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Practicing Culturally Relevant Pedagogy by Gloria Ladson Billings

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Practicing Culturally Relevant Pedagogy by Gloria Ladson Billings

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_Yes, But How Do We Do It__ Ladson-Billings

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Bank Street Black Lives Matter at School Week Early Childhood Symposium (Full video)

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Bank Street Black Lives Matter at School Week Early Childhood Symposium (Full video)

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Bank Street Black Lives Matter at School Week Early Childhood Symposium 2021

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Abolitionist Teaching Network: Teaching to Thrive

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Abolitionist Teaching Network: Teaching to Thrive

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Teaching to Thrive is a podcast committed to sharing ideas that strengthen the everyday lives of Black and Brown students within our schools and communities. Each episode is aimed at empowering our knowledge for collective liberation.

Teaching to Thrive is a podcast committed to sharing ideas that strengthen the everyday lives of Black and Brown students within our schools and communities. Each episode is aimed at empowering our knowledge for collective liberation.

Food for the abolitionist work!

Thank you for your authenticity and willingness to dream and work tirelessly out of the box. As a school social worker I see how much is broken systemically and working intentionally from a white supremacy lens. Thanks for allowing me to start to see that WE can dream and work differently.

Revolutionary

The episode with Rodney Robingson is brilliant and it motivated me to write a review. As a first year Latina teacher struggling in the middle of a pandemic, you all remind me why I started teaching in the first place. Thank you for the work you do, you all are inspirational. I'm still learning how to be an abolitionist but I am teaching in a
primarily white school and I have not seen a Black student yet. It's a culture shock, as I was raised in a really diverse neighborhood. So I feel uncomfortable even bringing up matters of race and other controversial topics around them. Thank you for your podcast, y'all are the professors I always wanted.

Love this podcast!

So excited that Dr. Love has her own podcast!

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‎ATN - Teaching To Thrive on Apple Podcasts

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Teaching to Thrive is a podcast committed to sharing ideas that strengthen the everyday lives of Black and Brown students within our schools and communities. Each episode is aimed at empowering our knowledge for collective liberation.

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In this episode, I talk with Emmanuel Acho, creator, host, and producer of Uncomfortable Conversations with a Black Man, a web series about racism to drive open and uncomfortable dialogue. His book with the same name is a thoughtful manifesto, a mandate, and a playbook that's both generous and full of love. We get personal, and we talk about what these important questions mean in context of history and for culture today.

Listen

For the latest from Unlocking Us

Guest Info

Emmanuel Acho

Emmanuel Acho is a Fox Sports Analyst (Co-Host, FS1 "Speak for Yourself") and Host/Producer of Uncomfortable Conversations with a Black Man, a web series about racism to drive open and uncomfortable dialogue. After earning his undergraduate degree in sports management in 2012, Emmanuel was drafted by the Cleveland Browns. He was then traded to the Philadelphia Eagles in 2013, where he spent most of his career. While in the NFL, Emmanuel spent off seasons at the University of Texas to earn his master's degree in Sports Psychology. In 2016, Emmanuel left the football field and picked up the microphone to begin his broadcast career. In 2018, Emmanuel was promoted within ESPN, where he served as the youngest national football analyst and was named a 2018 Forbes 30 Under 30 Selection. In 2017, he and his family's non-profit organization, Living Hope Christian Ministries, raised enough funds to build a hospital in rural Nigeria.

Show Notes

In Uncomfortable Conversations With a Black Man, Emmanuel Acho takes on all the questions, large and small, insensitive and taboo, many white Americans are afraid to ask―yet which all Americans need the answers to, now more than ever. With the same open-hearted generosity that has made his video series a phenomenon, Acho explains the vital core of such fraught concepts as white privilege, cultural appropriation, and "reverse racism." In his own words, he provides a space of compassion and understanding in a discussion that can lack both. He asks only for the reader's curiosity―but along the way, he will galvanize all of us to join the antiracist fight.

Shifting: The Double Lives of Black Women in America by Ms. Charisse Jones and Kumea Shorter-Gooden

VIEW TRANSCRIPT

Podcasts
Brené Brown Education and Research Group, LLC, owns the copyright in and to all content in and transcripts of the Unlocking Us and Dare to Lead podcasts, with all rights reserved, including right of publicity. WHAT'S OK: You are welcome to share an excerpt from the episode transcript (up to 500 words but not more) in media articles (e.g., The New York Times, LA Times, The Guardian), in a non-commercial article or blog post (e.g., Medium), and/or on a personal social media account for non-commercial purposes, provided that you include proper attribution and link back to the podcast URL. For the sake of clarity, media outlets with advertising models are permitted to use excerpts from the transcript per the above. WHAT'S NOT OK: No one is authorized to copy any portion of the podcast content or use Brené Brown's name, image or likeness for any commercial purpose or use, including without limitation inclusion in any books, e-books, book summaries or synopses, or on a commercial website or social media site (e.g., Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, etc.) that offers or promotes your or another's products or services. For the sake of clarity, media outlets are permitted to use photos of Brené Brown from her Media Kit page or license photos from Getty Images, etc.
CLICK TO CONTINUE

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Brené with Emmanuel Acho on Uncomfortable Conversations with a Black Man | Brené Brown

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In this episode, I talk with Emmanuel Acho, creator, host, and producer of Uncomfortable Conversations with a Black Man, a web series about racism to drive open and uncomfortable dialogue. His book with the same name is a thoughtful manifesto, a mandate, and a playbook that's both generous and full of love.

