Today during our first class of Senior Seminar: Writers of Color, we read Langston Hughes's essay, The Negro Artist and the Racial Mountain. Fueled by the presence and question of race and it's role in society, this question was asked to us; Does it matter what the race of a writer is?
Keeping in the spirit of Equality and universal acceptance, we want to say no, the race of a writer does not matter. However, that statement is inaccurate, and in the process, belittles any culture other than white. Race is essential to creatives’. We take from experience what we know, what we’ve been through, and we document that experience.
Race matters, because we live in a world where race labels everything: city limits, cars, clothing, gun control, music, food, and language/dialect. Race matters because society tells us that our skin is an experience. Maybe if we lived in a world where race wasn’t defined, then it wouldn’t matter what race a writer was… you’d just be a writer.
For example - If a writer says "I want to be a poet—not a Negro poet,” it's not that he wants to be white, or that he doesn't want to write for his people. It means he doesn't want to be defined by his skin. However, there are some people who only write for their people, and that, too, doesn't define you (solely) as a writer.
Race is a humanized thing, it comes from how people never really understood different ethnicities as anything other than different or animals. one race of people couldn't understand another race of people, right? We still have that mindset that if we don't understand someone, they must come from a whole different race.
Black people don't have a background/history like white people... they were taken from their routines and forced into a culture that treated them worse than farm dogs. As time went on and as black people were born and raised in America, they were no longer taught the "traditional ways" of their culture. They were further conditioned into learning the ways of the White Man.
And when we adapt to the ways of the White Man, we allow ourselves to become blind. White Washing is a very real problem in present day America. Schools white wash our children by withholding black history... I mean, come on; one month to celebrate black people? And it's the same five black people you learned about in school 20 years ago... or let's talk about how Texas was thinking of completely excluding black history in textbooks. Our president is black, and lately it seems like the peoples complaints are a giant excuse to blame the black race.
#thanksObama
If we really want to unite as artists and as human beings, we need to start talking about race and it's influence on our culture. Stop labeling the innocent, we need to come to terms that racism is here. Alive, and thriving off of the ignorance we output. Stop hiding behind your white ancestors and start learning from their mistakes. Risk your contentment. Risk your privilege.
#byeStacey
