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  • Why Do Apologies for History Sometimes Work and Sometimes Don't?
  • HNN Hot Topics: What Obama Should Do
    H3Related Links/h3 ul /liLIA's outlook and that of FDR and LBJ, and considers what it will take for him to succeed in office/abr plia href= http://hnn.us/roundup/entries/57435.html Milwaukee Journal Sentinel: Obama studying Lincoln, but which one will he pick?/abr plia href= http://hnn.us/roundup/entries/57288.html AP: Will Lincoln's 'team of rivals' play tod /abr plia href= http://hnn.us/roundup/entries/57238.html James Oakes: What#8217;s So Special About a Team of Rivals?/abr plia href= http://hnn.us/roundup/entries/57286.html Anthony J. Badger: Can Obama lead another New Deal?/abr plia href= http://hnn.us/roundup/entries/57150.html Bret Stephens: 'No Excuses' for Liberals /abr plia href= http://hnn.us/roundup/entries/57141.html Matthew Pinsker: Lincoln and the myth of 'Team of Rivals' /abr plia href= http://hnn.us/roundup/entries/57127.html Norman Markowitz: Obama's Mandate for Change/abr plia href= http://hnn.us/roundup/entries/56935.html Thomas Frank: A cheap cynicism has brought us to disaster. Let's try a little audacity./abr plia href= http://hnn.us/roundup/entries/56964.html Marc Ambinder: Why 2010 Won't Be Like 1994/abr plia href= http://hnn.us/roundup/entries/56934.html Holman W. Jenkins, Jr.: Obama's Car Puzzle/abr plia href= http://hnn.us/roundup/entries/56878.html Julian Zelizer: What Obama should do with Biden/abr plia href= http://hnn.us/roundup/entries/56947.html Timothy Garton Ash: Obama must show the way to a goal set by Russell, Einstein - and Reagan /abr plia href= http://hnn.us/roundup/entries/56776.html Paul Krugman: Franklin Delano Obama? /abr plia href= http://hnn.us/roundup/entries/56755.html Sam Tanenhaus: Harnessing a Cause Without Yielding to It/abr /ul

  • 'Rap Music Invented in Scotland'? Nonsense! Rap Music Is American, of African Roots
    pThis past week the news broke in many media, including thei New York Times/i, that American rap music derives from Scotland's medieval pubs. The Britishi a href=http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/music/3998862/Rap-music-originated-in-medieval-Scottish-pubs-claims-American-professor.htmlTelegraph/a/i newspaper quoted an American professor who cited, quot;an American civil war poem, printed in the New York Vanity magazine on November 9, 1861, as the first recorded example of the verbal battles being used in the United States.quot; He identified quot;flyting,quot; a medieval Scottish style of word duels in pubs, between nasty-mouthed drunken poets as the roots of American rap music. That's nonsense./p pVerbal duels, especially between poets, existed in many of our ancient cultures; they did not start in medieval days in a single culture. Specific people's ancestors are at the roots of their cultural traditions. Others, however, have tried to steal African American culture because they, and so many African Americans, do not know the specific ancestors at the roots of African American DNA. So let me, Speak girl, as my ancestors would say./p pOne of the advantages of genealogical research is that the results uncovered fill in the gaps, errors or misconceptions of history. An American history professor who specializes in American and Scottish studies announced that rap music, which was born in the Bronx, New York, has its roots in the Scottish verbal dueling tradition called, quot;a href=http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flytingflyting/a,quot; and the media does not take him to task. As an American whose extensive genealogical research resulted in a genuine, Queen of England granted Scottish coat of arms, I challenge him. I comment by whispering in the wind -- Cease the nonsense!/p pMy Scottish coat of arms, revealing ten generations of recovered ancestral documents, based on ten years research into my ancestry, wasa href=http://www.clan-duncan.co.uk/duncan-armorial-arms.html granted/a in 2005. As a newly discovered descendant of Scottish nobles, who were, -- and are -- relatives of the kings and queens of Scotland and England, I understand blended history, and do not have to distort it./p pAs a descendant of African ancestors who lived among the griots, who were storytellers of Ancient Mali and Ancient Ghana, who sang of political and communal events in medieval times, I know my ancestors' contributions to world culture. I know their contributions have been overlooked./p pAs a descendant of Jamaican ancestors, whose reggae music parodied political, local and personal events, whose farmers sang competitive work songs, whose market women, quot;higglersquot; sang competing songs to sell their fruit and vegetables, I celebrate