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Black Renaissance: The Art and Soul of Our Stories | YouTube Originals

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Robin Wall Kimmerer: Questions for a Resilient Future

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Robin Wall Kimmerer: Questions for a Resilient Future

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Questions for a Resilient Future: Robin Wall Kimmerer

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For the uninitiated, Afrofuturism is a fluid ideology shaped by generations of artists, musicians, scholars, and activists whose aim is to reconstruct "Blackness" in the culture. Reflected in the life and works of such figures as Octavia Butler, Sojourner Truth, Sun Ra, and Janelle Monáe, Afrofuturism is a cultural blueprint to guide society. The term was coined by Mark Dery in 1993 but birthed in the minds of enslaved Africans who prayed for their lives and the lives of their descendants along the horrific Middle Passage. The first Afrofuturists envisioned a society free from the bondages of oppression-both physical and social. Afrofuturism imagines a future void of white supremacist thought and the structures that violently oppressed Black communities. Afrofuturism evaluates the past and future to create better conditions for the present generation of Black people through the use of technology, often presented through art, music, and literature.

As Black activists demand for the abolishment of prisons and the dismantling of the police state, Afrofuturism emerges as a guide to push society into a future full of Black empowerment. "In Afrofuturism, we imagine ourselves and create whole worlds where we not only achieve greatness, but we are thriving in our own culture. There is a reason why films like Black Panther and novels written by Octavia Butler resonate so much in the African diaspora," says Nova Sparks, author of the Dome trilogy. "We see the possibilities of a society of Black men and women that is steeped in our history, but also embraces our advancement while protecting both as a means for survival. Seeing this can and has inspired more of us to invest in our communities, to continue to dominate in the STEM field and the arts, and to move forward in our quest to reach back into our communities by creating opportunities and guidance for our youth."

Existing power structures deny a future for Black youth who are fighting for the ability to develop fully into personhood, a privilege historically denied to Black communities. According to Tim Fielder, graphic novelist and creator of INFINITUM: An AfroFuturist Tale and Matty's Rocket, "We have the power to show what an inclusive future looks like. We can show what ergonomic housing and transportation, food, and water equality, as well as the dismantling of systemic racism, looks like. When a narrative is embedded with those visuals it takes on a more powerful connecting tissue. That is Afrofuturism." Whether intentional or not, Afrofuturism has been woven into social movements that worked against white supremacy to move toward a future where radicalism is viewed, not as something to be fought, but a societal good.

"I really am inspired and heartened by the ways in which Black people are using this time of crisis to insist on new ways of structuring society and how we can care for each other outside the confines of state-I'm thinking of food drives, mutual aid funds, and other forms of care that move laterally within our communities. But this time has been hard, people are dying, people have insecurity in regard to housing and food; but we see examples every day of Black people imagining new ways of being and hopefully thriving in this world," says Nathan Alexander Moore, writer and PhD candidate. "And that's always amazing, that's always beautiful. We are literally seeing Black people trying to build and enact a different future every day, and that's really what keeps me going." It's this ancestral spirit that has guided generations of Black-led movements in the United States-the Mississippi Freedom Summer, the Stonewall riots, and the current Movement for Black Lives. In the midst of a public health crisis, communities are fighting against institutions that fear an equitable future because equality would end its existence. This fight includes supporting each other through bail relief funds, provision of basic needs, and advocacy of protections for essential workers who are more likely to contract COVID-19.

Though many of us start off believing that anything is possible, it can be difficult to hold onto that vision of the future, where an individual can be whole, can aspire to greatness outside of the confines or perceptions of reality. But those practices are essential to the heart of Afrofuturism, a belief in the necessity to strive toward liberation, a generational investment in a society against harmful power structures. Believe Black protesters when they chant, "I've been to the future. We won." Because they already have.

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For the uninitiated, Afrofuturism is a fluid ideology shaped by generations of artists, musicians, scholars, and activists whose aim is to reconstruct "Blackness" in the culture. Reflected in the life and works of such figures as Octavia Butler, Sojourner Truth, Sun Ra, and Janelle Monáe, Afrofuturism is a cultural blueprint to guide society.

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Anti-Bias Education for Young Children and Ourselves, Second Edition by LOUISE DERMAN-SPARKS, JULIE OLSEN EDWARDS, CATHERINE M. GOINS

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Anti-Bias Education for Young Children and Ourselves, Second Edition by LOUISE DERMAN-SPARKS, JULIE OLSEN EDWARDS, CATHERINE M. GOINS

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Louise Derman-Sparks, Julie Olsen Edwards, Catherine M. Goins

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Anti-Bias Education for Young Children and Ourselves, Second Edition

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This classic resource, now expanded and updated, is your guide to building a strong anti-bias program, including learning to know yourself.

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Over the past few years, afrofuturism-a term coined in the mid-'90s to describe speculative art, music, and literature that addresses the African diaspora-has expanded its pop culture footprint thanks to Beyonce and Solange Knowles, Janelle Monáe, Marvel's Black Panther, and Ava DuVernay's just-announced TV series based on Octavia Butler's Dawn. But ever since the 1940s, when Sun Ra brought his cosmic jazz to Washington Park, Chicago has been ground zero for afrofuturist arts and culture, and it remains so today.

