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

The entries below continue the conversation that started in a September 2003 private CAN Web forum after "Making Art/Making Home," an Alternate ROOTS workshop at the 2003 Spoleto Festival USA. After we published that conversation, the participants continued to talk by e-mail through October and November, and they share their dialogue with us here. (See the original conversation for identification of some of the speakers.)

Hi Tina!( et alium)…okay now we are getting down to a..and please forgive me for this colloquialism..but I couldn’t resist..a…."nitty…gritty!!!..and thank you for liking me in spite of myself..first of all…and please feel free to come and picket or protest in front of my house for what I am about to say..and it would be so fantastic to have this dialogue face to face…anyway…I still feel that the "groupings" ..which we all do quite naturally, and which are extremely comforting…but these groupings are distractions from our common humanness in its most essential character…I like the groupings too!! ..but the world..like this conversation … has changed so drastically in the last 50 years that the groupings are simply no longer realistic because of what you have pointed out…we are on a shared, shrinking planet with limited resources…the resources seemed limitless long ago..when Nature was unfettered by the interference of our technological development..but now we are intruding into the machinations of things which we are unable to fully comprehend..we don’t know and cannot foresee the eventualities of our myriad forms of pollution in all of its diversity, genetic alterations to food sources, manipulation of the environment through emissions of various poisons,..and on, and on ..and on…if human survival is a basic issue for all of us in conjunction with the survival of the diverse life-forms of our little blue planet…then as a collective..beyond any geographical separations..we human things must begin working toward a global consciousness quite apart from our respective physical, cultural or social characteristics…that is the big picture.

…..preserving the subset identities is important to the subsets..but the larger issue is important…or should be important… to every respirating thing on this planet…and we are endangering ourselves by our callousness…that’s all I am saying…yes…I understand perfectly your concern about the logistics of specificity…if I am ‘black" and "poor" and lacking in a sufficient awareness of the possibilities of opportunity in a world where someone else is "white" and "rich" and highly aware of the myriad possibilities…then the "I" that I have identified is at risk. for discomforture….now the ugly question…is it the responsibility of the "rich"" white" to help the "poor" "black"..???..no…I would say ..NO!…however…I do feel that it is it the RESPONSIBILITY of one human being to help another..I would say yes to that because the "black’ and the "white" are both just "human" the differences are entirely superficial…because in truth the so-called "poor" "black" may in fact help the potentially demoralized, cynical, and greedy.."rich" "white" to be a more humane individual by offering the opportunity to learn about sharing…so the two become equal…one improves in material condition..one improves in spiritual condition..in the world you suggested Tina..the two may not be perceived as equal because of the various criteria of separation…I am proposing that we bomb..literally .blast away the criteria..that is we may be aware of these..criteria as identifying devices..but their importance would be exploded…thus we may approach a kind of equal footing which would make it a privilege for the perceived "have" to share with the perceived "have not"…this is a significant cultural shift in our world..yes I acknowledge that people do exist who want to control resources…but they have not carefully examined their motivations …in Academia..in this academic and theoretical conversation..we are free to do that..to examine the possibilities of motivation.. and offer these individuals alternative perspectives on their interpretation of reality…if "race" has been permitted to become solidified into a social construct in America..it is because Americans have allowed this to happen ..black ones and white ones and red ones and yellow ones and brown ones…by failing to question the validity of the status quo….unfortunately to move forward all of this must be questioned and much may have to be discarded….I don’t want to destroy the "blues" or "history" or black power or chicano heritage…but it would be nice if we could shift some of our populace out of their intellectual prisons…and exactly what is wrong with swarthy French-speaking intellectuals anyway?????!!!!

