The Singular Power of Writing
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The Singular Power of Writing
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Re: The Singular Power of Writing
#2This author is a voice we really need as a counterpoint to the current train of thought running through American politics. I will definitely check out his books.
As a side-note, I couldn't help but think of Kayne declaring that 'he's not black, he's Kanye' as an attempt to get across what Williams is talking about here. Of course, it tremendously backfired. I'm also reminded of some of Moran Freeman interviews, in which he cooly refuses to be pigeonholed.
Re: The Singular Power of Writing
#3This author is a voice we really need as a counterpoint to the current train of thought running through American politics. I will definitely check out his books. As a side-note, I couldn't help but think of Kayne declaring that 'he's not black, he's Kanye' as an attempt to get across what Williams is talking about here. Of course, it tremendously backfired. I'm also reminded of some of Moran Freeman interviews, in wh…
I think it's hard for people to stomach the notion of deconstructing race when we've designed society in such a way that has hamstringed groups for generations. I'm all for forgetting 'race' as a social construct, but I think there's a few things we'll need to atone for first.
Re: The Singular Power of Writing
#4This author is a voice we really need as a counterpoint to the current train of thought running through American politics. I will definitely check out his books. As a side-note, I couldn't help but think of Kayne declaring that 'he's not black, he's Kanye' as an attempt to get across what Williams is talking about here. Of course, it tremendously backfired. I'm also reminded of some of Moran Freeman interviews, in wh…
I think it's hard for people to stomach the notion of deconstructing race when we've designed society in such a way that has hamstringed groups for generations. I'm all for forgetting 'race' as a social construct, but I think there's a few things we'll need to atone for first.
The challenge is that race and culture are often tied together. In 1920 New York the Irish and the Italians would have effectively treated each other as different races. As culture homogenized, those ‘racial’ differences also faded away—now everyone is just European. It’s a challenge to maintain your culture within a dominant culture while not suffering socio-economically.
Re: The Singular Power of Writing
#5This author is a voice we really need as a counterpoint to the current train of thought running through American politics. I will definitely check out his books. As a side-note, I couldn't help but think of Kayne declaring that 'he's not black, he's Kanye' as an attempt to get across what Williams is talking about here. Of course, it tremendously backfired. I'm also reminded of some of Moran Freeman interviews, in wh…
I hope that this interview won't be dismissed as another "bootstraps" polemic by an elite like Freeman or Cosby, when it seems like just a regular guy reflecting thoughtfully about himself & his culture. So much of our cultural conversation around race reduces to the tension between the prioritization of group & individual identity.
I really appreciated this interview, including his assessment of Ta-Nehisi Coates. I'll have to pick up his book.
Re: The Singular Power of Writing
#6> I think that you need to have this kind of childlike way of looking at things, as the writer Albert Murray described, and which you see with children before they’ve been conditioned into race-thinking, which is that the color of your skin is not white. The color of my skin isn’t black. Those colors don’t even manifest on human flesh. We don’t even describe ourselves in words that are actually accurate to flesh tones. Any fool can see that white people are not actually white and black people are not black.
I agree with this. I think calling people 'white' or 'black' is stupid and I don't do it (and not just for this reason). But Williams does use these words to refer to people elsewhere through the interview. I wonder why he does it, after making this explicit point?
Re: The Singular Power of Writing
#7This author is a voice we really need as a counterpoint to the current train of thought running through American politics. I will definitely check out his books. As a side-note, I couldn't help but think of Kayne declaring that 'he's not black, he's Kanye' as an attempt to get across what Williams is talking about here. Of course, it tremendously backfired. I'm also reminded of some of Moran Freeman interviews, in wh…
Unless I'm sorely mistaken, Kanye definitely did not say that——Ta-Nehisi Coates wrote a response in the Atlantic to Kanye's public statements about race and Trump and the headline was 'I'm Not Black, I'm Kanye' which is a reference to O.J. Simpson, who allegedly told his friends, "I'm not black, I'm O.J."
Re: The Singular Power of Writing
#8> I think that you need to have this kind of childlike way of looking at things, as the writer Albert Murray described, and which you see with children before they’ve been conditioned into race-thinking, which is that the color of your skin is not white. The color of my skin isn’t black. Those colors don’t even manifest on human flesh. We don’t even describe ourselves in words that are actually accurate to flesh tone…
He calls this out in a later paragraph, mentioning that in the modern discourse it's too difficult to not. "(It’s almost impossible to actually have a conversation where you stop using the term “black.” So I hope, you know, when I say black and white, I’m not implying that I believe those terms are true. I’m just using it because that’s the way we speak about people.)"
Re: The Singular Power of Writing
#9> I think that you need to have this kind of childlike way of looking at things, as the writer Albert Murray described, and which you see with children before they’ve been conditioned into race-thinking, which is that the color of your skin is not white. The color of my skin isn’t black. Those colors don’t even manifest on human flesh. We don’t even describe ourselves in words that are actually accurate to flesh tone…
>I think calling people 'white' or 'black' is stupid and I don't do it (and not just for this reason). But Williams does use these words to refer to people elsewhere through the interview.
He does it because those are realities. Instead of ignoring reality (people have different skin colors and ancestral lines), we should fix our racist perception (that the colors mater regarding people's worth and merit). Blacks or whatever should be able to claim their colors AND the rest be fine with it. Neither blacks nor whites should be asked to erase their colors (or other aspects of their identity).
Btw, the part about children not seeing color is not true either: several studies suggests that babies prefer their own colors when shown pictures of people.
Before modern "scientific" theory of races emerged (circa 18th century) to justify the slave trade and colonialism, and especially in the ancient world (Hellenistic, Roman, etc), you could be whatever color and nobody cared (they might still consider an african tribe primitive, but for the same reasons we consider them, e.g. hunter-gathered like living, no education, etc, and not for their color. The would not consider Ethiopians -- which were equally black-- for example primitive).
Someone like Herodotus could wander all around the middle east, Africa, etc and not consider the people "inferior" for being of different skins, just different. Even slavery wasn't based on race or color (slaves where just people from places who lost a war, or had debts).
Re: The Singular Power of Writing
#10> I think that you need to have this kind of childlike way of looking at things, as the writer Albert Murray described, and which you see with children before they’ve been conditioned into race-thinking, which is that the color of your skin is not white. The color of my skin isn’t black. Those colors don’t even manifest on human flesh. We don’t even describe ourselves in words that are actually accurate to flesh tone…
He calls this out in a later paragraph, mentioning that in the modern discourse it's too difficult to not. "(It’s almost impossible to actually have a conversation where you stop using the term “black.” So I hope, you know, when I say black and white, I’m not implying that I believe those terms are true. I’m just using it because that’s the way we speak about people.)"
Thank you for pointing that out. I did read a good part of the interview but obviously missed that bit.
But I disagree with him here (while finding a lot of the rest of what I read insightful). How we speak about people is not fixed and change can come from us choosing to speak differently. Not that I'm suggesting we force others to speak differently, but we can make the change ourselves (which will be heard by others and perhaps picked up).