the track to radio.
All of this spells out good things for Bauuer, who is getting royalties off each YouTube play and is now in meetings with Columbia Records. He is also very clear that his song has no ties with the actual Harlem shake, or Harlem at all.Bauuer told The Daily Beast in an interview last month that he named the track after it’s sample, the song “Miller Time” by a Philadelphia-based rapper (you can hear the sample at 3:56). He describes the song itself as a “Dutch house squeaky-high synth… over a hip hop track… [with] as many sounds and weird s*** in there as I could.”
​
Members of the Crazy Boyz hope the real Harlem Shake will get some positive returns from the meme appropriating its name. In an interview last week, Crazy Boyz member Jesse Rutland–a.k.a. Smiley–told the New York Times, “What we would love to see is our style being honored.” The Crazy Boyz currently run an after-school dance program for Harlem teenagers. McGuire of Schlepp films is finishing a short documentary on the program, and hopes that some of the millions of people who have enjoyed participating in or watching the Bauuer track-based videos will contribute to the program led by original Harlem Shake dancers who use the dance in their work.
There is nothing inherently problematic in groups of individuals getting together to perform a flash mob-style dance and participate in a cultural craze, but it becomes so when people attempt to do so under the name of something that already exists–something with its own history, meaning, and style. Doing so both conveys a lack of respect for the original dance, and, as Melissa reminded on Sunday, fits into a long history of voyeurism and appropriation of Harlem’s artistic innovations.
People should feel free to continue making all the videos they want. But unless their dancing looks like this and acknowledges the actual history and trajectory of the Harlem Shake, they should find a new name for what they’re doing.
Sara Kugler is the program coordinator at the Anna Julia Cooper Project on Gender, Race, and Politics in the South at Tulane University, which is headed by host Melissa Harris-Perry. She resides in New Orleans, LA. Find the Anna Julia Cooper Project on Facebook, and on follow them on Twitter at @AJCProject.

Performance Anxiety

As a lifelong athlete I have always been fascinated with the relationship between sports and psychology. I am equally amazed at how often big men in basketball are poor free throw shooters. Even if adjustments are made to their shooting mechanics  the percentages usually continue to be poor. I have hypothesized three reasons for their poor performance at the free throw line:

1. Exceptionally large hands – It is much more difficult to shoot a basketball with good spin when your hands are exceptionally large. Don’t believe it? Try shooting free throws with a soccer ball or smaller sphere with back spin and compare your percentage to shooting with a standard sized basketball.

2. Players refuse to  shoot underhand or “granny style.” The great NBA Hall of Famer Rick Barry  used this technique and improved his percentage to over 90%. He is one of the greatest free throw shooters in NBA history. Wilt Chamberlain actually tried the technique and was still a poor shooter…but at least he tried and continued using this technique until he retired.  However, his percentage was higher than before he adopted this technique.

Let’s talk about the physics involved in shooting underhand. When using the underhand technique the ball will have a backward spin. Upon making contact with the rim, forward velocity is reduced increasing the chances of the ball going in the basket. Shooting granny style also minimizes drift if elbows are kept close to the body.

3. Fear of failure-when athletes think too much rather than relying on muscle memory and letting the game “flow” and “come to them” they are prone to lose confidence in their athletic abilities and their mistakes are magnified and can take on a domino effect.

I recently came across an article on ZocaloPublicSquare.org  discussing the free shooting woes of Los Angeles Lakers superstar center Dwight Howard. The  article was written by psychologist Dr. Gordon Goodman whose expertise is in performance anxiety.   I would like to share it with you.

How to Cure L.A. Laker Dwight Howard’s Stage Fright

Anyone Can Get Caught In a Bad Cognitive Loop. Mojo Is the Ticket Out.

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BY GORDON GOODMAN|JANUARY 3, 2013

Does Dwight Howard have stage fright?

Howard, who stands 6’10”, is one of the most successful basketball players of this era. This season, he will make $19 million playing center for the Los Angeles Lakers. But, to the consternation of much of Southern California, he keeps missing the easiest shot in basketball, the free throw. Howard has never had a high free-throw percentage, but this season, he is missing half of his free throws, a level that has contributed to several Laker losses. His failures are a puzzle to teammates, who say his average is better than 70 percent in practice.

Why is this happening? If Howard’s free-throw average really is higher during practice, then the cause of his failures is as simple as it is intractable: fear.

