Some ideas. If you dont have expensive jewelry invested in a set of rules, but also sensible shoes. Always where black. Nto and as you can see if you watch television in fashion week they are all in black. But today on this panel with the good major topics with the images of black and we continue to judge gave book by its cover of a man walks in the pants are hauled on the hips you automatically say he may not be ready for primetime. A young woman comes with half of her stomach out she may not be ready for prime time but i hope the Panel Discussion will help us to better understand these issues the moderator is 80 cocks a cultural anthropologist to teaches at the African American studies program. Her first book shape shifters. And she has written for a number of books of race and gender in Youth Culture is on the Editorial Board of the feminist writer of the founding Editorial Board of a former coeditor of transforming anthropology. A former professional the answer to a steady dollar scholarship at the ince theater of harlem in to work with the number two company. Also the founder of blackwhite of Young Women Initiative to produce communitybased projects in detroit and newark and did the york city. Into wave of program. [applause] welcome to the harlem of family and the schomburg family to read knowledge what you probably already know that these conversations happen here the things that we think about have been in communities. You are where we came from so i very much looking forward to be a tradition i also want to say thanks for state sharing the stage with me. I dont feel worthy of i will try my best. But the way we should proceed semi a truncated bios then i would like to offer an additional frame to the conversation that is rooted where we are the also the way refashion ourselves if we can stay alive or we die with the individual by the end of the to do that today we have no painter who lives in new jersey as an author historian and professor American History of Princeton University and author of seven books including the history of white people. 6019 and my favorite sojourners truth. And as a painter most recently with the ancestral arts. And now from the Rhode Island School of design please give her a hand. [applause] left of her we have nola exploring a race and gender have had their impacted by Popular Culture and political life in the United States. At cornell she is also the director of africom a steadies and the offer and author of three books that won both the 1997 awards for outstanding activist and the Public Library Association Award for Outstanding University press books. White mighty black power. Please welcome her. [applause] and last but not least we have michele who is the author of the of beautiful vintage black clamor aid as one of the 10 best books of the year the you could get. Nichelle an assistant editor at gq magazine including in style and clever and featured in the New York Times the Washington Post bbc news and npr born and raised in the jersey now lives in harlem. Please welcome her. [applause] 01 to say if you were dead dont want to talk to lot because i want to get into a conversation but it is important to offer a different five for a more additional questions so the title of the panel is fashioning the selfie image of black. In each word did offers us so much for us to consider and reconsider what do we mean when we say fashion in . Where the possible ways to allow ourselves to creatively making ourselves . And then with the word images formed in our minds through visual arts, a consumer advertisements, said judy rituals people reconsider icons or celebrities. And our own every day that are privately experience and publicly viewed so what do we tell about ourselves that is played out with the actions that we take . With social and political outcomes that reach far beyond of the imagination. Or the black identity the pill can deal with that but i have been and taking about that all day. But what does that mean for the work you are a engaged in . All of your work speaks to the nuances of the fashioning of the self it comes across different disciplinary practices with a variety of math kids to get us to think about fashion particularly with black women. So think of that specifically beyond the gender notion as simply all the about the choice is we make with beauty practices of the individual body. If i could have a bite to start off with a contemporary moment id been on the state right now with these four black women and the past possibilities but i also want us to think about this moment in the larger context with of larger context. Is that okay . I think we need to begin somewhere and that is a good place to start so i am thinking of some black woman at the front of the movement and long before they would turn to what they would do on the frontlines of protests they were involved in a political refashioning and i unthinking however one weekly news cycle we could witness a 40 yearold black girl go to the ground by a hyper Aggressive Police officer is a Reno Williams is demonized for her physical body and a white woman staking claim to blackpool and hud and the strategic choices of her hair and clothing and speech patterns. Yes we will not give her space. [laughter] it is all in one do cycle so while all this is happening feet high and the narratives those that we dulce televised from those images. How do we think about that . So i want to open off with that. What is this time and what do things like fashion and beauty and how you make yourself to be a larger questioning . Suez i turned to the panel there is a lot to think about but i hope we can open from that place so my specific question is how you define this moment that you specifically rightabout does it prevent it intervention or speak to the importance of where we are now . With race and body of fashion . Give this moment now how we a dress ourselves he talked about in the context of black lives and the danger where it i dont think there is personal safety analyses there is any way you can present yourself as a black person and be safe or safer. Compete in a dress and in pearls that doesnt mean your moral character is is the better or you are treated better by a police officer. So i think the way we present ourselves depends on the individual in yes you try