Back in 2014, we caught up with some of Chicago's most prominent afrofuturist artists and musicians like David Boykin, Nick Cave, and Cauleen Smith. But what about the city's poets and writers? Through science fiction, fantasy, magical realism, and surrealism, these three women are keeping Chicago at the center of the afrofuturist conversation.

Eve Ewing
Poet, Writer, Artist, Sociologist

Photos: (ewing) Taylor Castle; (book) Courtesy of haymarket books

Growing up in Logan Square, Eve Ewing used to daydream about "shooting arrows, exploring dungeons, and solving mysteries" while riding her bike. She didn't hear the word "afrofuturism" until her 20s, but as a child she watched Geordi La Forge on Star Trek and listened to George Clinton. Today, Ewing's one of Chicago's most visible cultural icons, from her reporting on Chicago Public Schools to her debut poetry collection, Electric Arches (Haymarket Books, Sept. 12), which looks at Chicago's South and West Sides through an afrofuturist lens.

"The book is an attempt to use poetry to write a future, and to me that future has to be a free black future," Ewing says. In Electric Arches, lunar aliens invade Chicago and paint everything black, a time machine allows a fifth-grader to speak with her ancestors, and South Side children escape the police on flying bicycles.

"Part of what makes afrofuturism interesting and distinct is that blackness in America demands an honest reckoning with a violent and traumatic past," she says. "And here we are in Chicago, a city where black life has been crafted in the face of generations of inconceivable violence: gun violence, state violence, everything. I think we are tasked with thinking beyond this world, about how to live in spite of and beyond everything trying to kill us."

Krista Franklin
Poet, Artist, Professor

Photos: (Franklin) Reginald Eldridge, Jr.; (art) Courtesy of Krista franklin

One of Eve Ewing's mentors is Krista Franklin, a poet and artist who teaches at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. In the art world, she's known for her mixed-media collages-as well as the art book SEED (The Book of Eve), which was inspired by the science fiction of Octavia Butler-but she's also an accomplished poet, appearing in Poetry magazine and the 2015 anthology, The Breakbeat Poets (Haymarket Books).

"Chicago is a fertile ground for afrofuturist writers, artists, and musicians for several reasons, but one of those reasons is that Chicago is a dystopia," Franklin says. "It's a city where invisible and visible lines are drawn; a city popularly characterized by crime, citizen- and state-sanctioned violence, and a commitment to the prison industrial complex for children, youth and adults. It's also a city where black and brown creativity thrives and flourishes even under challenging and difficult circumstances."

Since a lot of afrofuturist work looks toward the future, I asked Franklin if she was optimistic about the future of Chicago. "I don't think I even know what optimism means. I'm a realist, and I always have been. What I see from the artists, visionaries, writers, musicians, scholars, designers, and intellectuals who surround me is that Chicago's future is strong and vibrant. The future is happening now," she says.

Ytasha Womack
Author, Screenwriter, Filmmaker

Photos: (womack) twitter; (book) Courtesy of Chicago review press

As a fourth-grader, Ytasha Womack wondered why Darth Vader was voiced by James Earl Jones but played by a white actor. "With the diversity of the nation and world increasingly standing in stark contrast to the diversity in futuristic works, it's no surprise that afrofuturism emerged," she writes in Afrofuturism: The World of Black Sci-Fi and Fantasy Culture (Chicago Review Press), her landmark analysis of afrofuturism as a pop culture phenomenon.

Womack was also inspired by Nichelle Nichols, the Chicago-area actress who played Uhura in the original Star Trek series. "She was going to quit the show but was encouraged by Martin Luther King to stay. He told her that her role showed that everyone has a place in a technologically advanced future. Later, Nichols would actively help NASA recruit women astronauts, and her character inspired Mae Jemison [another Chicagoan] to become an astronaut as well," Womack says.

In addition to her nonfiction, Womack is a novelist, screenwriter, and filmmaker. Later this month, her experimental short film A Love Letter to the Ancestors From Chicago will screen at the Black Harvest Film Festival after showings in Nigeria and the UK. Meanwhile, her crowdfunded feature film Bar Star City, about "two star-crossed lovers from opposite ends of time who decide to make a bar on the South Side of Chicago their home," will start shooting this fall.

"It's no surprise that NASA's first black male and female astronauts came from Chicago," Womack says. "A great deal of those ideas about the future are embedded in black Chicago culture. As long as we value humanity in all that we do, we'll be spacetastic."

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The Next Generation of Chicago Afrofuturism

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Over the past few years, afrofuturism-a term coined in the mid-'90s to describe speculative art, music, and literature that addresses the African diaspora-has expanded its pop culture footprint thanks to Beyonce and Solange Knowles, Janelle Monáe, Marvel's Black Panther, and Ava DuVernay's just-announced TV series based on Octavia Butler's Dawn.

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Kerry James Marshall Is Shifting the Color of Art History (Published 2016)

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For more than 40 years, the Chicago-based artist has made it his mission to paint black figures into the canon.

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*Please also read this article as well in order to further clarify the terms: enslaved and indentured and the impact of those nuances.