Performance anxiety, also known as stage fright, is one of life’s most common psychological disorders. At its core is the fear of the judgment of others, and the engine powering that fear is our imagination. The more insecure we are, the more our imagination starts dreaming up worst-case scenarios. For example: “If I crack on the high note, then I’ll be reamed by the press, and I’ll be fired by my opera company, then no opera company will hire me again, my wife will leave me and take the house, then I’ll end up living out of a shopping cart, singing show tunes for tips outside a McDonald’s.”

Not all performance stress is bad, of course. A little stress can be exciting, like the stress you feel on a ride at an amusement park, and moderate stress can improve the speed of some simple tasks. Even the ability to dream up worst-case scenarios is a survival mechanism crucial to human evolution. The risk of apocalyptic imagination, however, is that we trick the limbic system into believing we’re facing real physical danger when we’re not, and cortisol and adrenaline start flooding through our bodies. This is great if we’re in a condition of fight or flight, but when we’re performing tasks that require a lot of concentration or the use of fine motor skills, excessive stress can drastically harm the performance. It interferes with fine skeletomotor control, and it also harms cognitive ability in the form of distracting “what if” thoughts unrelated to the task at hand.

So, what elements of the game, not present during practice, are causing Dwight Howard’s stress? There are four possible answers. Let’s take a look at each one:

Possibility #1: the response of the stadium and broadcast audience.

I once asked the Olympic diver Greg Louganis if during his final winning dive he thought of the audience. “Oh no,” he told me, with a laugh. “By that time you’re way past that.” Most professional athletes are far too intent on their own performance to be very aware of the crowd. Pleasing an audience is nice, but it doesn’t determine a ballplayer’s salary nearly as much as ability. So possibility #1 is not likely.

Possibility #2: the behavior of the opposing team.

An opposing team is not present during practice, when Howard has better performance, but, while an opposing team can hypothetically interfere with a player’s skills, free throws don’t allow for any overt physical interference. Mental interference coming from the opposing team during free throws would be a stretch. We can surely rule out possibility #2 as well.

Possibility #3: the potential loss of salary.

We can’t get around the fact that performance during a game affects the salary of a professional athlete. A player’s performance will determine his economic future and all the things that go along with it. Imagining the loss of one’s future could undeniably be one source of Howard’s anxiety.

Possibility #4: emotional instability owing to the loss of self-image. 

Our self-image is the foundation upon which we base a lot of our actions. If it changes, we’re thrown into a form of purgatory known as cognitive dissonance. Imagine working at a skill your whole life, sacrificing everything to achieve it, and then relying on it for everything you have. It can make you a millionaire, but it can also make you a pauper. Building identity on one skill is like building a house on top of a telephone pole. When that pole starts to tilt, you can guarantee fear will be involved.

I expect the source of Howard’s woes are to be found in possibilities three and four, which are intertwined. That sense is strengthened by Howard’s own words. “My mind cannot get clouded with everybody telling me how to shoot a free throw,” he told an interviewer in early December. “I just have to go up there and shoot it my way and not get caught up in what everybody else is saying, because that’s when I miss.”

Here we see that Howard feels an acute sense of threat. He admits his mind has often been clouded. And he believes that changing his technique now will cause further damage. Howard’s proposed solution is something he can’t define technically, because he didn’t acquire it technically. In the opinion of Kobe Bryant, Howard is one of many players who had no real fundamental training, and technical retraining is the answer.

I suspect Kobe, for all his phenomenal skills, is wrong. That’s because making free throws, like any other physical skill, involves many small individual movements. Once a series of motor movements or activities becomes automatic they can be chunked together into a unit and be thought of as one single activity or movement. The free throw. Chunking reduces mental effort because you’re thinking of one thing instead of many. Howard got used to experiencing free throws as a chunked movement. Most any skilled performer will suffer a drop in performance if he or she is required to deconstruct chunked motor skills. This explains the riddle, “What do you do to make a great golfer ruin his swing?” Answer: “Ask him to explain it.” Perhaps retraining over the long run would help Howard, but it’s not his immediate salvation.

To compound his woes, Howard may also be caught in a cognitive loop, a crippling condition that can affect any area of human performance. In this loop, you worry about whether your performance is good enough, change it, worry about what you’ve changed, change your performance again, worry about the new change you made—and on and on. It uses up so much mental processing that nothing’s left to play the actual game. And the less confident players are about their skills, the more likely they are to get sucked into that cognitive whirlpool.