to convey a message but it depends on the person. That is my thought initially. The lot of the work i did in my first two books from 8097 is the First Magazine it is called the journal of africanamerican and fashion. I just want to say that because people will say how i got started. We have a lot of history before essence magazine. But to figure out where you are right or wrong. The thing about aesthetics can fashion and hair have to do with the choices that the black folks are all people make about our bodies or how to represent ourselves. It feels good and it looks good but depending on looking at the choices people make determinations if you wear it in a way that is disturbing or upsetting with gender politics or sensuality Politics Around being too political or too radical and of the responses soap what is important to think about how you represent yourself and how they looked at you so very often we dont have to be mindful but we get to make choices about who we are. With all kinds of things that our tragic it can be true it is often true but those moments were those choices cost you if its different than what you understand it to be is still something that happens regularly. I am sort of working called the truth about the beauty we have been bin colleagues says the 20th century. [laughter] we did a conference on duty with the keynote and i talked about that and to think about the truth about beauty and saving your life as a woman or black woman or dark skinned black woman, i come across one truth isnt new. To talk about seeing yourself inside and outside. And he was probably thinking about educated black men but so that there is a gaze out there and you struggle with that as a black person because you know, yourself as a fullfledged person and you said that that struggle is absolutely exhausting. That is the part i remember now that i am of a certain age with a great deal of wisdom. [laughter] were you ever discriminated against . Not big discrimination. Did you ever struggle . But it has been exhausting. And my public with facebook i get a call through facebook. People are exhausted every week to have another atrocity to worry about. It is the conspiracies against black people to keep us from doing your work to keep us from fashioning ourselves as individuals. Almost to be an individual than to turn against your race. Is a difficult proposition because it means you dont do your work or love yourself as an individual. Sova i would like to say about the truth about you before us here, those of us that were here, to find a means to shut down that gays from outside and stop the rise. Living in a capitalist society where most images are marketed. Marketing means feel bad about yourself see by my staff. [applause] shut that down. And do not hear or see of what your society sense back to you. That is what i want to say about so fashion. That is interesting because i had the honor to meet the l legendary dancer who hosted a panel last night and posted it was Misty Copeland and two other dancers but they said focusing on the race in what is happening is keeping many of us from our work and frock focusing after a while with the new atrocity with a new. It takes us from our work but at some point make sure your focused on your work and dont let it go. That will affect our history going forward. This is how we make ourselves with the beauty and so often even the way we think about the daily atrocities even the way with the icons with the idea with the celebrities the everyday young woman on the book on the bus with an action to the larger narrative how that process independent of what happened what are the ways that every day people from your experience that what youd do to represent themselves the adn the playfulness that you bring up the view deceit the duty of sharing that. Bedclothing that we have for people to be more of the we have a problem to you talk about the playfulness around beauty and that hair styles of mean anything but it is all just hair and let it go. With the levels of melanin in your skin not something that we should talk about or be mindful of. I found myself wanting to be mindful that the difference between kiley gender and the numbers of black children that are constantly sent home in tears to have their hair in cornrows past year tell us it is playful and fun but i have not heard of any white people to be thrown out consistently for wearing a hair style in particular that is really common for many. Not all black girls but it is hardly a strange thing so it is different of who plays but at the same time but she says the first is to adorn. A the hair and by these and fashion and a little bit of nothing but you take something to be so satisfied at a fed. If we can think you and no balls with more hair if you see it. If you have bin to baltimore and you may have twins and they will not necessarily look alike. That is not how we make choices which is in our communities with the way that we understand what were doing but are affirming that we absolutely should be able to do but yet at the same time we have to be able to say if that is the only standard of black girl beauty that doesnt look affleck ethnically vague it comes as such a wide spectrum of color we celebrate in all but on a cultural stage is a certain little subset you could say people are from the middle east they could be from Central America to not even have the space to talk about that it matters and how much money you get paid in the amount of times but they will tell you those things matter and at some point we will not have those conversations at least notice it 90 ab be swept away or depressed or to turn on each other but the least notice it because you can fix it. That is where i am getting at. Who can play and who cant . But we dont have the reaction but there are clear consequences that are differently depending on how dark your skin is. This is what i wanted to get to maybe the question is seashore working on the gentleman quarterly version version, can we talk about what this means and engendered way like playful less is there a way to think about of a gender dimension to fascists health and beauty as it plays out . In my book and the forthcoming book i am focusing on the individuals it is a black people as well whole but people who have made impactive in history