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1619 is not a year that most Americans know as a notable date in our country's history. Those who do are at most a tiny fraction of those who can tell you that 1776 is the year of our nation's birth. What if, however, we were to tell you that the moment that the country's defining contradictions first came into the world was in late August of 1619? That was when a ship arrived at Point Comfort in the British colony of Virginia, bearing a cargo of 20 to 30 enslaved Africans. Their arrival inaugurated a barbaric system of chattel slavery that would last for the next 250 years. This is sometimes referred to as the country's original sin, but it is more than that: It is the country's very origin.

Out of slavery - and the anti-black racism it required - grew nearly everything that has truly made America exceptional: its economic might, its industrial power, its electoral system, its diet and popular music, the inequities of its public health and education, its astonishing penchant for violence, its income inequality, the example it sets for the world as a land of freedom and equality, its slang, its legal system and the endemic racial fears and hatreds that continue to plague it to this day. The seeds of all that were planted long before our official birth date, in 1776, when the men known as our founders formally declared independence from Britain.

The goal of The 1619 Project is to reframe American history by considering what it would mean to regard 1619 as our nation's birth year. Doing so requires us to place the consequences of slavery and the contributions of black Americans at the very center of the story we tell ourselves about who we are as a country.

The 1619 Project began with the publication, in August 2019, of a special issue of The New York Times Magazine containing essays on different aspects of contemporary American life, from mass incarceration to rush-hour traffic, that have their roots in slavery and its aftermath. Each essay takes up a modern phenomenon, familiar to all, and reveals its history. The first, by the staff writer Nikole Hannah-Jones (from whose mind this project sprang), provides the intellectual framework for the project and can be read as an introduction.

Alongside the essays, you will find 17 literary works that bring to life key moments in American history. These works are all original compositions by contemporary black writers who were asked to choose events on a timeline of the past 400 years. The poetry and fiction they created is arranged chronologically throughout the issue, and each work is introduced by the history to which the author is responding.

In addition to these elements, we partnered with the Smithsonian's National Museum of African-American History and Culture to create a brief visual history of slavery. That is as good a place to start as any.

A word of warning: There is gruesome material in these stories, material that readers will find disturbing. That is, unfortunately, as it must be. American history cannot be told truthfully without a clear vision of how inhuman and immoral the treatment of black Americans has been. By acknowledging this shameful history, by trying hard to understand its powerful influence on the present, perhaps we can prepare ourselves for a more just future.

That is the hope of this project.

The Idea of America, by Nikole Hannah-Jones

Capitalism, by Matthew Desmond

A Broken Health Care System, by Jeneen Interlandi

Traffic, by Kevin M. Kruse

Undemocratic Democracy, by Jamelle Bouie

Medical Inequality, by Linda Villarosa

American Popular Music, by Wesley Morris

Sugar, by Khalil Gibran Muhammad

Mass Incarceration, by Bryan Stevenson

The Wealth Gap, by Trymaine Lee

Hope, a Photo Essay, by Djeneba Aduayom
400 Years: A Literary Timeline
Why Can't We Teach This? by Nikita Stewart

A Brief History of Slavery, by Mary Elliott and Jazmine Hughes
The 1619 Podcast
Jake Silverstein is editor in chief of The New York Times Magazine.

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1619 is not a year that most Americans know as a notable date in our country's history. Those who do are at most a tiny fraction of those who can tell you that 1776 is the year of our nation's birth.

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Finding Our Way is a podcast hosted by writer, healer, teacher, and Somatics practitioner, Prentis Hemphill. Prentis dives into topics of embodiment, boundaries, harm, creativity, and more with people who are working to reshape this world. This isn't a podcast about answers. It is an exploration into ourselves, and the skills we need to create and embody the world we want. Welcome to Finding Our Way.

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Listen to Finding Our Way on Spotify. Finding Our Way is a podcast hosted by writer, healer, teacher, and Somatics practitioner, Prentis Hemphill. Prentis dives into topics of embodiment, boundaries, harm, creativity, and more with people who are working to reshape this world. This isn't a podcast about answers.

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President Barack Obama and Bruce Springsteen first met back in 2008. Though the two have very different backgrounds and careers, they formed a deep friendship. Starting today, listeners can eavesdrop on their personal, intimate conversations in a new podcast: Renegades: Born in the USA .

The eight-episode series was announced today during Spotify's Stream On event and is the second podcast to launch through Spotify's partnership with President Obama and Michelle Obama's Higher Ground . Over the course of the season, President Obama and Springsteen will explore topics of race, fatherhood, marriage, and the future of America.

Dollar Shave Club and Comcast will serve as the first season's presenting sponsors in the United States.

The longtime friends discuss their hometowns and role models, explore modern manhood, and confront the painfully divided state of the country today-and offer a vision of how we can all move forward together.

President Barack Obama asks in the introduction of the first episode of the podcast: "How did we get here? How could we find our way back to a more unifying American story?"

He then goes on to explain: "That topic came to dominate so many of my conversations last year-with Michelle , with my daughters and with friends. And one of the friends just happened to be Mr. Bruce Springsteen . On the surface, Bruce and I don't have a lot in common. But over the years, what we've found is that we've got a shared sensibility. About work, about family and about America. In our own ways, Bruce and I have been on parallel journeys trying to understand this country that's given us both so much. Trying to chronicle the stories of its people. Looking for a way to connect our own individual searches for meaning and truth and community with the larger story of America."