What I’ve found in my research is that the only reliable antidote to stage fright is confidence. In a study conducted in 2011 on stage fright in elite professional actors, I found out just how pivotal the feeling of confidence can be in changing the interpretation of stress. During high levels of confidence, most stress gets translated into excitement (good). During low levels of confidence, even moderate stress can be translated into threat (bad). When a player is confident, he or she is like a trampoline with plenty of elasticity, rebounding in spite of changes in the game or slight dips in performance. Without confidence, a player is like a trampoline that loses a spring with every blunder, causing the fabric to give way.

So how does Mr. Howard get back that confidence—or mojo? In a nutshell: His Way.

My suggestion is to add distraction to his practice sessions at the free-throw line. Have other team members do all they can to distract him. Make it surpass what he might experience in a real game until external distraction draws attention away from the distraction that’s going on in his head. Make this a regular part of his practice until nothing bothers him. During the off-season, he can start defining what he’s doing so that he never loses his mojo again—and so that Southern Californians can worry about other serious local problems, like Steve Nash’s defense.

Dr. Gordon Goodman is a media and entertainment psychologist and an expert on stage fright and performance. He lives in Los Angeles where he is a consultant on performance issues and creativity in the arts.

 

Black Male/Female Relationship Conference

On Saturday, February 9, 2013 I was honored to participate on a panel  hosted by Delta Sigma Theta Sorority, Inc., Pomona Valley Alumnae Chapter. The event was the Second Annual State of the Black Male/Female Relationship Conference at Western University in Pomona, CA.  The conference showcased various relationship experts in workshops throughout the day and stimulated healthy debate and conversation between those in attendance.

 

2012 Association of Black Psychologists Annual Conference

I recently attended the annual Association of Black Psychologists national conference in Los Angeles, California July 16-21, 2012. It was a great conference with workshops providing a lot of information to all of the participants. I was fortunate enough to co-lead a workshop on working with and being sensitive to the needs of African American fathers in the Child Welfare system.

Reception for Wes Moore

My wife, Dr. Yivette Odell and I were invited to a reception at the City Club in Downtown Los Angeles on June 20, 2012. The Gibson Dunn law firm and it’s diversity department,were honoring a young African American brother, Wes Moore, and the publishing of his book “The Other Wes Moore”. Several community organizations, film and television studios, and law firms actively involved in diversity and the community were invited. I have been involved with Children’s Institute Inc.’s Project Fatherhood for several years and Project Fatherhood was mentioned in the book.  Mr. Moore’s mother was employed by Casey Family Foundation in Baltimore. She interviewed several of the top fatherhood programs in the country at the annual Healthy Marriage and Responsible Fatherhood Conference in Baltimore a couple of years ago. I was fortunate to be interviewed by her. Hence my invitation. This young man has a great and uplifting story and is a remarkable and engaging speaker. It was a wonderful reception. If you have an opportunity to hear him speak or read his book by all means go for it.

Is Adidas Racist?

Adidas recently came out with a new basketball shoe with shackles. What’s up with that? Who is the shoe marketed to? What would motivate them to produce such a shoe? Did they think that we wouldn’t notice? We know that black male youth are huge consumers of basketball shoes. A disproportionate number of young black males are incarcerated. Many young brothers living in our urban communities see incarceration as a rite of passage. Well, designer Jeremy Scott claims innocence on the racist charge stating that he was inspired by a a 1990’s cartoon/toy character  “My Pet Monster ” complete with orange shackles.  This is an example of cognitive dissonance. Cognitive dissonance is the uncomfortable tension people feel when they experience conflicting thoughts or beliefs (cognitions), or engage in behavior that is apparently opposed to our stated beliefs. In an attempt to escape this discomfort they  will seek to rationalize their behavior on some other grounds which allows them to hold on to their otherwise discredited belief. No one wants to be seen as racist. By stating that his inspiration was drawn from an innocent  children’s toy Scott and Adidas resolve their dissonance by discussing the existence of a presumably non-threatening, innocuous toy. So if children played with this toy it couldn’t possibly be considered racist? I find it extremely interesting that the toy in question is a monster.

Ultimately, the shoes were pulled. Why should it take a public uproar to bring about civil behavior? Racism is still alive and well in America.

African American History/Tuskegee Airmen

This review of Red Tails was posted in Geek Dad. This is a fairly good guide for parents who are not familiar with this important time in American history or have children who were born post-1980’s.

