The beauty of African-American art

Dear comrades, we stand united today to discuss a controversial situation. I, Eubie Black, am standing here to help you illuminate yourselves and understand why “American Art” is not the ultimate goal for us. It is not rare the day that I meet with an African-American pianist, a Negro painter, a Black singer; and I hear them say that they don’t want to be classified as “African-American”, “Negro”, or  “Black”. Dear comrades, this is when I wonder, If we are not going to give ourselves credit, who will? If we don’t stand proud of our roots, who will? If we don’t fight for recognition and respect, who will?

Langston Hughes, the successful Negro poet, describes our skin as something deliciously unique, for which we should be honored to have. In “Dream Variations” he refers to our color as “coffee and cream, licorice, clove and cinnamon”. Black skin is beautiful peers, it is a part of us and we should not cover or hide it, we should be proud of it.

Black people; we are just as human as white people, we are as American as white people, therefore we should be treated equally. If we are just as special as them, then why must we change for them? Why should we adjust our art, our appearance, our beliefs, for them? We should respect our roots, and fight for others’ respect as well.

Being Negro comes with not only black skin, but with a complete culture. The jazz and the blues, the portraits with black characters, the poems about oppression and racial discrimination; they are all part of ourselves and we must not suppress them for the white public. Paul Roberson, the well-known  black actor and activist, imputes his fame to the black representation he did for interracial plays. If his Negro plays are fruitful and accepted by the audience, then the rest of Negro art will be accepted too; and if it’s not the case then we must not care. Every artist faces criticism, every art piece is meant to be presented to a judging audience. We must not let the opinions of “white Americans” affect us. The purpose of our art is to liberate our afflicted history and painful past, not to enliven white people. 

Imagination

We should accept everyone as they are

Lina Uzunhasan

21 March 2016

I will start my speech by introducing myself. I am a fiction writer as well as an equestrian. I have 7 published books, 11 magazine articles and several interviews that took place in the newspapers. When I was small, I always thought how authors found topics to write about. Specially when you read a book that smashes your imagination, one might think how it is possible for someone to think of it. That was one of the reasons that made me follow this path to become an author. 

I realised that imagination is like a muscle. You have to train it for it to get better and stronger. However, there are some people that are much more creative compared to others, just like some people having stronger muscles than others. I believe it is what is called ‘talent’. It is something that you inherit from your parents, from your environment, from the people that surround you. Imagination is a thing that concerns your past and present. You can only imagine what you already saw. You might think how we can imagine dragons or aliens that don't even exist. Easy. You see a reptile, you see a butterfly, you combine them and you have a dragon. Human mind can almost never come up with completely non existent things. 

What I am trying to say is that, if imagination is based on our past, how can the ‘black’ people ever be imaginative if they are not allowed to accept their past. These people are avoiding their pasts because they think its not good for them. These people are running away from their cultures because we force them to think its not beautiful. If it was not for ‘black’ people and their pasts, there wouldn't be jazz music, there wouldn't be any boogie woogie! How are these people supposed to express their talents if we are not allowing them to be creative in their own way. It’s like trying to make a race horse jump. A race horse is build and breed for racing just like ‘black’ people have their own ways of art. We can't just tell them to do our art because we think their art is not nice, or even worse, because its not familiar! 

Everyone has to accept themselves as who they are instead of trying to change, because change might be a good thing but it shouldn't be used as a way of escape. If we are accepting the white art, why cant we accept the negro art as it is as well?

https://youtu.be/umQa7N7BQOA

<Culture Independence>

Edward Na DP1

Hello our culture’s future leaders, creators and defenders. Today as a leader of black art movement, I am here to ask you to take special responsibility. It is a responsibility which only you are able to take, able to accomplish and make it happen.

Let’s take a look back on our history. White people, only because their skin color is white, they took our freedom, family and rights to be treated equally. Since 1789 to 1861 for 172 years they treated us as animals they own. Now they are trying to take our culture away from us again. Whites are trying to make our culture as theirs by insisting that we are part of U.S and we are same people. Harlem renaissance is a culture boom that we created, take a look at the number of musicians, writers and actors. You can hardly name any famous white artist. We are the main role in Harlem renaissance, us African Americans.

Because our ancestors weren’t civilized as white people were, they were not powerful enough to defend themselves from white people thus slavery. But we are civilized now. We have knowledge to defend ourselves and power to defend our culture. Are we going to let the whites take away our thing again? Like our ancestors failed to defend themselves and lead us to be slavery for almost 20 decades, are we going to let our future generation ashamed of us? No, we should not let our dark past repeat.

My generation of artists will soon face the time to retire. We are getting old and we would not be able to perform as great as our past days. We will be less affective to society. However, you, young African American artists are going to rise as new stars and celebrities. It is now on your hand that our culture, American African's culture rise like a new star or remembered as  glory lying on the past.

We have already done it once. We have retrieved our freedom, family and rights from whites. Let us win this battle again. Make us proud of you, make your children proud of you, make yourselves pride when you look back to past in the future.

Thank you for listening

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