The first two episodes are available exclusively to the hundreds of millions of Free and Premium Spotify users around the world now. Give them a listen:

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President Barack Obama and Bruce Springsteen Join Forces in the New Podcast 'Renegades: Born in the USA' - Spotify

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President Barack Obama and Bruce Springsteen first met back in 2008. Though the two have very different backgrounds and careers, they formed a deep friendship. Starting today, listeners can eavesdrop on their personal, intimate conversations in a new podcast: Renegades: Born in the USA. The eight-episode series was announced today during Spotify's Stream On event...

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Black History in Two Minutes (or so) is the new way to immerse yourself in Black History. The digital video series features dozens of short, engaging and factually accurate videos about important historical events or people who have shaped American history. Like never before, people of all ages, backgrounds and educational levels can learn more about the African American experience.

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Home | Black History in Two Minutes (or so)

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Black History in Two Minutes (or so) is the new way to immerse yourself in Black History. The digital video series features dozens of short, engaging and factually accurate videos about important historical events or people who have shaped American history.

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Author: Jason Reynolds and Ibram X. Kendi

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Jason Reynolds — Imagination and Fortitude

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The National Ambassador for Young People’s Literature — and a magnificent source of wisdom for human society as a whole.

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A young woman came up to the microphone after another student had had his turn. I was book touring for Stamped From the Beginning at a historically Black university in Dover, Del. Looking freshman young, her darker skin curled around a nervous face. Or a curious one?

"Have you ever thought about cutting your hair?" she asked matter-of-factly.

My locs hung down my back as still and suspended as the room. I sensed the question had less to do with my hairstyle and more to do with my lifestyle choices. Locs after all-like cornrows and huge Afros-make some white people uncomfortable. Not considered professional. Considered rebellious. I didn't think twice about my answer.

"No," I replied.

Time paused in the silence. She smiled. An approving murmur shot through the room like a tremor from her smile. They felt my hair love. It was as if she had asked, "Do you worry about what white people think about you?" And I responded, "No." She was glad I had escaped. Her classmates were glad I had escaped.

I had escaped what Toni Morrison called the "white gaze." When internalized by Black people, the white gaze functions as a pair of glasses binding our eyes-and thereby our very being. To see the world through the white gaze-no matter one's identity-is to center white people and their looks, their ways, their perspectives and their actions. A real-life

The white gaze positions white people as the perpetual main character of Black life and thought. It colonizes imaginations. It becomes hard to create without what white people think about the creation ever present. That's because the white gaze situates white people as the audience and deports the rest of us illegal aliens. No Latinx or Asian or Native or Middle Eastern people in the audience. No Black people in the audience even in an auditorium filled with Black students at Delaware State University. It is as if "our lives have no meaning, no depth without the white gaze," Morrison once said. "And I have spent my entire writing life trying to make sure that the white gaze was not the dominant one in any of my books."

In this first Black History Month after the racial reckoning of 2020, I feel impelled to do what historians rarely do: mark history while the story is still being written. We are living in a time when the white gaze remains ever present in American life, but is hardly dominant among today's assemblage of courageous Black creators. We are living in the time of a new renaissance-what we are calling the Black Renaissance-the third great cultural revival of Black Americans, after the Harlem Renaissance of the 1920s, after the Black Arts Movement of the 1960s and 1970s. Black creators today were nurtured by these past cultural revivals-and all those brilliant creators who sustained Black Arts during the 1980s and 1990s. But if the Harlem Renaissance stirred Black people to see themselves, if the Black Arts Movement stirred Black people to love themselves, then the Black Renaissance is stirring Black people to be themselves. Totally. Unapologetically. Freely.

As Beyoncé wrote in 2018, "I like to be free. I'm not alive unless I am creating something."

A renaissance does not emerge on its own. Structures must be built to allow creativity to truly flourish. During the past six or so years, Black artists formed mechanisms to lift up their own work and that of their peers: Lena Waithe created a mentorship program, and Ava DuVernay a film distribution and resource collective. Leaders in the publishing industry, like Tracy Sherrod and my own editor, Chris Jackson, are running their own imprints and delivering the mighty literature of Ta-Nehisi Coates and the late great Cicely Tyson. Numerous creators are following in Oprah's and Spike Lee's footsteps and building their own entertainment and production companies, signing and managing and inspiring young superstars like Chloe x Halle. And all of this has coincided with a moment when white executives, out of shame or guilt, goodwill or good (money) sense, began to seek out our stories and storytellers in greater numbers.

Black novelists, poets, filmmakers, producers, musicians, playwrights, artists and writers got the white judge off our heads. We are no longer focused on making white people comfortable or uncomfortable. We also got the Black judge out of our heads. We refuse to carry the race on our shoulders. We are tired of being race representatives. We've escaped the shaming politics of respectability. We are showing that our Black lives have meaning and depth beyond white people.

At the height of the Harlem Renaissance in 1926, Langston Hughes expressed a similar sentiment to the one inspiring creators today: We "now intend to express our individual dark-skinned selves without fear or shame ... We know we are beautiful. And ugly too."

