Afterwords: A Conversation Around "Making Art/Making Home"

In June 2003, Alternate ROOTS (Regional Organizations of Theaters/Artists South) organized a public workshop called "Making Art/Making Home" in partnership with the "Evoking History" project at the Spoleto Festival USA in Charleston, S.C. The three-part workshop, June 6-8, was designed by ROOTS’ educational arm, Resources for Social Change, to examine the changing meaning of home in the region and the role of the arts within this social change.

The workshop produced some lively discussions about issues of race and privilege. The discussion continued from September 4 to October 1 in a private CAN Web forum among some of the workshop participants, facilitated by Charleston artist Gwylène Gallimard (who posted quotes from the workshop for further commentary). Following is a transcript of the Web forum. You can find short bios on the discussion participants at the bottom of this page. —Linda Burnham

To initiate the conversation, and all along, I will be using quotes from the videotapes made during the workshop "Making Art/Making Home" and from e-mails generated by it.

Here are the first ones, and our first subject. Please jump into them! —Gwylène

"Caucasians in this room you need to talk, you have been too quiet and it is ticking me off… Everybody in this room is dealing with a known medically posttraumatic stress syndrome. And one of the things this country has never dealt with is the effect of 400 + years of slavery, the effect psychologically, on the people who participated in both sides of the process." —John Wright

"I am here and I am white and I want to be a part of that conversation and I’ve heard a lot of black people talk and I am honest to God grateful for this." —Frances Watson

"My experience in making ‘Shared History’ confirms to me how deeply embedded the rituals of race are; how we all walk so carefully and gingerly around the issue. I remind myself that I think in the workshop someone said the issue is not so much about slavery as about racism. Yes, but I do think the more we know historically about what happened to individuals—"black and white"—the better we are able to understand how deeply we have all been affected." —Felicia Furman Dryden

"I do worry sometimes with the focus of racial discussions on slavery… perhaps they promote the idea the main objection Blacks have today is slavery and I don’t think that is so. The main objection Blacks have today deals with present day situation." —Darryl Wellington

The choice of these quotes brings me right back to the strength and heat of the weekend we spent together. I really relate with John Wright’s naming the issue in terms of post-traumatic stress syndrome. Between the video itself, the conversations that came out of it, and the insights I had into Charleston’s histories, as shared and/or not shared by those I met at the workshop, I came away from the weekend with a profoundly deepened realization of the impact of the institution and practice of slavery on all descendents and inheritors of that legacy (all Americans). The shame and guilt associated with the belief that I own someone, that I deny the humanity of another human, is passed down the generations. It comes out in the usual behavior of walking "so carefully and gingerly" around issues of race. It comes out in the constant editing of our communication with one another, an editing that conveys distrust while it means to do quite the opposite.

I simultaneously agree with Darryl Wellington that the main objection, when it comes to race issues, is the present-day situation. Through this workshop conversation, I came to understand more thoroughly than ever before how connected the historical legacies of slavery are to the present-day situation.

We see each other through the filter of fear and shame. We have institutionalized those filters so that we believe the way we see is "the way things are."

Just by recognizing these influences, these forces of history, I feel more empowered to speak and act out for equality and the end of racism. I am complicit in maintaining the oppression of racism if I accept these historical forces as "the way things are." I have the power to see things differently. That is how I am able to start to make change.

The weekend workshop was by no means perfect or complete. I felt it was only a beginning. Yet, I am grateful beyond measure to have been able to participate and learn with such good and passionate people. —Bob Leonard

One thing I noticed about race in Charleston, and I guess it’s true of most American cities, is the way it stays dug into the landscape in both visible and invisible ways. Against people’s best intentions (and along with their worst, of course) its effects fan out in all directions. In politics, education, planning, and social life.

I’m a slave-owner descendent, and wonder about how the embedded mental maps and images that flow from this history lead us in contemporary life. And if they can be affected by conscious creative work.

I wonder if the weekend of the workshop and performance felt like it could begin to address the scope and weight of such a pervasive thing. —Neill Bogan

Regarding the pervasiveness of racism in contemporary life — my husband and I vacationed in Maine last week. As we bought our last coffees before heading to the airport, we chatted with our server who was from somewhere in Russia. She was telling us about her travels around the east coast. Most places got glowing reviews. However, she commented that she was not prejudiced but had not liked Atlanta because there were so many blacks there. And she felt afraid.

I grew up in Atlanta and taught there for about ten years in the 80s-90s at a school for the extraordinarily privileged. An African American boy I taught there as a 5th grader later told me stories about his experiences as a high school student. In this relatively small community, white girls pressed themselves to the opposite side of the hall when he walked along with African American friends. Etc.

Several years ago while still in Atlanta, I came upon a poem about a race riot in Atlanta in 1906. I had never heard about it — but went to school k-12 in Atlanta. I did research. It was a huge, horrific event. White on black violence. How could I not know? Like Darryl I think that it is now that matters — but what about now makes it so important to hide so much about our history? And doesn’t hiding it help to create the silences that John Wright refers to? A last reflection. While in Charleston I have taught decidedly NOT privileged children. Teaching about slavery and its aftermath was an eye-opener to me. I thought I was presenting the stories of people of astounding physical and emotional strength and ability to endure. Some of my more vocal 10-year-olds seemed to disagree. They seemed to view their forbearers as alien. How could they let those white people get away with those things? They (my fifth graders) would have struck back and quick too.

I’m stuck here. My values definitely impose. I try to help these kids learn not to hit back as a first response. They, I think, are looking at this history and thinking their ancestors let themselves be messed with and look where it got them. I think I’m feeling that these students, and their families, and I, have been cheated of our histories and that it leaves us all confused about where we are now. —Dana Brown

"I’ve never understood why Black people must feel ashamed of slavery. It ought to be us who should feel that way." —Sam Watson

"All our people were slaves. They were enslaved, hurt and utilized. And our people are being taught in a very nice way that it was OK, because look at where you are now! It was not OK and I agree with you about the holocaust, we too have to tell the story and that’s why this African American Museum that is coming here has got to tell the truth." —La’Sheia Oubre’

I am wondering if actually the pain does not come mostly from not having accepted the end of slavery with grace, honor and a sense of other much more human possibilities. The pain that I have felt many white Southerners suffer deeply from was not anchored directly in slavery, but in the acts of their family or the like during reconstruction times, segregation times, the civil rights movement time. Those times may be too close to now to be part of history, and too close to home to be acknowledged and lead some sort of truth-and-reconciliation discussion. So dealing with slavery as an approach to reach our times’ problems seems to me like a work in progress, a sort of a long walk to our present times, as long as it is not a way to avoid the here and now. —Gwylène

Dana, I’m an Atlanta native and that moment of finding out about 1906 you describe is all too familiar.