Felicia raised an interesting question about education…education is so contextual..it’s another one of those "loaded" terms..and its equation with "whiteness" is a bizarre phenomenon in American cultures and subcultures..meaning that the literature-based, archival, academically structured, linear information we commonly refer to as "education" in Western culture is equated with "whiteness" by many people trained in this Western cultural structure…but education is such a broad term…it’s more than just a certain system of structuring information…but I know many Americans of African descent attempt to reject the Westernized form of the structure because its tradition has been passed to this culture based on how its codification took place in the European model. of the Academy coming out of the Greek tradition…which had its roots in Northern Africa..in Egypt where the early ancient libraries were….so clearly the structured transmission of information is not by any means either exclusively Euro-centrist..or constructable as "white"…so I find it funny (ha-ha) that so many people actually draw this particular parallel…this speaks again to just how differently we all process information..and for me this is what is sooooooo intriguing about this entire conversation…we do all need to meet post web-talk and have a good "throttle"!!!..sorry that’s an "in-joke" that I am electing not to explain in detail..not here..anyway..that particular idea about education and race-based constructs just JUMPED out at me…and I felt simply compelled to say something…but …more later!! —Frank Martin

We keep doing this and I really am sorry but I have to comment and, I agree that the conversation must continue in this or some other format. Felicia and Frank spoke of education. Are we talking about education or schooling? I hear people use terms such as "education" to define the fact that someone has gone through a formal structured process and has been given some seal of approval. Whether that process has an articulated end result and whether individuals coming through that process can demonstrate that they meet the criteria articulated, is another conversation. But I often think of the system of transhumance that was in place in the region known as North Africa where nomadic peoples moved around in a manner that prevented any group to stay long enough for their livestock to eat the roots of the vegetation. This knowledge being passed on from generation to generation was truly an education in my mind but would not represent schooling. This structured process of knowledge transfer was critically important and impacts all of mankind to this day.

Therefore, I have had the pleasure of interacting with people who hold terminal degrees (some of them hold more than one) who could not articulate a coherent thought. I have also had the pleasure of interacting with individuals, many of them high school drop outs and incarcerated who articulated ideology that was so beautiful in its simplicity that it made me want to cry. The first group would be said to be educated and the latter not, however it is the latter group of people who are marginalized by society, but who keep me as a researcher grounded and gives meaning to my work. Not because of their condition, but because they simply look at the world through a lens that is so drastically different from the lens that I look through. The former group is also necessary to my growth and development because they can at least espouse what has been written before. Both groups extremely necessary, only one recognized by our society as legitimately educated. I have come to the conclusion (at this moment) that 1. there is certainly a difference between schooling and education, and 2. education is a condition that must be defined by humans given the context of their existence and goes beyond a simple system that can be picked up by one group and dropped onto another.

This is where I think that we get into centricism. There are some groups (sorry Frank) who can accept other people knowing differently from them and are more inclined to tolerate this different way of knowing. There are other groups who insist that everyone should know like they know or not only is something wrong with them, the other group is actually substandard. This group also takes that to another level by insisting that all groups know like they know or be destroyed. Kind of cryptic, but it is the way that things seem to work in the world…as I see it through my lens. —Tina

I had to switch out of the conversation. I know I am missing some of my earlier thoughts. To find them back I will need to plan to do an essay. In middle and high school, essays were extremely important for us and our grades (as opposed to tests which were reserved for kids with problems). I was very good at organizing my essays, very bad at writing them - And that has not changed, despite the fact that my main language as well as the context have changed.

My first thoughts are for Education and Schooling. You are right: we are often mixing them. In a simplistic way, it seems that one of them may free us $wise as the other one may free us mind wise. My dad had little schooling although it was expecting from him (to take over the honor of his dad killed in World War One); my Mom had a lot of schooling for her time although it was not expected from her as a woman. We, four girls and a boy, were expected to do good, but not super good. Good enough to have a job without them to worry about us. But not super good because on one hand my Dad hated intellectuals but loved us and on the other hand, he believed women who knew too much were trouble and women could not by nature be strong every day of the year.
Well the same type of discrepancy was existing in the awareness of other countries and other races. Yes we should know the whole world and be able to hitchhike (a freedom that the youth of today has lost) to deal with our fears in growing to adulthood, but then we should be very French and family oriented in our life choices. But which family? There was never a straight answer. 1968 happened - by the way we heard of the Orangeburg massacre at that time - Some of us lived 1968 as a great education. It destroyed our schooling, and shook many family values. Wishing to be short I won’t tell you all the reasons and French politics. The point is that for a few months we were put, as students, in a situation where we had to think of what global (although the word did not exist yet) education and the many cultures in the world were. As some of the consequences, one of my sisters moved to Colombia (South America) and I got summer jobs in Togo and Congo, and started to work collaboratively within the very traditional Paris art schools. For the most part, including college and university level, schooling is free in France, but education may cost: money, time, friendship, family and may need some sort of activism. Can we say, again in a very simplistic way, that education created social classes or various groups and ways of belongings but schooling/$ defines socioeconomic classes and the balance of power is unfair. Everything is defined in $ terms, actually becoming THE way to represent anything. Where is reality? Just listening to the news is one way to be bombarded with numbers most of us have no grasp for. They are totally detached from education and from any quality of work. How many 0 to talk in millions or billions? I am wondering about the perceptual flexibility of those numbers.