Black people, like all racial groups, are knowledgeable and ignorant, law-abiding and lawbreaking, secure and insecure, hardworking and lazy. The racial groups are equals, and what makes the racial groups equals is our common humanity; and our common humanity is imperfect and complex.

The creators of this new renaissance have been expressing their own humanity in myriad ways. Cardi B, Megan Thee Stallion and the hosts of The Breakfast Club are modeling our freestyling posture. Issa Rae told our stories about dating and sex and work and friendship in Jesmyn Ward shared a story of familial bonds in southern Mississippi in Sing, Unburied, Sing. Kerry Washington, Michael B. Jordan, Billy Porter, Lupita Nyong'o, Daveed Diggs, Danai Gurira, Regina King and Viola Davis have played familiar and unfamiliar-but always unforgettable-Black characters on the stage and screen. In I Am Not Your Negro, Raoul Peck breathed new life into an unfinished work of James Baldwin's. These creators are constantly breathing new life into Black history-and not breaths of constant woe and pity. Scholar Imani Perry evoked Zora Neale Hurston when writing last summer, "I do not want pity from a single soul. Sin and shame are found in neither my body nor my identity. Blackness is an immense and defiant joy."

We are creating our immensity. No creator should have to tone down their individuality in the chorus of Blackness. We are telling America to tone down its anti-Black racism; and its sexism, homophobia, transphobia, ableism, classism and nativism; and all the ways those isms intersect; and all their violence. So, we can live and be trans and cis and queer and disabled in the moonlight. Because, as Alicia, Patrisse and Opal put it: All Black lives matter.

"For generations in the mind of America, the Negro has been more of a formula than a human being-a something to be argued about, condemned or defended, to be 'kept down,' or 'in his place,' or 'helped up,' to be worried with or worried over, harassed or patronized, a social bogey or a social burden," scholar Alain Locke wrote in his signature essay marking the Harlem Renaissance in 1925, published in Survey Graphic magazine. "By shedding the old chrysalis of the Negro problem we are achieving something like a spiritual emancipation."

In this new Black Renaissance, we are once again shedding what and who do not serve us. Our plays, portraits, films, shows, books, music, essays, podcasts and art are growing in popularity-are emancipating the American consciousness, and banging on the door of the classical canon. The audience for our work is Black people-or people of all races. Black people are appreciating what J. Cole and Janelle Monáe and John Legend and Jason Reynolds are creating because they see their complex selves. Non-Black people are appreciating the podcasts Code Switch and the poetry of Amanda Gorman and Jericho Brown, the novels of Colson Whitehead, the illustrations of Kadir Nelson and Vashti Harrison, and the television shows Watchmen and Lovecraft Country, because they do not see themselves, at the same time that they see themselves in our common humanity. Black creators have inspired Native, Asian, white, Latinx and Middle Eastern creators just as they inspired us. Black creators in the U.S. have inspired Black creators abroad just as those creators abroad have inspired us. Around the world we are becoming.

But our Wakanda, our 1619 Project, our anti-racism is facing resistance. Mobs have amassed in front of our Capitol and told us we are stealing their country, and told us to go back to our "sh-thole" countries, which caused us to lean in and create more unapologetically. When the violence and intimidation did not work, the discrediting began, saying we hated white people since we didn't worship white people; saying we hated America because we didn't worship America as exceptional. Because in racist minds Black people either worship white people or hate white people. In racist minds, white people can't just be people like we are. Black people can't just be ourselves, like they are.

In the end, the racism has not knocked us out. Our chins are steel like Adonis Johnson's in like our real-life fighter, Tarana Burke. In the end, as Kendrick Lamar put it, "we gon' be alright." Toni was like our Harriet Tubman before she passed away in 2019. She guided us, willed us to escape the white gaze, until we did.

When I was younger, I often saw myself and other Black people through the eyes of white people. I worried about what white people thought about me; how I was appearing, speaking, acting, being in their world. When I looked in the mirror sometimes, I did not see myself, for myself. I saw what the white gaze saw and felt inadequate or proud; and changed myself or rebelled-and apologized for conforming or rebelling-thus apologizing for being Black. I was not alone.

But by the time I stood before those Black students in October 2016, on the eve of Donald Trump's election, we were no longer apologizing for who we were. This is our world too. We were calling ourselves "unapologetically Black" like writer Damon Young of the Very Smart Brothas. Whether that was the right phrase or not isn't important now. Our collective sentiment was important.

Who knows when the Black Renaissance actually started? Perhaps 2015, with a long pregnancy. It was the year that Black Lives Matter, which originated with a Facebook post in 2013, expanded into a movement. In April, Freddie Gray was killed by police officers and Baltimore exploded. On June 16, Trump announced his presidential bid, and the very next day, a white supremacist murdered nine Black churchgoers in South Carolina after praying with them. "Our mourning, this mourning, is in time with our lives," wrote poet Claudia Rankine soon afterward. "There is no life outside of our reality here." There was no reality outside of the death of Sandra Bland that July. There was no reality outside of us saying her name.

As Childish Gambino declared: " This is America."

But nothing baked our Black Renaissance quite like the heat of the first Black presidency. Barack Obama's Administration was akin to the Great Migration for the Harlem Renaissance; akin to the civil rights bills for the Black Arts Movement. Our raised expectations collided with the racism of the emerging Tea Party. We witnessed the rising opposition to the first Black presidency, day after day, year after year. We came to know full well that the more Black people uplift themselves, the more we will find ourselves on the receiving end of a racist backlash like Obama was.