Gwylène, your reply is eloquent. White Southerners’ working through these things is necessary work; but as "reconciliation" implies, the process needs to have limits. The "long walk into present times" may not have an end but it does need to have a shape.

On the other hand, I still think it’s impossible to approach the present day situation in Charleston without starting at slavery and returning to it regularly. —Neill Bogan

I am now wondering if the capitalist mentality based on competition, a class society, great merchandizing more important than quality product, is actually preventing this reconciliation to happen; If the goal to own as much as possible and/or be in power is not an echo of the slave/slave owner mentality. When our president can raise so much money to be kept in place and none to keep summer programs in place, he is selling our freedom away. When CEOs in charge of so many employees are paid (minimum) fifty or a hundred times more than the American minimum wage they practice on others, they are promoting the thoughts (and reality) that the poor worker needs to be partly on welfare of a system (or a social class, or a race), and will not be freed by his work.

Maybe that thought is not so far from Omari Fox’s comment at the workshop: "Last time somebody not from my community came in … they decided what they wanted it to look like and how they can capitalize on it and retransmit it to people in my neighborhood. And when they left what I thought was Hip-Hop became all of a sudden being intellectual and things of that nature. Skills from your heart were no longer precepts." —Gwylène

Neill, Help me get a handle on what we are talking about here. When you say, "the present day situation in Charleston," what does that mean for you? Thanks. —Dana

"Charleston: To Learn a Place" is an Honors course at UNC Charlotte that just now I am leading for the third time. (Really, I want to say that I am taking the course for the third time.) It is not a course in art or in history; it wants to be a course "in" Charleston though we are meeting in Charlotte and, as a class, will be visiting Charleston only one time — soon: Thursday-Sunday, September 18-21.

I want to tell you why we are coming that particular weekend; you will see why the story fits the themes of this discussions. Two years ago Mr. Dorland Abernathy was a student in our course. Dorland is in his fifties, white, a committed Baptist and graduate of Bob Jones University; two years ago he was a prison guard (with his new degree in hand, he’s now teaching high-school English). One day Dorland commented to me, "I’ve got about as thorough Redneck credentials as anyone could have." As indeed he does.

Dorland loves Charleston, he always has. And during his class’ visit, he fell in love with Emanuel A.M.E. Church, whose members Ms. Liz Alston and her husband Albert, had graciously offered us as a place for our class to meet. Many of us attended services that Sunday, and Emanuel became a very special place for him in Charleston.

After we returned to Charlotte, Dorland wrote a hymn, "Mother Emanuel." One of its verses reads "Not for what they did/ But for what they were,/ Her sons were hanged/ On a tree./ She’s stood faithful as her Lord/ Called his church to do./ He’ll reward her when He comes,/ Hallelu!"

Reverend Smith has said that "Mother Emanuel" will be sung during services on Sunday, September 21. We want to be there. Perhaps you will join us.

I wish you would join us also for the one "formal" session we will have as a class in Charleston, the previous day, Saturday, 2:00 - 5:00, in the Fellowship Hall beneath Emanuel’s sanctuary. As newcomers to Charleston, we will be voicing our impressions and whatever questions we find ourselves asking. We’d like you to join the discussion.

Just afterwards, also at Emanuel, we will be sharing an early supper from Gullah Cuisine. Students are paying for their own meals so that we can include a few Charlestonians as our guests. If you can be one of them, please let me know ASAP; I have to tell Ms. Jenkins how many people to prepare for.

I hope you will read this posting not as an advertisement. It is an invitation instead. And, even moreso, it is one story of "making art, making home." (For more on my view of the Charleston project, you could visit http://www.uncc.edu/charleston/ ).

Peace, sisters and brothers. In our diversity can lie our strength. —Sam Watson

Thanks to everybody who posted something. This is a conversation. All questions there are still up for comments. In order to encourage whoever has been reading, but not posting yet, to do so I am adding one more subject which was suggested in the following terms by Frank Martin few weeks ago: "I am personally interested in constructs of ‘quality’ with regard to artistic production… Is everything creative and permissible as "art"…if not… who has the authority to limit? These questions have a direct impact on the related "standards" and constructs of "race".… By freeing ourselves from the tyranny of "race"-based assessments of reality…do we unsettle the status quo? If we have rules, must they be in some sense tyrannical? Is tyranny, and its attendant reliance upon accepted, canonical standardization sometimes advantageous or even beneficial? When and why?… I am very interested in discussing these "structure" questions because of their relationship to the workshop and to the Spoleto presentations/performances and impact on day to day artistic production." —Gwylène

Dana’s experience with the Russian waitress and the story told to her by her young student are the realities of the descendents of Africans living in America. DuBois’ double consciousness is so much a reality for those of us who would to some extent separate ourselves from the fabric of America, but find ourselves so American.

For years I have studied the structured atrocities that whites have visited upon Blacks in this country and it still shocks me to hear of the majority Black townships that developed across the country only to be destroyed by hordes of whites simply because they were angry. I wonder how white people express such fear of Black people, when indeed it should be Black people who fear white people based on these historical events. Could it be a fear of retaliation?

My feelings are split between Dana’s attempt to portray enslaved Africans as those who dared to live and her 5th graders who felt "they should have fought back." Although history cannot be undone, the supposed emancipation of enslaved peoples by a government might have struck one of the most devastating blows possible to the current condition of African Americans. I can’t help but wonder if it would have been better for us, the descendents of the victims of slavery, if our ancestors would have won their own freedom. Would we be in the same place psychologically, emotionally and spiritually? Would these factors have impacted our economic, social, and cultural stature in this country and the world?

I personally don’t feel shame when I think of my ancestors. I do feel shame for those who were so inhumane as to enslave people and commit such horrible atrocities to the minds, bodies and souls of an entire people. I wonder what type of psychological healing is necessary for the descendents of the enslavers? —Tina Marshall-Bradley

Making Art/Making Home.… so many issues, so little time to discuss each in depth. Hi, everyone! I’ve finally managed to navigate the maze of technological blocks in place which have prevented me from engaging in the conversation up to this point; much thanks to Gwylène and Steve.