the complexity of our roots. /p pAs a New Yorker, raised in Manhattan and the Bronx, where young musicians were so creative and improvisational on their musical turntables, in their angst, and in poetry, I say, Don't even think about distorting the roots of this history./p pAs an American, a student of pop culture, I say, Stop the nonsense! America has grownup, and now accepts the blending of culture at its roots; it now sees and accepts the contribution of black Americans to the Americas and the world. Let's celebrate the richness at its roots, not muddy or distort its heritage: America's blended heritage with African origins./p pThe professor said Scottish slaveowners brought the verbal tradition to America, taught it to the African slaves, African Americans, who, centuries later, gave birth to rap music. He credits Scotland with the birth of hip-hop rap music. So he's saying rap music, derived from anti-slavery fighting roots, was taught to the slaves by the slaveowners who enslaved them. Right. His research is hollow. Shallow. Reports such as this one from historians are ignorant of the tug-of-war and the subtle blending of cultures in American colonial times. My research revealed that I am descended from slaves and Free Colonial Americans, people who were originally farmers and village leaders in medieval Ghana. I used family nicknames, folk stories and DNA to locate and confirm these ancestors. I found records of how they intermixed and blended with Scottish slaveowners and abolitionists, some of whom were nobles./p pMy genealogical research revealed how extensive the blending was, in a variety of arenas, from slavery battlefields to wilderness churches. My ancestors, Scots and Africans, met in bush wars and, in religious fellowship. On my family tree in Jamaica, Ghanaians from West Africa were mostly Akans, Fante and Akuapem people. They were first cousins of the Ashante and other Akan people who settled in Suriname in the wilds on the northern coasts of South America./p pA Scottish commissioned officer, Captain John Stedman, who led the slavers' militias against these Akans and also Congolese Angolans, described how the African slaves who fled to the wilds and fought for their freedom participated in verbal duels on the battlefields. These Africans were called runaways, Maroons. They fought fiercely, including using verbal warfare now called playing-the-dozens. So don't tell me about the roots of African American music. It was not 1861 in Vanity Fair./p pIn his iNarrative of a Five-Years' Expedition, Against the Revolted Negroes of Surinam in Guiana from the Wild Coast of South America from the Years 1772 to 1777/i, a 704-page colonial war journal, Captain Stedman described the songs, chants, praise-poetry, verbal dueling, posturing and martial arts quot;capoeira-stylequot; flying moves these African ancestors used in anti-slavery warfare. Their dueling battled, characterized by a war of words, drumming, dancing and singing, among English-speaking Maroons were called quot;plays,quot; and among the Dutch-speaking Maroons, quot;baljarden.quot; The tradition was a rendition of the remnants of medieval word-plays of young men who defended their African villages against enemies and invasions in medieval Ghana. The Fante and Ashante young men formed military organizations, quot;asafo,quot; in which they wielded words, songs and dances, rivaling in verbal duels, military dance duels, and anti-slavery village defenses./p pSo don't tell me about the roots of this dueling verbal art form./p pIn America in the 1770s, Captain Stedman described the verbal duels these Ghanaians and Angolans who were Maroons threw at his militia soldiers on the battlefields. quot;They told us . . . they scorned to expend much more of their powder on such scarecrows; but should the planters and overseers dare enter the woods, not a soul of them should ever return . . . .quot; The Maroons, in graphic curse words, also hurled curses at the black soldiers the militias recruited to combat Maroons in the American wilds. Stedman's 704-page war journal said, these African American Maroons hurled words at them, calling them, quot;poltrons [cowards, wretches] and traitors of their countrymen, challenging them the next day to single combat; swearing they only wished to lave [wash] their hands in the blood of such scoundrels, who had been the principal agents in destroying their flourishing settlement.quot; The other curse words were more graphic./p pSo let's not steal this history from these ancestors./p pIn my book-in-progress I describe how the spiritual traditions came together, how the call-and-response form of church worship and musical performances, ritual word plays, and sing-song music, which is now so popular in our