Organized by MOJA festival there was a really interesting discussion on Brown Vs board of Education. Everybody agreed that if legally the matter was won, practically today it was still not acted upon: Schooling for the White and Schooling for the Black are not equal, Schooling within rich counties and Schooling within poor counties are not equal… Great education for all within compulsory integrated schooling has not happened yet.
Same for health coverage. In the early 90’s Jean-Marie and I had a show at the Halsey Gallery at the College of Charleston. One of the installations, part of a series of "Portraits of America" was called "insurance: Compassion for sale". The subject was hot in the politics of the day, but mostly we were inspired and outraged by the fact that the sicker you are, the more expensive your insurance becomes. In other words human beings are treated like cars! Those economists have no education! Those $people who tell us, as employers, that we don’t need to worry about health insurance for other employees have no education! And those guys who want to sell us a camera system to watch the café from our home have no education… Until next time soon. —Gwylene

"Black people are in the electric chair, but white america just hasn’t pulled the switch yet. The reason they haven’t pulled the switch yet is because they’re making money showing Black people strapped in in the electric chair." —KRS-ONE

Omari on hip-hop: the last time someone "came to my neighborhood to help me," .. the art that i knew and loved as hip-hop, that put me in a place where loving myself just because…., or having confidence and garnering adulation for my verbal acrobatics-lyrical brilliance, originality, and defining myself for myself suddenly were no longer acceptable because, a mercenary Jewish and or anglo-saxon protestant missionary (eh ehm record company) who came to "help" me decided that the white masses of record buyers would find it unacceptable that i could be intelligent, articulate, and brilliant in my own right apart from them because, well they perceived me as a uhm… a ".nigger." Not only that, i might be honest about all the bulsh*t that ‘certain’ groups of people have created across the world since their transformation from original form.. But if money could be made off of such rants then it was cool. Just as Kunta was renamed, Kemet Egyptified from Aigyptos, and every other aspect of brilliance that i continue to uncover about Black people gets renamed, retold, etc. from Jesus on.. even hip-hop was christened as "rap".. by "the man." Now everybody of every color finds a guy like me unusual cause i can ‘articulate’ the art of erudition so crystally clear that i must either think or want to be "white," or that for a "nigger" (which I am not) i’m relatively intelligent, somewhat, which is really what’s meant. BUT, The fore fathers didn’t have to pimp/ ‘ho themselves like the last time them dudes on the ships came ashore. Only this time they came in corporate america power lunch suits offering me a chance to get crumbs for me and an unlimited meal for them. There’s no doubt that poverty was and is real since "the man" gave ‘rap’ to the masses thusly it ain’t hard to take someone hyper talented with poverty consciousness engrained in them from the ghetto, string them along like Geppetto, and move em to the meadow. But I’m not Jewish, i ain’t from the ghetto, i’m "bougie", but america (of all colors) tells me i should be ashamed of my middleclass status and two-parent household family…but hip hop never told me that until the "man" got there….before the man got there my credibility was based on my ability not my social status…but that ain’t really enough now…considering my talent. The point is there were never enough Europeans that couldn’t have been fought off, no beads in the world would entice me to go into the motherlands interior and sell souls to the soul-less for approval from ‘the man’ and street artists were never forced to sign their lives away to record deals. So why should i be mad because as chuck D stated " rappers are the manifestation of white peoples fantasies about themselves." ? I’m not mad but i don’t give a God da*m about how intelligent any white person feels i am. or how white any person who calls themselves a nigger says I act because i love myself and i can read and write and enunciate with oral cultural precision. Bottom line is its a people issue, but i wont discredit the evils that Europeans have direct or indirect involvement in since forever….