It seems to me that the issues of today are in fact the very same issues that were confronted by those of the past. Slavery is slavery, it matters little to me if you frame the question in terms of forced labor because of conceptual "ownership" or whether you frame it in terms of "laborers vs. capitalists" or "communists vs. capitalists" for that matter. What matters most is the consciousness of the people involved. Slavery is a state of mind. The slave master was just as much a "slave" to the system in place at that time as the slave-proper was; just as capitalists, communists and laborers are all at the current time imprisoned by their own limited views of reality. Reality is not perception, or if you will, perception is not reality. —John

To your last question Tina, I attempt the answer that it needs a social debate. And it has started under many forms. In staying in Charleston. I cannot avoid to be thinking of black-white relationships. Not a real choice. My staying in Charleston could be enslaving my mind more and more against my will if I was not actively looking for preventing that to happen.

About thirty years ago I was very impressed by a book by a French sociologist, Pierre Bourdieu, on the social critic of judgment and taste. The assessments were not race-based but class-based. The discovery was that what "I like" was not only what "I" like. And actually it was refreshing, comforting… and needed to be challenged! My "I" could not be "enslaved" without me knowing it? or could it be? The arts, and more specifically the road toward an appreciation of the arts as motors or tools for social change are now proposing a field in movement to value those assessments as analytical tools, temporary criteria of quality, or even engines for re-creation. John, how multi-dimensional and multi-directional is, can be, that space between reality and perception? How fast can we move from one way to the other way. And do we need to represent it? to activate it? Are there forms (Neill’s previous question) to be found there? —Gwylène

First, Dana, what I meant by "the situation in Charleston" was explosive economic change, in a society and a built landscape that are both racialized and historicized. The area’s efforts to manage growth have to deal with elements like property boundaries, community locations, and employment patterns that are tied back to the past. The economy itself is tied to a depiction of the past. In both areas, not to mention the more direct aspects of family connections and cultural traditions, I think we have to acknowledge the legacy of the slave system in a lot of seemingly new situations.

To Tina Marshall Bradley: I think a certain amount of "psychological healing is necessary for the descendents of the enslavers," but I think the main healing comes through simple acknowledgement, recognition of the facts about our own history. A lot of my work the past few years has been based on the idea that this is necessary work for white Americans. We descendents and other white Southerners are in a better position to be reached in a sense, because it is harder to deny our connection.

I try to emphasize that the main thing is to understand clearly what happened, the history of our peoples, in order to make good choices and actions today. Because like with any self-investigation, there are a lot of pitfalls, from wallowing in guilt to getting lost in a healing process, to even a kind of power-thrill.

As for the question of African American resistance, I have no standing to judge what people "should have" done. I do emphasize, in the area of "clear understanding," that most Americans have very little idea of the other thing you mention—how ferocious and organized a totalitarian response is hidden under the folksy name "Jim Crow" and the incredible efforts it took to suppress what looks to me like pretty strong social, economic, and even at times armed resistance. —Neill

My silence is due to the need, before I entered, to have a reach, to find a protruding stone on this cliff, which I can grab onto and hope it will carry me to the next ledge.

I am not a mountain climber. Yet I am trying to follow you all in your climb. Knowing that there is no free fall.

So, the protruding stone I am clinging on is called "the Porto Alegre experiment in participative democracy." Those guys, down in Brazil — thanks to particular circumstances — could propose, in the running of their city, that a parallel organization be set up alongside the municipal council, enabling local inhabitants to take real decisions for their city (not quite a verbatim quote from an article, in French, by Bernard Cassen, in Le Monde Diplomatique, October 1998). Since I am sure you know that "local inhabitants" is like a code word for "inner city folks," you understand that we are talking about the disenfranchised minorities.

Well, we can create the circumstances. We can assemble the "local inhabitants." We can give them equal time, equal space, equal voice. We can imagine VERBAL, LIVE conversations where the dominant and the oppressed would pair, as equals. For sure, they would come to common ideas on small matters. Then they would move to larger questions. Then, as in Brazil. they would attempt a statewide action. And if the larger action fails, because … because, they could walk back home happy together and revisit, rework, rethink, reorganize…

My point is that it is a need, for me, to integrate actual activities into historic revisiting. Or else we remain in utopia, nostalgia, a complex attempt at reconciliation without ever facing the truth.

Please be patient! Here, the word truth is used to make a connection between what I advocate and the Mandela-Tutu South African experiment, as in "Truth and Reconciliation."

In our context, truth has nothing to do with dogmatism or religious fervor. Truth is an expression of the existential necessity to update, to immerse in the present, any notion, concept, idea … if one wants to have a future.

Am I circling around the topic? Not pronouncing the R word (racism)? Yes, I am. As a living studio artist, I believe that art can bring people together on a very simple, simplistic basis. I believe black and white can mix paints together and … create a common color, which will not change their color, tough.

And I believe it cannot be the color of money, of privilege, of exploitation. The color of oppression. So, Nayo, this is not revolution. This is a cry for such a simple, step by step exercise! Tell me, you, who has so often kneaded this matter of earth and fire. —Jean-Marie

"What does it mean for social change? What does it mean for to-morrow? This piece of art ("Latitude 32° - Navigating Home") created a sense of community, even temporarily; it really pulled people together… What I see in the city, there is a lot of mobilization going on here, there is no organizing going on in this town that I can find… Organizing is long term. We investigate, evaluate, negotiate and implement." —Nayo Watkins

"I cannot become the cultural organizer you are and that you are making a call for and maybe the project of Suzanne is calling for also. I can only collaborate with you." —Gwylène Gallimard

"We also tried to give you some tools. The story circle is a tool. If you are trying to work across communities, across different kind of people with different kind of people, the story circle is a powerful tool… The cultural organizing theme is a powerful tool. Goes back into community organizing… As artists we need to be clear about where we claim responsibility and where we pass responsibility. And when we pass it… we don’t just drop it." —Nayo Watkins

Frank, can you help me out with what "freeing ourselves from the tyranny of "race"-based assessments of reality means? Or give me an example?