African American churches and in American and world music concerts, blended. The oral styles of Scottish-Irish-English religious worship and African charismatic spirituality and anti-slavery military traditions came together, in America. In my book, I say, quot;We inherited the DNA of blended cultures.quot; We are a people with the blended DNA of a variety of ancestors./p pThe capoeira-style verbal gymnastics of the Africans blended with the quot;lining out,quot; the calling out of words the Scots brought. Scots added to the African quot;griot,quot; style of storytelling, and quot;asafo,quot; defensive verbal gymnastics, but the verbal style that gave rise to charismatic-call-and-response music in American and Caribbean churches, to reggae, soca jamback, and rap, were all African at the root of their polyrhythms. The style is still heard today in Akan quot;asafoquot; festivals in the Fante villages in Ghana, Africa, where I found my family's DNA marches. Medieval military battles evolved into festive celebrations of cultural contests./p pThe quot;lining outquot; traditions, verbal call-and-response, my Scottish ancestors brought to wilderness worship was added to the oral traditions and musical styles my African ancestors brought to America. It did not give rise to them. It was not at the root. The Africans arriving in the Americas as slaves continued to practice their music, gathering in the wilderness fields, around a griot, and responding to a single quot;griotquot; speaker-singer, who sang, in a sing-song, telltale voice. They retained the resistance, word-play, sing-song style of their medieval African ancestors. Their descendants in the Bronx, New York, created rap music from African ancestors'cultural DNA./p

  • HNN Hot Topics: Meltdown 2008
    H3Related Links/h3 ul plia href= http://hnn.us/articles/1849.html What Are the Origins of Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae? /abr plia href= http://hnn.us/articles/880.html What Are the Biggest Financial Scandals in U.S. History? /abr plia href= http://hnn.us/articles/3800.html Jim Powell: It's Time to Explode the Myths About the New Deal /abr /ul H3Commentary News/h3ul plia href= http://hnn.us/roundup/entries/59096.html Alan Brinkley: Learning from FDR's mistakes/abr plia href= http://hnn.us/roundup/entries/59046.html The Global Credit Crisis as History: One historian's view /abr plia href= http://hnn.us/roundup/entries/58958.html Tyler Cowan: Bailout of Long-Term Capital ... A Bad Precedent? /abr plia href= http://hnn.us/roundup/entries/58748.html Mark Naison: Will The Recession End in June 2009 ? Who Are Economists Kidding!! /abr plia href= http://hnn.us/articles/57903.html Brian Purnell: The White-Collar Working Class: Has the American Middle Class Gone into Foreclosure? /abr plia href= http://hnn.us/articles/58616.html Robert Brent Toplin: Economics 101: Who's Up, Who's Down/abr plia href= http://hnn.us/roundup/entries/58624.html Louis Uchitelle: A Trap in Obama#8217;s Spending Plan/abr plia href= http://hnn.us/roundup/entries/58559.html Tyler Cowan: Fiscal policy and the burden of proof /abr plia href= http://hnn.us/roundup/entries/58505.html Dick Morris: Obama's spending plan won't create enough stimulus/abr plia href= http://hnn.us/roundup/entries/58528.html Clinton Tax Break May Have Helped Cause Housing Bubble /abr plia href= http://hnn.us/roundup/entries/58383.html Robert Skidelsky: Why Keynes is the man of the year /abr plia href= http://hnn.us/roundup/entries/58197.html Paul Krugman: What to Do /abr plia href= http://hnn.us/roundup/entries/58138.html Mark Naison: Creating Opportunity Out of Tragedy- Occupying Abandoned Commercial Space Will be the Next Phase of the Civil Rights Movement/abr plia href= http://hnn.us/roundup/entries/58074.html Nelson Lichtenstein and Christopher Phelps: Chicago factory sit-in fits nation's mood /abr plia href= http://hnn.us/roundup/entries/58030.html Joseph Stiglitz: Capitalist/abr plia href= http://hnn.us/roundup/entries/58026.html WSJ: How would we know we are in a depression? /abr plia href= http://hnn.us/articles/56906.html Joshua Berman: The Bible, Home Ownership, and the Housing Crisis/abr plia href= http://hnn.us/articles/57905.html John Paul Rossi: Another Great Depression? Very Close./abr plia href= http://hnn.us/roundup/entries/57805.html Stanley Kutler: Bailout Ballpark/abr plia href= http://hnn.us/roundup/entries/57694.html Kaneko Masaru and Andrew DeWit: The Positive and Negative Lessons of the Japanese Bubble for Americans /abr plia href= http://hnn.us/articles/57568.html Richard Striner: How Lincoln Might Fix Our Economic Mess/abr plia href=http://hnn.us/articles/57558.html Lawrence S. Wittner: How Not to Deal with the Oncoming Depression: The Case of New York