As writer and director Tonja Renée Stidhum explained to CNN, "He was the respectable Negro. He was biracial, wasn't dark-skinned, spoke the King's English, was smart, married and the head of a nuclear family. But still that wasn't enough."

Every cheap shot at Obama shot down our worry about what white people thought. Not because we universally adored him or agreed with all his policies. The lesson was clear: If Obama wasn't enough, then we would never be enough.

Many of us were taught to protect ourselves through the white gaze-knowing any off-beam move in this America could be our downfall or death. But over the past six years we've come to protect ourselves from the white gaze-knowing we could be shot at any point for no reason. So why not live freely and create freely before our downfall or death? Why can't we be anti-racist to prevent our downfall or death?

When I say we, I'm not saying all Black creators have been thinking this way. I, for one, am not always thinking this way: my scholarship flows from research and evidence, which can lead me anywhere. But there do seem to be mainstream currents driving the Black Renaissance, that many of us swim in and out of, or follow like a stream of consciousness.

I cannot speak for the entire renaissance and all Black creators. I am not a representative. Indeed, we chafe at the idea that anyone can represent us. But just as there are many ideas we disagree upon, there are ideas many of us likely share, or are sympathetic to, anti-racist ideas rooting our art, or watering our art, or weeding our art. Escaping the white gaze is one. Rejecting the politics of respectability is another. Confronting racism while silently kneeling or standing loudly is another. Being our genuine selves is still another. Maintaining an inclusive and complicated view of Blackness is yet another.

I could be wrong. I could be way off. After all, we don't like to be put into boxes. Our stories often escape categories. Our lives are complex and heavy and thick, like our humanity.

But we can be captured by painters Awol Erizku and Amy Sherald. We can be described by 2 Dope Queens in their podcast, or by Roxane Gay in print. Part of the job of creators is to describe ourselves, and our cultures, and our nations, while recognizing we are not bound by ourselves, or our cultures, or our nations. We are not bound by anyone or anything or any gaze. Our imaginations are not bound by racism. The Black Renaissance cannot be bound. The Black Renaissance is fighting for the freedom of being. The Black Renaissance is the freedom of being.

We are free.

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The Black Renaissance package was reported by Mariah Espada, Simmone Shah and Julia Zorthian.

Contact us at letters@time.com.

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Ibram X. Kendi: This Is the Black Renaissance

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A young woman came up to the microphone after another student had had his turn. I was book touring for Stamped From the Beginning at a historically Black university in Dover, Del. Looking freshman young, her darker skin curled around a nervous face. Or a curious one?

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National Museum of African American History and Culture: Talking About Race

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National Museum of African American History and Culture

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At the National Museum of African American History and Culture, we believe that any productive conversation on race must start with honesty, respect for others, and an openness to ideas and information that provide new perspectives.
We hope that this portal will be an ever-evolving place that will continue to grow, develop, and ensure that we listen to one another in a spirit of civility and common cause.

Whiteness and white racialized identity refer to the way that white people, their customs, culture, and beliefs operate as the standard by which all other groups of are compared. Whiteness is also at the core of understanding race in America. Whiteness and the normalization of white racial identity throughout America's history have created a culture where nonwhite persons are seen as inferior or abnormal.

This white-dominant culture also operates as a social mechanism that grants advantages to white people, since they can navigate society both by feeling normal and being viewed as normal. Persons who identify as white rarely have to think about their racial identity because they live within a culture where whiteness has been normalized.

Thinking about race is very different for nonwhite persons living in America. People of color must always consider their racial identity, whatever the situation, due to the systemic and interpersonal racism that still exists.

Whiteness (and its accepted normality) also exist as everyday microaggressions toward people of color. Acts of microaggressions include verbal, nonverbal, and environmental slights, snubs or insults toward nonwhites. Whether intentional or not, these attitudes communicate hostile, derogatory, or harmful messages.

In this country, American means white. Everybody else has to hyphenate. Toni Morrison

White Privilege
Since white people in America hold most of the political, institutional, and economic power, they receive advantages that nonwhite groups do not. These benefits and advantages, of varying degrees, are known as white privilege. For many white people, this can be hard to hear, understand, or accept - but it is true. If you are white in America, you have benefited from the color of your skin.

White people can possess other marginalized parts of their identity, but their race is not one of these. To learn more about how race intersects with our other identities, check out the section titled systems of oppression.

Being white does not mean you haven't experienced hardships or oppression. Being white does mean you have not faced hardships or oppression based on the color of your skin. We need to be honest about the ways white people have benefited from racism so we can work toward an equitable, fair and just society.

In "White Privilege: Unpacking the Invisible Knapsack," scholar Peggy McIntosh writes, "White privilege is like an invisible weightless knapsack of special provisions, maps, passports, code books, visas, clothes, tools, and blank checks." Here are some examples she gives on what white privilege looks like in day to day living:

I can if I wish arrange to be in the company of people of my race most of the time.

I can avoid spending time with people whom I was trained to mistrust and who have learned to mistrust my kind or me.