Tina Marshall Bradley wonders whether the ancestors of the victims of slavery would be better off today had their ancestors won their own freedom, and I think, "Well, yes." Honestly, though, that never has seemed feasible to me. Enslaved African Americans did try, and, as Tina and Neill point out, African Americans during Jim Crow did try. Yet here we are. Their efforts were met with, as Neill says, a ferocious and organized totalitarian response. DuBois’ life seems an example. He was a brilliant man, yet his life was so constrained. I remember reading how disheartened DuBois’ wife felt on their move to, I think, Atlanta. She was locked out of the kinds of cultural institutions that had previously nourished her. And DuBois himself. Aren’t I correct that he couldn’t earn a doctorate in his own country? Nor did his work receive the acknowledgment it deserved. Neill says that the main thing is to understand clearly what happened, and I agree. But I also think it is important, and maybe harder, to understand what IS happening. Sometimes I feel like a child awakened to find herself caught under the bed sheets. The reality of racism seems so pervasive, so casual, so much a given, and I am so much a part of it. Often I don’t even notice "out loud" to myself. And I feel caught and smothered and see no way out. —Dana

Taking off from Jean-Marie’s simple steps, I wonder if anyone reading this has imagined new steps or taken some since the workshop, or "under its influence"? (Maybe the step is simply to stop talking for a while!)

I suppose mine is to keep plugging at a local situation I’m working on where I live — trying to get some people together to deliver arts services to a large group of kids in the foster system; which I think (or hope) goes to Nayo’s sense of artists really doing organizing. (I’m aware of the huge structural issues behind the face of the foster-care system; I think an effort like this does force awareness of those through, literally, simple steps.)

I was also curious about reactions to the invitation to a community event in Charleston, since I didn’t see any responses to that post. ——Neill

As I have read the awesome remarks of all concerned, I have to reply to the issue of arts and enslavement. Both are issues to where personal feelings and thoughts are in total control. From the time we are born our thoughts are shaped by others and as we grow older those thoughts should be questioned, thus we became teenagers. The age of rebellion, questioning, doubt, reasoning and impressionable minds. Then comes adulthood and everything we have experienced changes daily just as art changes by the different eyes that view it.

Enslavement as I know it was the most horrifying event in this country’s history. As a southern woman of South Carolina and Louisiana heritage this topic strikes to my heart, because I know if you have never really walked in my shoes you can only assume my pain and not really understand the magnitude of the pain and how deep it runs on a daily basis. Many days I have to analyze the words or actions I hear from other races and hopefully those words or actions don’t carry a racial connotation. I have mixed feelings about the racial issues that occur in Charleston. Charlestonians are a rare group of people no matter what color. On a daily basis most are cordial and talkative from a sidewalk to an elevator. On another day the disrespect portrayed is utterly ridiculous, from visual looks to bodily gestures from any race to another race. How do I deal with it? I take the moment, deal with as I wish and sorry for the person who gets the angry side of me. I will address the situation head-on, and when I finish you can believe you have learned a lesson about disrespecting another human being and usually an apology follows with a hand-shake of respect to another human — namely ME! I hope after such encounters the people involved will carry themselves differently the next time around. Once again, as with art, a person’s vision or view is totally subjective.

I honor my ancestors in my daily work and life. Their endurance, pain, strength, bloodshed, death, separations, and torture are all my strength. For me their is nothing but much respect and love for what my people endured and I hope my actions can live up to their honor. Everyone will deal with it in their own way so I don’t feel any one way is right or wrong. Respecting others is a start to understanding differences are OK. —La’Sheia Oubre’

La’Sheia, thank you for bringing such strong and personal thoughts for others to consider.

It’s a strange thing. I also honor my ancestors in my daily life and work. There’s only one set of them, and I can’t pick and choose. In trying to see them in their humanness, I have to acknowledge their wrong actions as well as their strength. —Neill

"I looked at it ("Latitude 32° - Navigating Home") as if it was a painting and I saw a mix of white and black people I have never seen before in Charleston. Does this represent Charleston? Will this representation of Charleston 2003 make history? In Charleston, I see the black neighborhoods and I see the white neighborhoods. In the performance, I can see the true reality of the mix and the untrue reality of its representation." —Gwylène Gallimard

"I am puzzled about this table of Asian people, because everybody was black-white-black-white. There they were all Asian… The racial politics of the United States, you’re either challenging it by letting those people be together to work their things out, and then you put black and white at other tables. Is that the stereotype in America? I am puzzled…" —Jean-Marie Mauclet

"Someone, a participant at one of the tables said: ‘We were so diverse that it was great to share, but there is no reason ever for us to get back together again. Because it would be already car problems, we don’t have the same community, we don’t have the same grounds, so we cannot work together, we can only talk together." —Reported by Gwylène Gallimard

Felicia Dryden is considering a reenactment that would reenact the reactions of the freed slaves. What do you think about it?

Frank Martin feels the moment when Tina Marshall Bradley said "Oh! That’s what it was…" about Colin Quashie’s piece that she had seen and wondered about two years ago, was very important as it outlines some of the missing links between the various forms of "Public" Art and their audience. Let’s talk more about that. —Gwylène

I have lived on Huger for 42 years and my neighborhood has always had races living together. Blacks, Greeks, Jews, whites, mixed couples, numerous religions, and we had mixed high schools — Charleston High where I graduated from, Rivers, Bishop England and we had all-black high schools — Burke, C.A. Brown. Diversity is not new to the Holy City. Also we had many military bases and port activities that brought people from all over the world. Charleston was called the "Melting Mecca." —La’Sheia

Our group actually started with slide presentations by various artists. And we have not done it for a while. Our meetings this year have been led by various subjects, not by artworks or artists presentations. And I guess we need to partly go back to those. I am not convinced, though, art openings are the best time for a group discussion. Actually I have avoided art openings for years because I resented to see that art could be diluted in a party. There is an opening Thursday evening at the city gallery at Waterfront Park for three artists invited for Moja Arts Festival, and a gallery talk by two of them Friday the 26th from 1 to 3pm. I will be trying to go to the talk. And let’s organize a discussion there if hours are convenient for everybody or anywhere else. And maybe other artforms should be considered. —Gwylène

I found it interesting that John’s comments from the opening session were the very first that Gwylène put forth. My initial reaction was that I was so glad when he first said them, because it was what I had been feeling in that room. I didn’t even know where to start. What seemed important to say at that moment?