State /abr plia href= http://hnn.us/roundup/entries/57634.html Mark Naison: Its Time to Use the D Word: Recession Doesn't Begin to Describe Where The US Economy/abr plia href= http://hnn.us/roundup/entries/57596.html Bernanke says crisis 'no comparison' to Great Depression /abr plia href= http://hnn.us/roundup/entries/57583.html Steve Fraser: Roosevelt's Brain Trust vs Obama's Brainiacs/abr plia href= http://hnn.us/roundup/entries/57582.html Tom Engelhardt: For it or again' it, the New Deal's the rage/abr plia href= http://hnn.us/roundup/entries/57434.html Niall Ferguson's study of the financial history of the world made him prescient about today/abr plia href= http://hnn.us/roundup/entries/57469.html Mark Naison: Any Long Term Solution to the Economic Crisis Requires Raising Wages and Redistributing Income/abr plia href= http://hnn.us/roundup/entries/57448.html Ezra Klein vs. Eric Rauchway: Is the Great Depression Relevant?/abr plia href= http://hnn.us/roundup/entries/57360.html Daniel Gross: Don't Get Depressed, It's Not 1929 /abr plia href= http://hnn.us/articles/57257.html James Livingston: Saving Private Savings, or, The God That Failed/abr plia href= http://hnn.us/roundup/entries/57354.html Tyler Cowen: The New Deal Didn#8217;t Always Work Either /abr plia href= http://hnn.us/articles/57252.html Bernard A. Weisberger: How GM Betrayed Its Founding Genius /abr plia href= http://hnn.us/roundup/entries/57189.html John B. Judis: Economists know the fatal flaw in our system--but they can't agree how to fix it /abr plia href= http://hnn.us/roundup/entries/57188.html Stephen Birmingham: When ostrich feathers were in vogue, traders thought they would remain popular forever. Fortunes were lost. /abr plia href= http://hnn.us/roundup/entries/56873.html David Beito: Paul Krugman's Prescription for Disaster (Response by Alonzo Hamby)/abr plia href= http://hnn.us/roundup/entries/54603.html Luke A. Nichter: President Obama and Bretton Woods /abr plia href= http://hnn.us/roundup/entries/57056.html Mark Naison: George Bush's Refusal to Rescue General Motors Cements His Legacy of Hardship and Pain/abr plia href= http://hnn.us/roundup/entries/56891.html Genworth Financial Wealth Management: When will the markets recover? /abr plia href= http://hnn.us/roundup/entries/56712.html Joe Nocera: 75 Years Later, a Nation Hopes for Another F.D.R./abr plia href= http://hnn.us/roundup/entries/56487.html John Steele Gordon: Speculators, Politicians, and Financial Disasters/abr plia href= http://hnn.us/articles/55762.html Andrew M. Schocket: The Bailout ... A Far Cry from Socialism /abr plia href= http://hnn.us/articles/55796.html Jessica Leppler: The Bank Crisis Blame Game, Then and Now/abr plia href= http://hnn.us/roundup/entries/56370.html R. Taggart Murphy: Asia and the Meltdown of American Finance/abr plia href= http://hnn.us/roundup/entries/56281.html Robert S. McElvaine: Black Tuesday plus 79 Years /abr plia href= http://hnn.us/roundup/entries/56259.html David Kennedy: A Historian on the Lessons of the Depression/abr plia href= http://hnn.us/roundup/entries/56241.html Great Depression survivors uncertain of nation's mettle/abr plia href= http://hnn.us/roundup/entries/56135.html David Greenberg: How FDR saved capitalism in eight days/abr plia href= http://hnn.us/roundup/entries/56040.html Norman Markowitz: When Do We Say Oh Yeah to Bush and His Media Helpers? /abr plia href= http://hnn.us/roundup/entries/55980.html Maury Klein: Is it 1929 all over again? /abr plia href=http://hnn.us/articles/55548.html Robert Buzzanco: Bring Back Glass-Steagall?/abr plia href= http://hnn.us/roundup/entries/55850.html Brian M. Carney: Bernanke Is Fighting the Last War/abr plia href= http://hnn.us/roundup/entries/55770.html Bill Hobby: Before saving the nation's banks, Jesse Jones bailed out Houston/abr plia href= http://hnn.us/roundup/entries/55489.html Stephen Foley: History lessons ... Galbraith's 'The Great Crash 1929' is still essential reading today/abr plia href= http://hnn.us/roundup/entries/55624.html Fareed Zakaria: There Is a Silver Lining/abr plia href= http://hnn.us/roundup/entries/55552.html Chalmers Johnson: Back to 1932 /abr plia href= http://hnn.us/roundup/entries/55569.html Tony Badger: How FDR saved US /abr plia href= http://hnn.us/roundup/entries/55620.html Tom Engelhardt: My Depression -- or Ours? /abr plia href= http://hnn.us/roundup/entries/55666.html Juan Cole: The Great Reagan Pyramid Scheme Comes Crashing Down /abr plia href= http://hnn.us/roundup/entries/55676.html Judith Stein: Crisis is the fruit of policies that encourage low wages /abrP B a href= http://hnn.us/articles/57358.html Click here to see our earlier list of articles concerning the Meltdown. /b /ul

  • Should We Be Wary of Political Dynasties?