"Remember, you’re not a slave,
cause we were put here to be much more than that
But we couldn’t see it because our minds were trapped/
but i’m here to take away the pain/ break away the chain
remake the brain/ reveal my name"
—RAKIM

BUT Hold up, Wait a minute, based on fascinating genealogical discoveries that emerged during my family reunion it was uncovered that "oh my God, I have white ancestors!!!!", so uh oh I’m not pure Black like a thought, but never mind that, science unequivocally and ‘all that’ lets us know that everybody is from Africa, so pardon my "the man" "thisses", and "Europeans" "thats" because at the end of the day its people f*cking people. So i’m leery as to me the super artist going into your hood telling you what’s wrong with you then leaving you for dead then blaming you for not acting artsy like me. And according to the people who call themselves ‘whatever’ at the Benedict College art department, i’m not artsy at all because i dont want to be dreary and soul-less like them. Their white-ness/ blackness/ niggerness etc. would prevent them from saying that but just go to read between the lines at a critique and you’ll see. But let me close with this, the U.S. wealth is squarely built on the presence of Africans here, not to discredit any other group but lets be real. In the land of the thief and home of the slave, do we really think that white people from "old money" have any plans of coming off the cash? yeah right. The cash is going to self-insulation and self-medication and the rehab man…because how could you live with yourself??? But you cant steal from a thief so lets figure out constructive ways to take it that i will not divulge in this forum But the prison and pain that comes with having old white, eh ehm Black labor money proves Chuck D right. Except its not cool for the media to portray that type of issue or pain, but it is cool to give welfare a Black face, and show Black people in a one-dimensional aspect of poverty and squalor which i know is real but isnt that real for the human race. How do poor white people feel bout Black people getting all the attention for f*cked up living conditions, so its clearly not a color thing at all. Why does Ester Rolle have to fight to have a husband on "Good Times," get him, then the saddest day in black entertainment bottom line occurs, James the father gets killed. Why did they say the Cosby show wouldn’t work? It did because it made money. Green first, rich white upper one percentile that’s down with GW 2nd and f*ck everybody else…who isn’t making money for the…" " And as far as education? i say f*ck school, and that’s from the greatest public school educator ever.

Published on Saturday, September 20, 2003 by the Guardian/UK
"The Global Hierarchy of Race" by Martin Jacques

As the only racial group that never suffers systemic racism, whites are in denial about its impact. – Gwylène

Gwylene,
Thank you for this article. It is in the same vein as other white authors who are beginning to at least explore the notion of white privilege from a world view. I mourn for the hearts and souls of people of color who are in this continuous battle of whether to try their damnedest to "join" the group on top or fight against a faster and stronger foe to legitimize their voices, cultures, and their very being. The world loses if all of the peoples of the world strive to be one. It makes me almost crazy to think about the knowledge that we have lost from the indigenous people of what we now call North America because if they were not wiped out, their language is gone, their offspring have forgotten their culture. The same is true of peoples all over the globe. I am truly frightened for humanity because of what has been lost. And we all seem to be complicit in this terrible downward trend.

Hi! This article was very interesting but..seemed steeped in white aggrandizement…overstating the case is as ridiculous as understating it…this articles suggests that the world perceives people who call themselves "white" as "gods"… I would be very interested to know what happened to his wife….?