After going around and around with this in my head, I arrived at the realization that all I have is my story. Yes, I can always find opinions about other people’s stories, and most of the time I feel perfectly willing to share those opinions. But it is the depth of this issue, racism in our country, that seems so completely overwhelming to address. This leaves me feeling that in offering my story to others, the ball can get rolling.

My response, then, during that weekend in June, was to refrain from jumping into the public forum with attempts to say something in response to John’s remarks, and instead, to seek John out and try to find our commonalities. I suppose I could have sought him out as a "confessor," delving into these issues of the past and present, but my feeling at the time seemed that looking to the future was a way to begin a small healing. I discovered that we both have a passion for contemporary architecture and design. We realized that we both love the same magazine, Dwell. We both found that we have a fondness for LA. We talked. We communed.

It was this simple thing, that the group of us who attended the events of the weekend began to function as a community, that I found most compelling. It is this that I have taken away from that weekend, this observation that the process of community building begins with those small conversations. They are often provoked by the big issues, but the important stuff, the one-on-one relationship building, begins with just two.

I now find myself at once both a part of the Charleston community and not. I am not physically there, nor do I anticipate relocating there. But now I have some relationship bridges with some folks there. I want to keep in touch with these folks. At the end of the weekend, I expressed my disappointment that there was not an official roster of attendees, with email addresses and phone numbers, etc. Yet I have already fallen short in my active participation in this new community of mine—waiting only until now to share my thoughts.

John, I would really like to continue to trade stories. Drop me a line at patton@ztel.com if you get a chance. —Patton

"I am in agreement that the workshop starting with ‘Shared History’ was very significant in its effect to generate dialogue with a diverse group. But I am aware that the issue of really getting to the bare truths and honest dialogue from most participants will take some doing. It’s like unraveling an onion. The issues of racism, social change, uncovering the oppression and ignorance from past experiences are deeply embedded. I sensed resistance to really share because there is a numbness that comes first when confronted with revisiting past experiences. These opportunities like ‘Making Art/Making Home’ and ‘Shared History’ do in time peel away the layers of our onions. I applaud the initiators. Thank you! More…more… more." —Arianne King Comer

"The workshop reconfirmed to me that there are people out there that understand the importance of serious, uncomfortable discussion. It is great when people squirm toward reality." —Felicia Dryden

Hi, everyone … I don’ t know if this conversation will reach all or not … my skepticism regarding technology has been transformed into a conviction … I find that the conversation is quite interesting … actually much to my surprise. I had begun to think that we had said all that we could say about the illusion of race, also … because of the difficulty of writing into a void … unable to enjoy the nuance of expression or voice quality … I feel like a free floating body … but here I go attempting to enter this conversation again … (because of a history of technology challenges it’s too boring to discuss..)

Dana’s question about the tyranny of race-based assessments of reality engaged my attention … because that is something which is so essentially American … an approach which I did not always feel when visiting European cultures or when talking with friends from various countries in Africa … but which may have been sometimes present in many of those conversations but outside of my personal awareness I suppose … I was also profoundly struck by something that Tina said pertaining to the perception of how the American of African descent was liberated from the illusions and delusions of "legal" enslavement … Tina suggested that "blacks" may have been better off if they had fought for their freedom … well look at Haiti … American blacks fought against slavery in every conceivable manner, the Stono, Camden, and Denmark Vesey Rebellions come immediately to mind, and 40 years of bitter battle with the assistance of the Seminole and Creek peoples are examples which predate the Civil Rights War. In which black regiments participated … there were battles before the Civil War with Africans as principal players and I have left out so many … the point being that African Americans did fight to obtain freedom … but the distortions of history ignore the accounts of lawsuits (such as Dred Scott and many others who petitioned through the courts for freedom and recognition), so much of the construct of being "victims" of slavery is in reality a romantic notion invented by persons who wish to be perceived as "whites" … because a white liberation transfers the sense of autonomy away from blacks on the one hand and discredits "African-American" autonomous activity on the other hand … and this foolish and error-filled perception is meted out to everyone … as some kind of "truth" … it is far from that … of equal damage is the construct of "white" organization and "power" … really a kind of thuggish intimidation perpetuated by convenience and the … for lack of a better term … gullibility of African-American self-perception as a collective distinct from other American collectives.

… in order to evolve a language which makes it possible just to like or dislike each other on the basis of our personalities instead of these powerful mythologies of race … we have to do some unprecedented re-thinking of what we as Americans in particular … have been taught … this is no easy task. "Blacks" have transformed aspects of the myth into a desirable history of "suffering" and "victimization" … and "whites," even in the midst of a placating search for self-extraction from this enormously complex ogre of myth … may find themselves falling into cliché and condescension … I don’t feel that this is a hopeless conversation … but I do feel that the problem … if there is a problem … has not been described clearly. In Charleston …"blacks" and "whites" seem to be seeking some means to create a capitalist enterprise by exploiting the past … and I do not condemn that … our system requires money for survival to some extent and I am not the least either anti-capitalist or anti-privilege … even racism has its advantages … in ethnocentrist self-identification … group dynamic and heritage celebration … etc. etc. But as human beings … we simply have to understand and acknowledge that these separations are superficial, political, expedient, and while they may be fun … they are essentially trivial … larger issues must be addressed on our shared planet … and this is the difficulty of so-called race … it is a distraction among many … class, education, etc…which we use to distinguish among ourselves and forget our common humanity .… race is never really the issue … the actual human issue is always something else … I am finding it very difficult to have a serious conversation about an illusion of something … and I disagree with John … perception IS someone’s reality … because perception is what creates the context of how we enable our understanding of reality, how we decide to conduct ourselves in the shared reality of interconnection, interaction and response … some people feel "black" or "white" (or Jewish or Palestinian, etc…) and act so … whatever that means, these people perpetuate racism … even if they don’ t intend to do so .… no matter who they may be … —Frank Martin

Well, Frank, you certainly reached me — logically as well as technologically. Thanks for the effort. I gain from your thoughts that a particular agenda we might all take up from this point is the importance of telling the stories. Your intimations of the struggles (violent, legal, personal, and collective) that have permeated our history for the entire span of slavery in America, as well as in the post-slavery era, are fraught with possibilities.

Our conversation, coming out of the "Making Art/Making Home" workshop, can move on this agenda to a discovery of how each of us, those of us who make art and those of us who make home, are able to tell the stories, to put into the public place the secrets, the hidden facts, the heroes, the demons that affect our individual lives. I thank you for rightfully including the historical and the immediate present as a whole. We separate the present from the past at our peril.