If I should need to move, I can be pretty sure of renting or purchasing housing in an area which I can afford and in which I would want to live.

I can be pretty sure that my neighbors in such a location will be neutral or pleasant to me.

I can go shopping alone most of the time, pretty well assured that I will not be followed or harassed

I can turn on the television or open to the front page of the paper and see people of my race widely represented.

When I am told about our national heritage or about "civilization," I am shown that people of my color made it what it is.

I can be sure that my children will be given curricular materials that testify to the existence of their race.

If I want to, I can be pretty sure of finding a publisher for this piece on white privilege.

I can be pretty sure of having my voice heard in a group in which I am the only member of my race.

I can be casual about whether or not to listen to another person's voice in a group in which s/he is the only member of his/her race

WATCH: White privilege and constructing white racial identity

White nationalism is a concept born out of white supremacy. A key difference is a focus on nationhood. White nationalists in the United States advocate for a country that is only for the white race due to feelings of entitlement and racial superiority. They also believe that the diversity of people in the United States will lead to the destruction of whiteness and white culture - hence, the correlation to white supremacist ideology.

White Dominant Culture
White dominant culture describes how white people and their practices, beliefs, and culture have been normalized over time and are now considered standard in the United States. As a result, all Americans have all adopted various aspects of white culture, including people of color.

White supremacy is an ideology where white people are believed to be superior to nonwhite people. This fallacy is rooted in the same scientific racism and pseudo-science used to justify slavery, imperialism, colonialism, and genocide at various times in throughout history. White supremacist ideologies and their followers continue to perpetuate the myth of white racial superiority.

The belief of white superiority has been part of the United States since its inception. The white European imperialists who settled here believed they were inherently superior to nonwhite groups. These beliefs justified atrocities like the genocide of Native Americans and nearly 250 years of African slavery. After slavery, white supremacist ideologies manifested into a series of laws that would limit the freedom of African Americans, known as Black Codes and Jim Crow. White supremacy and its legacy can still be found in our legal system and other institutions through coded language and targeted practices.

Direct and violent forms of racism that promote white supremacy have been on the rise in recent years. These acts are more directly linked to white nationalism. White nationalism is a concept born out of white supremacy. A key difference is a focus on nationhood. White nationalists in the United States advocate for a country that is only for the white race due to feelings of entitlement and racial superiority. They also believe that the diversity of people in the United States will lead to the destruction of whiteness and white culture - hence, the correlation to white supremacist ideology.

Internalization of Whiteness and White Dominant Culture

Racism is perpetuated by deeming whiteness as superior and other racial and ethnic groups as inferior. The prevalence of white dominant culture and racism leads to an internalized racial superiority for those who adhere to it. This [as defined by internalized dominance "describes the experience and attitudes of those who are members of the dominant, privileged, or powerful identity groups. Members of the [dominant] group accept their group's socially superior status as normal and deserved." CARED: Calgary Anti-Racism Education]

When people of a nondominant group (people of color) are discriminated against, targeted or oppressed over time, they often believe the myths and misinformation about their group. Known as internalized racism, it happens when an oppressed group believes the racial views that society communicates are true, and they act as if they were true.

Confronting Whiteness

If you identify as white, acknowledging your white racial identity and its privileges is a crucial step to help end racism. Facing your whiteness is hard and can result in feelings of guilt, sadness, confusion, defensiveness, or fear. Dr. Robin DiAngelo coined the term white fragility to describe these feelings as "a state in which even a minimum amount of racial stress becomes intolerable, triggering a range of defensive moves." Since white people "live in a social environment that insulates them from race-based stress," whites are rarely challenged and have less of a tolerance to race-based stress.

For those of us who work to raise the racial consciousness of whites, simply getting whites to acknowledge that our race gives us advantages is a major effort. The defensiveness, denial, and resistance are deep. Robin DiAngelo "White Fragility: Why It's So Hard for White People to Talk About Racism"

The feelings associated with white fragility often derail conversations about race and serve to support white supremacy. While these feelings are natural human reactions, staying stuck in any of them hurts the process of creating a more equitable society. The defensiveness, guilt, or denial gets in the way of addressing the racism experienced by people of color.

For white people doing anti-racist and social justice work, the first meaningful step should be to recognize their fragility around racial issues and build their emotional stamina. "White Fragility" author Robin DiAngelo breaks it down.

Besides your own internal reflection, processing, and daily commitment to anti-racist work, try participating in affinity groups, or caucuses. These groups are people sharing common interests, backgrounds, or experiences, coming together to support each other.

Let's Talk

For Concerned Citizens: Whiteness operates in covert and overt ways that affect all of us. It can appear as practices within an institution or accepted social norms. Since whiteness works almost invisibly, we may not always be aware of how it manifests in our daily lives. Thinking critically about your social conditioning and the values you have adopted as fact, ask yourself:

What are some aspects of whiteness you've internalized?

How can these be hurtful to you and others?

What are some ways you plan on combating them?

Let's Act

For Parents: How often do you talk to your child(ren) about the noticeable racial differences in society as well as your own race? To learn more on how to teach your child about the ways whiteness is prevalent in society, watch this video with concrete examples and suggestions:

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Socially and politically constructed, whiteness is not simply referring to skin color but is an ideology that reinforces power at the expense of others and strengthens systems of oppression. Let's dig deeper.