I felt that this article grossly overstated its case…and indeed this is a very difficult subject to discuss because of its emotional content and context…no I am not in denial about the hegemony of Eurocentrist economic intrusion globally..but that particular form of intrusion has not succeeded in obliterating all aspects of cultural integrity among other peoples..and I feel it would be a mistake to promote such an idea…overstatement of power or even potential is as much of a misrepresentation as understatement or omission…and yes I am very directly affected by Eurocentrism because I am writing to communicate through a technology primarily fostered through the agency of the United States and am communicating in English not Yoruba….but the conceptualization of the shared reality in which I am communicating is not exclusively shaped by either of those things…and the world is not actually "dominated" by any race…the perception of such a dominance may exist due to the propaganda that we have been sustained by..but propaganda is rarely fact…racism is real because people decide to perpetuate it and believe in it…this author for all of his supposed sincerity and tragedy is still harboring racist attitudes and he admits that…why support this view of reality…?? Both his attitude and the decision to support it are delusional and destructive..even self-destructive in my opinion…the world views of diverse groups do not exist in the discretion of so-called "white" people…!!! whether they have atomic weapons or not..even physical power cannot shape perceptual reality….. —Frank Martin

Omari, You don’t expect any response? That I don’t get it.
So here is one color proposal to get back at your powerful computer. Instead of using lowercase character, change the name! Try to call the white people COLORLESS, WHITEWASHED, KALSOMINED (?), BLEACHED (remember the bleaching of Charleston?), SILVER, GRAY, CLEANSED, PURIFIED, CAUCASOID, PALE, BLOODLESS… Those are direct from a thesaurus and they may often paint a good representation of some of our states of mind.

And thanks for your post. Whether you wish it or not your voice is needed. —Gwylene

Yo G, you are the greatest by the way. i was enlightened by your response actually. As a poet, wordplay is critical to my craft. How can such a soft spoken diminutive person resonate so loudly? what the French would call " i know not what." I want you to meet my new girlfriend. Her name is Jenna Sae Quah. She’s Kalsominian. From the island of Noir. No seriously, you keep me sharp. Thanx.

honestly i just wanted to start trouble. To me what i said was like a woman admitting the amount of sex partners she really had to her boyfriend, instead of counting only certain ones. Or how white people talk about black people when black people ain’t around. I know that for different reasons some of us cant be honest about sh*t and i specifically didn’t touch on certain things just to f*ck with people… I didn’t touch on how i’ve never been called nigger by WHITE people (to my face), and only by my fellow black people. notice lower cased. smile. I didn’t talk about mr. give us free, Cinque going back to Africa and becoming a prominent slave trader. I just ranted about Europeans knowing good and well that I love Italian suits, long for certain hot sexy white b*tches (im kidding, of course i mean ladies), and never attempted to learn an African tongue or even been to Africa, and i didn’t mention my Afrocentric clothing made by Koreans. I didn’t talk about how black people pimped slavery and though people say it was "better" and civilized, humane etc. how the f*ck can splitting up families and even selling your own kids be "civilized." There’s a reason why we riot in South Central and not Beverly hills and i’ll spill it. Whether conditioned or not there are black people who like being disenfranchised no matter how much bitching is done about the man. However, i would argue that "the man" and i mean the upper one percentile that pimp/ ho’s all of us would prefer that the so called blacks and whites scrap about color while they find creative ways to train people to fly planes sideways, down Ron Browns plane, falsifyAfrican uranium invoices to Iraq, sign 10 yr. trillion dollar defense contracts, and seal their daddy’s executive documents as well as create laws preventing the investigation of imperial governmental/ petroleum companies till the end of time. Let me be the first to admit that i believe some people who look like me act the way white people say black people act, as opposed to organically being themselves. In such a visual based culture, clearly people like me don’t control the media arts and in america its not cool to show the total picture of anything anyway because blacks and whites alike might be unplugged from the matrix. what’s the matrix, there is no black and white. everybody has a common African ancestor in the Real Eve, a woman who appears black but existed before the construct of white or black so…I teach people in my classroom, i know that america would much rather prefer "that nigga, that nigga" but at what point did they kill Malcolm and why did King have to go, because they espoused humanity. Novus Ordo Seclorum cant be having everybody unified and loving each other. Normally i’d be scared to say this sh*t over the net with my friend John, you know the A. General logging hours in my box but f*ck it, everybody knows this sh*t is about oil and power and revenge for " mr. he tried to kill my dad" so i gotta kill thousands of civilians to remove someone that my dad and his crew put into power in the first place. And another thing, what about native americans and latins. I got Europe, Choctaw, Cherokee, Jamaica, Africa all in my blood. What will black people do when its white and latin. what will we bitch about and still not do s*it about then. what will all those white people who voted for George the loser of the election do now, when the cash ain’t the same. What about the over 6 million starving black kids in america, the 9 million white kids and the over 30 million starving below poverty line american families do while i bitch about being called erudite by some clown. I want to check that. I didn’t really care for a response from anyone of any color because what would they say that could alter my view. I don’t think the truth is a view point, it just "is." SO when y’all cats really wanna do some sh*t and get this utopia started let me know cause i’m past blueprint and i’m constructing right now, i’m a muthaf*ckin teacher, best at my school, probably the world.
Greatest teacher list