What I particularly like about your thoughts is that you include in this creative effort the search of a language — a vocabulary, a syntax, and a style — that can express the story we choose to tell. We are, each in our own way, no doubt already telling some of the stories. The search for a language that you suggest requires analysis of common practice that is rigorous and demanding, but essential. I believe we can only successfully accomplish such a search by working collectively, across boundaries of communication. That, I am realizing as we continue this conversation, is the potential value of the circle of people that is forming (or has formed) in Charleston.

Thanks and I’m glad we are finding ways to simplify the process of communication. —Bob Leonard

It is overwhelming to read all this exchange of thoughts. What is also overwhelming is the weight dualistic thinking is bringing to or taking away from the whole conversation. Dualism is a shell, a nutshell, a straitjacket, and a bad habit.

Although he is not part of this conversation yet, let me quote a friend, a very dear member of the Charleston rhizome. He, being a man of his time and of his philosophy, always brings back conversations to "contradiction" or "dialectics." Well, a few weeks ago, as he was relating some event to the group, he had a slip, Freudian or not, but a huge slip, (I can talk about it because we laughed about it): He talked about "trialectics." And he caught himself doing it. But it was done. And here is my point. We must let our mind slip. We must deconstruct, literally, this conversation in black and white. Not as a surgeon would, in order to reconstruct and hope it will breathe again. No. You deconstruct to study (as we do), to observe and analyze (as we do), to come to understanding and critical responses (as we do) BUT never to reconstruct the former structure. It is the meaning of history that any attempt to put back Humpty-Dumpty together again, even conceptually for the sake of advanced scholarship, is a futile, dooming attempt at eternity! It is the living part of the Faustian dream. And we know (do we really?) what happened to Faust.

I, for sure, am not a serious philosopher. But every day tells me, mostly since Gwylène and I work with refugees, that America is a living example of what our world really is today: a multitudinal array of diversity from which (I am being very aware and careful, here. And if I slip, please, someone, help me), the black/white issue should find comfort. Meaning that the variables of the quandary have changed and that, although not any simpler, the quest for social justice is gaining from such a diversity. We have passed the dualistic framework. Globalization is ALSO a liberating force. Except that, those in power intend to keep the problem simple, bi-polar, so they stand a fair chance to keep their privileges. They constantly fall back to the reactionary dualism of "them vs. us." But we have passed this stage.

Well, yes, Bob … and by the way it is really good to hear from you again … I think that what is presented as "history" does have to be enlarged … revisited in every generation really … however … this can become so very specific that every ethnocentrist or political faction will have drastically different propaganda to disseminate … the archival nature of Eurocentrist culture has had an enormous impact regarding how we have been indoctrinated into perceiving events of the past … but the fake race silliness is essentially, in my mind anyway … a "bill of goods" so to speak … its propaganda became so pervasive that many people accepted the myths as if they bore some form of credibility and argue about the myths as if the myths are true … well … they are just myths … and that’s all … they may be interesting or compelling or … whatever … but the myth of victimization is in part false … yes millions of Africans were tortured and kidnapped and sold by other Africans to Europeans for profit … and etc.… etc.… and we must not become desensitized to this fact of the past … but we must also avoid romanticizing the facts and search for the histories that underlie the facts … this is VERY difficult … because a summary assessment is sooooo much easier … but so dangerous … that’s how we arrived at where we were and are … that is , cultural stereotyping … summarizing behavior … which was then ironically adopted in part by the groups it was attributed to … this is what makes me feel uneasy about so many conversations pertaining to "race" … the fact that people take the "issue" so seriously and in my comments I intentionally mixed ethnicity and religion into the race discussion because these separation are equally divisive and non-essential to the HUMANE condition … not I said religion NOT spirituality … the consequences of the interactions of these phenomena have been serious but the illusions of their "reality" have always been illusions! Destabilizing and replacing the negative aspects of the myths of race, & etc.… would be what I’d perceive as a central point of future action … to fashion the tomorrow of different possibilities … and I did not say "equality" because I am not certain that equality can exist … among people… —Frank Martin

I find it exhilarating that this conversation is occurring right now, and particularly your latest comments, as they help to put into words what I have been struggling with in the project I am currently working on. My project, broadly entitled "The Mapping Project," with at least one subtitle, "You Are Here!," is using the concept of Map Making at its center. Maps attempt to depict a reality. They try to be "absolute" or "objective." But the more I have thought about them, the more that I have come to see them as simply one of those myths you talk about. They put forth a particular point of view, and they become obsolete the moment they come off of the printing press. (Case in point, I recently drove from Atlanta to Kingsport, Tenn., and a section of the road denoted with black dashed lines as "incomplete" was, in fact, completed recently.)

Our society is littered with various forms of Maps that try to do the same thing — to suggest that this is the only correct way to think about this or that.

It also makes me think about what has been going on with the Bush administration (although I’m sure that it isn’t limited to this administration) with all of the partial truths, half-truths and flat-out lies that are spouted by the various mouth-pieces. The thought process behind it all being, "If we say it, then it is true". (Or at least perceived as truth by the unquestioning many…)

Maybe we could take some time really examining your last thought, that of equality. Perhaps a starting point could be, "How can we come to a common definition of what we are even talking about, when we talk of equality?" —Patton White

