Expand Your Perspective
The first, maybe most important challenge for White People’s Work is to pull back the curtain that isolates you from the true experiences and perspectives of Black people. That curtain is White majority culture, which screens and filters Blackness to protect itself, its power, and White people. If you live in a community with many Blacks, you might have a thinner curtain; on the other hand, you might have an extra-thick one so Whiteness is kept safe. On the White side of the curtain, we have access primarily to Black experiences and perspectives that are safe for Whiteness: Black people who entertain us, for example, or Black people whose behavior is spun to justify the curtain. White people usually see only partial, sanitized, White-empowering Black experiences through the curtain.
A perfect example of this is the national, White cultural embrace of Martin Luther King Jr. as a civil rights hero. White people honor King specifically because he was non-violent; while he challenged White power, he needed to convince enough White people to agree to change. White people also rarely know the breadth and depth of MLK’s work. At the end of his life he was significantly more radicalized, yet we celebrate and elevate the parts that we are comfortable with. Most White people also know nothing about other heros of the civil rights movement, like Malcom X and Stokley Carmichael and Huey Newton, whose methods or beliefs felt more threatening to Whites.
On the other side of the curtain, Black creatives have always been developing and sharing works that proudly and completely describe their diverse Black experiences. The best way to pull the White curtain back is to sink into those creations with curiosity and compassion, and listen to Black people speaking directly through their work.
I’ve been reading a lot of books, for three reasons: I love to read; there are way more books than there are other creative forms; and I believe that books are the cleanest medium with respect to White interference in the creative process. Publishing a specific genre or for a specific demographic is standard, so there is more opportunity for Black creatives to release works without concerning themselves with satisfying a wider (Whiter) audience. Additionally, publishing has a lower threshold for creative access: there are over 2800 publishers in the United States, many of them quite small.
There is amazing Black creativity in other media, like music, television, film, and performing and visual arts. We should watch for and seek out opportunities to witness Black experiences through these media. Music is another high access, high volume medium with good levels of non-White ownership. Television and film are expensive media with a lot of White ownership, so we need to be discerning to avoid selections curated by those White owners. Streaming has been wonderful for Black creatives; Netflix in particular has a lot of titles produced specifically for Black audiences. I don’t know much about creative access and ownership rates in performing and visual arts, but these creative media aren’t as broadly available to people. You should take any opportunity to attend a production, though; I attended an art exhibit called “Soul Nation: Art in the Age of Black Power” this year and felt the strength of “a picture is worth a thousand words”.
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