Gwylene, been meaning to say, that personally I aren’t any of those things from the thesaurus, though I will submit to the word "white" (and so perhaps subject to a charge of colored-less-ness), as there is no real substitute in our current language(s).

Looking out for further self-mystifying, deifying, or self-definition either positive or false-negative through the misty aura of skin. Hence I cannot deal with "white-ness" which is like some potion or excretion from a fairy story, likewise with "pale" etc., which end up as another weird re-inscription of mystique and power even if it is a negative, Golem-like power.

I can deal with "white skin privilege," which uses the descriptor "white skin" to mark an active social force that I ride on every day. —Neill Bogan

Yo People,
Its been how many months. Where is the mobilizing and organizing. I love the intellectualisms and all that but I can confirm my mobilizing and organizing on a small scale from my extra-curricularisms with my students and art clubs i’m involved with. Its wonderful to inspire young people and have them tell me how i inspired them, exposed, etc. but I would love to do more. Can we pick up a cause, a neighborhood talent show, open a community center, feed the homeless, something, cause I’m just ready. I think that my mental muscle is getting very well developed from this CAN of brain soda but what about the aftermath. Can we have a teen talk? a gathering and deal with the oppression of the female self-esteem, the human beings self-love? What about white pain? Remember i got some whiteness in my blood from that enslaved lady’s rape plus I’m middle class and you know that disqualifies me from black pain. no but seriously, Again here i go, WE ALL KNOW that its not culturally acceptable for white people to be honest about race or class out in public so what good is a forum going to do if my fellow human beings cant say things that might be perceived as racist, classist, etc. IF IM LYING THEN ASK RUSH, TRENT LOTT, or any non-klansmen about how they really feel and they’ll tell you they were fired, erased, or on pain killers. So people who are considered "White" or call themselves, or European Americans, what does that feel like to not be able to say certain things because of your appearance. I went through the same sh*t at SCSU in the early 90’s with dreadlocks and honesty. Accept in reverse, it wasn’t cool for a NYer to be honest about all the form or to love yourself and have styles that white people didn’t find acceptable. Sound like my hip hop argument right. That was a mind trip having people with darker complexions than me telling me I’m too black one minute, then say i wanna be white when i speak clearly. Hell, it ain’t even a color thing in the south cause culturally its not acceptable to be honest about anything here and i guess America on a whole. And in other places honesty is a death penalty. and with the A general, you better not be honest about our "democracy" i mean democrazy. So what are we going to do, we’ll talk and smile at each other then call each other crackers and niggers under our breathe, or we’ll pretend to be objective which is impossible and have another feel good forum using big "ass" words, eh ehm Frank, then what? Can we do an art show about these issues, include anybody from any community, can we give the proceeds to charity, i dont know. All i know is this black and white sh*t is cool but we all from Africa, its redundant and even myself am guilty of getting caught up in. and yo G, as i predicted, no response, not one save for you, so just say i told you so. Not even the 27 language speaking hyper-smart, Yale-alum, all-intelligent, all-world Frank Martin chimed in. I believe it was the honorable TMB who said, "teaching is one of the most revolutionary acts we can do." I’m doing it severely underpaid but i’m doing it. And i got the empirical data to prove it. It ain’t enough, i can do more, but i don’t think blowing sunshine up……is really doing s*it. BUT i’ll be there when the talk goes down anyway. —Omari

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Afterwords: A Conversation Around "Making Art/Making Home" – Part 2

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