I guess technology has its benefits after all … I was beginning to become a sort of "mistechnothrope" … no, that is not actually a word … or rather it wasn’t … it is one now … my personal neologism … it’s now my techno-referent equivalent of "misanthrope" … the map metaphor is perfect … quite brilliant, really … and brings to mind a great foil for your question …t he next exhibition to be offered here in the spring will be called "In Pursuit of Equity: Artists Celebrate Brown vs Board of Education’s 50th Anniversary" … but equity and equality may not be the same thing … while two citizens may have equal access to law and the benefits of the protection of the law … the ability of two citizens to understand the law itself and the character and importance of that protection may seriously affect how those two citizens are able to avail themselves of the privilege of protection … and it is for this reason the equality is not equal … because individuals are not the same … if I have kinesthetic intelligence and you have linear intelligence … I may be able to learn a series of eloquent movements much more rapidly than you may … but you may be able to logically define a situation in which those movements may have a greater cultural relevance .… so we could be different … but are we equal if the society in which we live places a greater value on your ability to contextualize than on my ability to perform…? the map metaphor is so perfect because our awareness of "where we are" is contextualized by our understanding of that locus in relationship to other things … the more we know about other places in relationship to "where we are" then to some extent the greater our understanding of how where we are situates itself in a larger "world"/ universe … some people only know their self-house and are unable to imagine either the entire neighborhood, or village, or town, or city, state, country, continent … etc.… so a need develops to create mythologies to explain the unknown … and all of the rest follows suit from that more or less in part is would seem … our fear of the unfamiliar is self-preservative … but limiting … and the Bush folk really do play upon this particular insecurity … as you have pointed out Patton … the more alien the fanatical terrorist is the easier to de-humanize his or her needs and demands … and disregard any possibility of their being either reasonable or even appropriate. Thus a power struggle in which right is an US or THEM situation … and no situation is ever really entirely that way … but we seem to want an illusion of clarity … even when it is damaging or damning … because often the "truth" is a muddle of different points of view … and that is very difficult to sort through … and the muddle is most human … human is process not finality … we love facts but they don’t really exist as such … even these are relative … the same is true with a map and the means to reach a particular point … looking forward to hearing more about your project… —Frank Martin

One of the questions I would pose to you Jean-Marie, might be … "How might you propose to create a socio-cultural structure which permits the "participants" to "participate" in a true "democracy" …??? I am currently unaware of any democracy that has ever existed … some aspect or segment of any culture laying claim to "democratic rule" is actually always left out … in Ancient Greece it was women … slaves … and children … and America has always been an oligarchy … and still is … less than 30% of the "qualified" population even bothers to "vote" but even if they do, since this is a democratic republic … not a democracy … their decision would be filtered through an electoral college which follows the will of the people purely as a form … not an edict … democracy, here, thus becomes an extremely unstable term … worse … many of the people I know personally are arbitrary and completely lacking in conscientiousness with regard to the responsibilities of maintaining an awareness of the issues which would effect democratic rule … do we really believe that MOST people would be sufficiently well-informed enough to decide if international trade laws specific to 80 different countries with different relationships to this specific government and highly differing agenda could reasonably vote in appropriate decisions to maintain their own prosperity?? I do not feel confident that such is true or probable … it may be possible … but I personally doubt its probability … I certainly agree that the "race"/black/white idea has lost its authority as a social dilemma … but its constructs of "us" versus "them" hold true metaphorically for all of the other adversarial constructs that we may be subjected to … including the class-based discussion which underlies the issue of "privilege"… and the loss or gaining of "privilege" … and … shifting from "race" to "class" doesn’t significantly change the issues brought forward in this conversation in my opinion … the most significant issue is to (or for) me … how do we suspend the importance of these transient and superficial separations and speak directly to our mutual humanness while seeking to transform the circumstances and our shared levels of awareness under which we must interact? That is what seems difficult to me … I would consider this to be the "human" challenge … and all constructs of exclusion or "otherness" are in some sense alien to it … I just don’t know if democracy works…it has NEVER been tried … it may work in small communities … but for whole countries … with diverse sectors and varying regional needs … to subject everything to a popular vote is … well … preposterous … we may be reluctant to admit it … but sooner or later … some form of socialism will have to be accommodated … healthcare is a most significant case in point … its escalating costs are debilitating to individuals … some form of regulation may eventually have to be imposed … or … only the VERY RICH will have access … can we trust ourselves to have self-control in an unregulated free-market economy … history tells us "NO!" aspects of free market work well leading to prosperity … but … greed corrupts and without safeguards abuse eventually ruins prosperity … we could change history … we could be different … we have possibility … the question is …will we?? —Frank Martin

Frank, although I feel you on the race (ethnicity and religion) regarding our propensity to categorize people, I would love to say that we are groups and subgroups and subgroups within groups and we all feel differently and that should just be okay. There should be a way of saying that I don’t like tall swarthy-skinned intellects who speak French and that should be just between you and I. I could even go so far as to say that I think that people in the arts who live and study in Blacksburg have no right to take state money away from training programs that would allow students to get a job. These are notions of prejudice and I support anyone’s right to be prejudiced, even when it is directed at me. What I have a hard time simply pushing aside within an academic discussion is when the lives of entire groups of people are impacted by a "group prejudice" if you will. When that "group prejudice" can cost people a decent way of living on one end of the spectrum and their lives on the other end of the spectrum, it becomes more than simple myth. There is a real and continuing struggle for a limited amount of resources on this earth and there are groups who have gone to great lengths to determine how those resources will be distributed among the people of the earth. Whether this is a concerted deliberate attempt (just because you’re paranoid, doesn’t mean they aren’t out to get you), or it is just something that has happened as human beings move about the earth and in the heavens, is irrelevant. One can’t ignore that there are lines of separation regarding groups of people’s ability to control their own destiny. Now whether we split these groups of people up by ethnicity, religion, or genetic indicators there are issues to be addressed. I am open for a way of discussing issues, without the groupings, I just haven’t been able to come up with a way. It may sound as if I support the notion of race, but I don’t. I just can’t think of another way to communicate with people (particularly in America where race seems to have been solidified like nowhere else in the world) about social and historical issues without placing them in a context that has race as its backdrop. —Tina

P.S. Frank, I really do like you, and Bob, I think that your work is very necessary to the development of a civil society.

Well, here goes: I’m just jumping into the conversation after reading everyone else’s comments and feel pretty overwhelmed to the point I forget what we’re doing, but here are some thoughts.

Tina’s comments about not liking the "tall swarthy intellectual who speaks French," etc., inspired me to think about the issue of "difference" and this whole thing about being "white" or "black," which is still an ingrained idea and which makes normal — whatever that is — interactions sometimes difficult. Here is what I think about now: Is a particular person behaving disrespectfully to me or you (me/you as white American or Pakistani or African American, etc.) because of 1) my skin color in which they see 2) privilege or threat or distaste or "poorness," or is it that they are just generally unpleasant and nasty?