10 Things Parents Should Know About Red Tails

• By Lonnie Morgan
• Email Author
• January 20, 2012 |
• 4:30 pm |
• Categories: Armchair Geek

The Red Tails escort an American bomber group over Europe.Image courtesy Lucasfilm

1. “Red Tails?” Is this a Crimson Guard/furrie mashup?

Star Wars. George Lucas. Star Wars. George Lucas. Star Wars. George Lucas. For 40-plus years, the two names have been synonymous. Thus, when Lucas birthed Red Tails, some people may have assumed that the movie would be set somewhere and sometime in that galaxy, far, far away. But no, we are much closer to home! Instead of opening the movie with a battle over the skies of Coruscant, this film takes place in the middle of the air war of the European theater of World War II.

2. What’s the movie all about?

During the midst of what some call America’s greatest war, the U.S. Army was at war with itself over what to do with its African-American soldiers. Black men had fought in every major war and skirmish since the founding of the United States. However, more than 160 years into the country’s history, the Army still maintained a legacy of separation and discrimination.

Enter the Tuskegee Airmen. An all-black fighter unit formed in 1941, the Tuskegee Airmen prepared and trained to become pursuit pilots in a war that many of the Army brass never intended for them to fight in.Red Tails paints the story of how the Tuskegee commanding officers and pilots overcame the Army’s enshrined policies of racism and separation of the races to earn the right to fight for their country.

The movie focuses on the relationship between the unit’s captain, Marty “Easy” Julian (Nate Parker) and his second in command, Joe “Lightning” Little (David Oyelowo). As the movie opens, the unit is still being denied the opportunity to fly in a significant combat role. The group’s commander, Col. A. J. Bullard (Terrence Howard), is working to change that before the war ends.

3. Will I like it?

You will enjoy it. Like? Love? I’ll leave that up to you. I recommend that you see it in the theater: The air-battle scenes are definitely worthy of the big-screen treatment. Industrial Light & Magic did a magnificent job with replicating what I consider to be one of the most beautiful aircraft ever made, the P-51 Mustang. As with any historical story where there is such a strong overtone of social strife, the writers had a challenge in developing a story that was not directly related to the primary issue. I would give them a C-plus for that effort. While the racism that the Tuskegee pilots experienced does play a major role in the film, you could almost have had the plot that played out in the movie without it.

4. Will my kids like it?

I think this is a great film for kids 12 and up. The plot points are not overly complex and children should have no problem following the hows and whys of the story. You are introduced to the “evil villain” early in the movie (and it is not the white American soldier, fortunately — World War II Germany gets that title). Thus, the ultimate conflict is foreshadowed early on and will give the kids a nice, neat line to follow to the climax. There are a few curse words dropped here and there, but you will not find any character spitting out a stream of racially charged expletives. There was only one intense “Get out of here, n***er” moment. So if your kids have not heard anyone speak that way before, you may want to read through the answer to No. 5 below.

Image: Wikipedia Commons

5. Do I have to have “the racism talk” with my kids before watching the movie?

Despite the progress that race relations have made in America since the 1940s, racism is still a touchy subject. Fortunately, for many young kids today, racism is a foreign concept. If your kids fall into this category, it might be worthwhile to give them a general overview of what the movie is about before you visit the theater. Explain how during the 1940s, African-Americans were denied their rights simply because of their skin color. The movie skips the formation and training of the Tuskegee Airmen, so some quickbackground reading would help the kids along.

6. When’s the best time for a bathroom break?

Any of the scenes with Sofia. As a smart movie watcher, I understand the need for a love story. However, these were the slowest parts of the movie.

7. It’s rated PG-13; how 13 is it?

As I mentioned above, there is not much for a parent to be concerned about when it comes to ugly racism. There is a little cursing and one character likes to hit the bottle. Apart from that, this is a war movie, so you will see people die — and I am not just talking about watching a plane crash into the ground. Finally, there is one “love” scene, but you can barely call it that.

8. Do I need to get there in time to see some good trailers?

No. But, 20th Century Fox must be expecting a large African-American crowd. Red Tails was front-ended by Tyler Perry’s new movie, Good Deeds, Eddie Murphy’s new movie, A Thousand Words, and the new film based on Steve Harvey’s book, Think Like A Man. There were also trailers for The Three Stoogesand Star Wars Episode I in 3-D. But I barely paid attention to those.

9. Do I need to sit through the credits for a bonus scene at the end?

No. Only credits on this one.

10. Will I want to see it again?

I doubt it. The movie goes on for more than two hours, and at times is slow to move along. Once it comes to the streaming world of movie downloads, I might be ready to see it again.

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