    Stephen Hess began seriously studying American political dynasties while stationed in Frankfurt, Germany in the military. nbsp;Flipping through the pages of an extensive volume on American political history, he was struck by the frequency and size of the clusters of shared last names.nbsp; Of course, some werenrsquo;t so surprisingmdash;the Adamses, Roosevelts and other household namesmdash;but more local names, like the Frelinghuysens of New Jersey, prompted Hess to craft elaborate genealogies of Americarsquo;s political families/p pSenior fellow emeritus at the Brookings Institution and Distinguished Research Professor at the George Washington University, Hess formerly served on the White House staffs of Dwight Eisenhower and Gerald Ford.nbsp;nbsp; He has become a foremost authority on media and government, and is author of ema href=http://www.amazon.com/Americas-Political-Dynasties-Stephen-Hess/dp/156000911X/ref=sr_1_11?ie=UTF8amp;s=booksamp;qid=1229529457amp;sr=8-11Americarsquo;s Political Dynasties/a /em(1966, Doubleday; 1997, Transaction). nbsp;nbsp;In a brief discussion with Hess, he raised a few issues to remember when thinking about America and its relationship to our political families. I here list a few of them:/p pstrongI. Last name alone rarely guarantees political success. /strong/p pBoth of Franklin D. Rooseveltrsquo;s children tried unsuccessfully to launch political careers. nbsp;Candidates, no matter what their last name, are held accountable by the voters and are judged largely on the quality of their service./p pBut a famous last name can provide a stepping stone much the way other seemingly impertinent attributes can.nbsp; Abraham Lincolnrsquo;s early local political success owed much to his ldquo;rough-and-tumblerdquo; fighting prowess.nbsp; Others have relied on good looks, political machines and acting skills. nbsp;br / br / strongII. Political dynasties are not symptomatic of an unhealthy democracy./strong/p pHessrsquo;s research suggests that public servants associated with political dynasties have served their constituencies just as well as individuals without that name recognition (he defines dynasty as a family with three generations of politicians).nbsp; It isnrsquo;t as though wersquo;ve been left with a collection of substandard politicians with recognizable last names.nbsp; /p pMoreover, political dynasties are not indefinite.nbsp; New ones are constantly emerging, and others fading out.nbsp; Sometimes they happen by accident and sometimes they are deliberate and carefully planned.nbsp; Hess argues that Joe Kennedy groomed his children to become political leaders, while the Bushes largely stumbled upon the political scene. /p pMore recently, women and minorities have entered the dynastic struggle for political power.nbsp; On the national level, Nancy Pelosirsquo;s family has all the characteristics of a political dynasty, and Jesse Jackson has started one of his own.nbsp;nbsp; Latinos around the country have political dynasties at a local level. /p pstrongIII.nbsp; Theyrsquo;ve been here since the start. /strong/p pDynasties are not always household names.nbsp; They generally operate on a very local level with power passed on in the same way as other family-run businesses.nbsp; A name becomes something of a brand that voters learn to trust.nbsp; When that trust is breached, or a new family challenges the old, then the dynasty is replaced. Tafts were elected for generations in Ohio, but that has changed recently./p pStarting with the first congress in 1789, one finds the beginnings of several political dynasties.nbsp; Itrsquo;s hard to like political dynasties, but they are inevitable, and built into American democracy.nbsp; Some find the mythology of America's ruling families entertaining or intriguing, others are sickened by a system that has monarchical implications./p pIn the unconventional case of appointments, itrsquo;s hard to say emwho/em deserves emwhat/em.nbsp; In a democracy, the person receiving the most votes (or electoral votes) deserves the position in question.nbsp; Political appointees unavoidably circumvent the voting process.nbsp; If chosen, Caroline Kennedy has two years to prove to the people of New York that she was a worthy choice, otherwise she will be replaced.nbsp; Thatrsquo;s the beauty of the system.nbsp; /p blockquote PBRelated Links/bP LI a href= http://hnn.us/roundup/entries/59276.html Paul Jenkins: Along Came Caroline. And Andrew. And Beau./a /blockquote

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