I know this is an old idea, but what seems to me the great leveler is education. But is having education being white? Is being educated in this country taking on "whiteness"? I guess I don’t want having education be a function of whiteness because it exposes some kind of ingrained racism in me if I use it as a criteria for those I identify with. I know that I organize my interactions around people at first glance based on their educational level. That is very leveling for me. At the same time it’s very elitist. What people are reading and talking about makes a huge difference as to whether I’m interested in "hanging out" with them. In the fifties, education seemed the real tangible difference. (In my thinking as a child then, the main difference between blacks and whites other than the skin color thing was education, despite all the other messages I was getting.) Today, depending on where I am, if I meet someone and they happen to be African American, I make one assumption (at least consciously — I probably make others too); that they have had certain family/cultural experiences that include discrimination based on skin color that I haven’t had and vice versa. But mostly I find a great deal of identicalness in the ways most all of us U.S. people behave based on educational levels. Even when it comes to discrimination — more whites are experiencing it and I think beginning to understand it. I’ve been stereotyped/discriminated against because people have thought I was Jewish (at SMU in Dallas!). When I went to graduate school in Manhattan, the Jewish students made it pretty obvious they thought I was inferior (you sound so stupid with that southern accent). I have felt my very presence to be offensive in some groups (The White Privilege Awareness group at the University of Colorado). I’ve had close African American friends exclude me from certain gatherings because I was not a person of color. Now I don’t equate this with the intensity/depth of legal, formalized ugly racial discrimination but it has helped me perhaps understand what it feels like to be excluded because of ethnicity/color. (And what a privilege that is — to be the one who gets to experience what other people have to experience.) I don’t think it’s necessarily bad to have socially exclusive events/institutions — except that in this country exclusion has mostly been about oppression. Hey, what about Kwanzaa – it’s such a better idea than Christmas and New Year’s with the buy buy buy and drink drink drink traditions. I would love Kwanzaa to become the American "winter" celebration, but African Americans may wish to preserve this as "their" own. See – it’s slipping in again. Their, them, you people (the most offensive sounding of all to me).

Re Tina’s comments on the psychological outcomes of those responsible for perpetuating, promoting and participating in slavery. Trying to get my mind around my ancestors having brutalized other people is overwhelming. (Note of caution: For those who have grown up with their families telling them their ancestors were "good masters" — perhaps meaning they only had their slaves beaten once a day instead of three times a day, or even if people were treated "humanely" — meaning not using physical force (although you had the right to) and providing sufficient food, etc., ole massa could always sell you or your family. Even if he said he never would, you knew deep down that when things got bad, you were property and he would have to sell you. Don’t get me started.) I do feel shame and guilt. I am also concerned about the psychic time and energy it must have taken to not only deny that slavery was ultimately against their very own white God but to actually believe — like my ancestors did — that the benefits of slavery were to the slave. This requires quite a bit of mental/emotional corruption and gyration to produce this kind of thinking and I always wonder if my present family’s ability to rationalize/justify wrongs or inconsistencies, etc., might have come out of our ancestor’s very refined techniques of denial about slavery developed over the 18th, 19th, and 20th centuries. I think the film project "Shared History" is one way for me to unravel this family characteristic. I very much agree with Neill Bogan: Whites must at the least acknowledge the REALITY of the past. (And African Americans too for that matter. One might be proud their ancestors had the wherewithal to make it through and come out strong from the slavery experience but I don’t know that anyone actually wants their ancestors to have been slaves — I certainly don’t want my ancestors to have been slave owners, but they were.) And whether you decide to feel shame, guilt or inspired to take a positive action (but be careful — what a white person may think is a positive action may not actually be one — and I know this from my own experience of being "little miss know-it-all [I have more education than you do] white missy") is certainly going to be different for each person. So we must know our history and understand that it continues to deeply influence us on many different levels. (Neill: I especially liked the comment about getting lost in a healing process. I live in Boulder, CO, and there are many here lost in that healing process via meditation, crystals, color therapy, etc.)

So my "art," "Shared History" is, in a sense, making a home for that REALITY, (the reality of "I am who I am because of who you are") where we can all pull up a chair, look each other in the eye, and if not so much say anything, demonstrate a willingness—by physically being in a group of people who, by being there at all—acknowledge a need to make what has seemed like "other" their own. —Felicia Dryden

Jean-Marie, I guess Dualities R Us. We try to move beyond our cultural conditioning. R Dialectics Us Too? Without always knowing it, for most people, yes.

Frank, in that effort to move beyond conditioning you are giving us points to move toward, outward, beyond race. Funny how for me and many others this trip had to start with the past to move outward. My gut tells me you are so conditioned by history you don’t have to refer to it self-consciously anymore.

Thank you all for the thought provoking exchange. And thank you to the planners of this forum. —Tina

[Editor’s note: The participants continued this conversation after we published this transcript. We added Part 2 to the discussion in December 2003.]

Felicia Dryden is a historic preservationist and arts administrator who is currently the executive producer of "Shared History," a one-hour documentary sponsored by ETV Endowment of South Carolina designed to expand the conversation about race in the U.S.

Gwylène Gallimard and Jean-Marie Mauclet have worked for 30 years in the field of visual arts in France and the States, independently and collaboratively. They are presently developing "My Journey Yours," an exploratory program with Refugee Family Services and Youth Art Connection, and working on "The Future is on the Table #3."

Neill Bogan is an artist and writer from Georgia who currently lives outside New York City. He has staged projects dealing with place, power and memory in performance, visual art, and interdisciplinary public art venues since 1983, and is currently a partner with artist Tom Klem in Klem/Bogan Art and Communication.

Frank Martin is curator of exhibitions and collections for the I.P. Stanback Museum at South Carolina State University and former contributing critic in the fine arts for the Charleston Post and Courier. A South Carolina native, he works and lives in Orangeburg.

Robert H. Leonard is associate professor in the Department of Theatre Arts at Virginia Tech in Blacksburg, Va., where he teaches directing and improvisation. He was the founding member of ROOTS, founding director of The Road Company of Johnson City, Tenn., and is a founding director of the Community Arts Network.

D. Patton White is a dancer/choreographer living in Atlanta, GA. He has been a member of Alternate ROOTS since 1998.

Tina Marshall-Bradley is an educator in Columbia, S.C., with an interest in the historical, social, political and cultural contexts of knowledge transfer. Her scholarship focuses on issues of social justice and equity in educational systems in America and abroad.

Sam Watson, a native of Orangeburg, is also a professor of English at UNC Charlotte, where for the third time he’s leading a University Honors course, "Charleston: To Learn a Place."

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Afterwords: A Conversation Around "Making Art/Making Home"

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