My New Black Magazine - NYU Black Renaissance Noire BRN-FALL-206 ISSUE RELEASE | Page 6

How does Klein know this? Did he
interview any of the principals involved?
Did he cite any sources? Who knows?
Klein certainly never deigns to attribute
this “inside” information to any source.
His is a perfect illustration of what’s
wrong with much of what passes as
“the mainstream media” these days.
Whether it is some critic calling Kara
Walker “a genius” or Edward Klein
spouting all kinds of unsubstantiated
nonsense on television about President
Obama and First Lady, Michelle Obama,
we are living in a time when anything
of substance can be cancelled out,
immediately knocked off the airwaves —
if it ever gets that far — or never
published anywhere, if the “powers that
be” don’t want it to see the light of day,
for whatever reason. This is where the
country is in my view.

Finally, in the United States we see a
cynical, dysfunctional, ideologically
driven Supreme Court making
bone-headed and destructive rulings
in favor of corporations and the ruling
class, in concert with a Congress
dominated by so many racist Republicans
watching from the sideline everyday,
doing absolutely nothing. They believe
that doing nothing will make President
Obama look bad and ultimately give
Republicans total power in the country.

We in this country and others in the
world find ourselves in a terrible,
horrific situation today. It seems more
and more the world is in a state of
devolution, approaching a death spiral,
as groups on both side of this struggle
refuse to compromise on anything.
People on one side of a question point
fingers at everyone else with whom
they disagree on practically every
question. Such intransigence leads
inevitably to more violence and
destruction, a recipe for total madness.
Future historians will look back at
this bleak and dark period as a time of
travesty and total breakdown of human
morality. It seems we have few wise
people with vision steering and guiding
the ships of nations through increasingly
powerful, relentless storms roiling
the polluted waters surrounding us all.
We have gathered together for you
another highly readable issue of Black
Renaissance Noire. In this issue we
offer poetry by Allison Adele Hedge
Coke, Aracelis Girmay, Tyehimba Jess,
Yusef Komunyakaa, Colleen McElroy,
Cynthia Dewi Oka, Sterling Plumpp,
Meha Semwal, Matthew Shenoda,
Ekere Tallie, Derek Walcott; visual art
by Jules Allen, C. Michael