culturally. It tends to be entertainers actors photographers i am not sure about that playfulness part but some people just have that a static whoever is going on you are in there i. Thats it. Some women will do that i am not one of those but. [laughter] but that is in individual thing and personal. I dont know in my particular books of a has anything to do with that particular question. I want to Say Something about blackness. [laughter] there are a lot of really good things. One is that it is easier for us defendant feel solidarity and a sense of community. That is important. You mentioned adornment. Yes. And cents and not worry about black people being kept down in terms of appearance, but icy that seems almost an american and theyre showing great bodies and in great things with the way that non flak people would hesitate to do there are good things about black suspect, with that is to scratch the surface for. I think it is not good feverfew are black to have no knowledge of history. Story, if you remember the trauma part without remembering the creation part, i called my book creating black americans. And the inside of it is about trauma, but its also about creation. We have to remember the creation part. If you focus too heavily on the trauma, you cant do anything. Youre stopped because youc automatically feel theyre going to cut me off, they wont let me do it, the police will get me. If you only focus on the numbers and the statistics, its so dismal. You would just stay home in bed. So let us respectfully not keep our history and not keep our social statistics foremost in mind as educated, thoughtful people. You need to know. But as a sane person in the United States of america, you need to forget. Thank you for that. [applause] remember the, well, i guess maybe i can tack onto my answer, because part of what i do is not to ignore the trauma, but to let people know within our history its not all trauma. Thats right. Theres creation. This is, you know, my book celebrates or artists, you know . Lena honor, you know the cab callaways and the things you have not heard about them. To give you not just another story about them having to go through the back door in a white hotel, but the story of them writing a song or painting a painting or studying their lines. In my book theres a picture of dorothy [inaudible] taking a dance class. Young people today love beyonce and talk about her work ethic a lot, and i always like to bring that up in that context for something you can understand. The thing you admire beyonce for or Janet Jackson always seen rehearsing, thats not new. Theyre from a long tradition of artists who were hard workers and loved art of every type. Lenalena hornewas a big reader. Thats right. Im so glad you said that, because i hear a lot of especially undergrads who say to me all im learning and whether its an ethnic studies class or africanAmerican History, is how bad it is. So the history piece is one thing, but also even in this moment. Thats how i started off, right . In this moment its all a about how we are diagnose, right . Slow death dying, right . At what point do i have any agency to do anything you know, theres a distinction in the world between optimists and pessimists. Turns out that optimists get things done. Optimists succeed. It turns out that pessimists are right about the world. Right. [laughter] right, right, right, right. And i just want to, i want to introduce a term. This is not an academic term, but its a term that i got from some of the black women that i worked with in detroit who were around 16 years old. And they said theres a difference between a struggle, the struggle and struggley with an ly, and they say a struggle is what we go through as human beings on this planet. The struggle they define as specific to the africanamerican experience in this country. And they said but struggley is when and they named this through what they saw happening to their grandmothers and their aunties, struggling is when you are constantly battling and fighting with no prospects of anything getting better, with no prospect of joy. And no one, no human being should live in that space. And so they, their counteraction to that or the way they thought about this had a lot to do with how they carried themselves, their ability to be creative not just in fashion, but to write poetry, to dance in ways that were in defiance of this idea of being struggley. We understand that there is a history for all of us, right, of working through and coming through. They even understood the history in the midst of the trauma, the narrative that you have can be all about the trauma for a variety of reasons. But thats not necessarily the narrative that i have about black people. And its not one that i teach my students. Like, you need to understand the conditions that were pressing down at any moment. Like, again, you cant just be like and they were play i had somebody say somewhere that we need to get beyond this trauma pleasure thing, because even on during the middle passage, black women were having orgasms. Im like, now youve gone far, right . [laughter] now youve gone far with your dichotomy. Yes, they may have been, but, you know, it wasnt the pleasure cruise. [laughter] so we can talk about how were not all just damaged. Black women, theres stuff to talk about, you know . Dr. Painter, i think in your book am i correct in that you were saying we see the slave initially in upstate new york and that her first language was dutch. Yes. Not english. And i think when people bring out that trope of Sojourner Truth, they hear that southern accent. [laughter] so whether she says [inaudible conversations] but thats the point im making. The point im making is that people not only trot that out as saying that, but also they hear it in that southern black voice, and that had nothing to do with when i read that in your book people are carrying on about Sojourner Truth without even knowing anything about her. [inaudible conversations] can you, please i would love [inaudible conversations] could you talk about just that, where youre going with this, but also i would love if you could talk about the moment of the photographs yes. And the importance of yes, yes. I want to say three things. Let me try to remember the three things. The first thing is so Sojourner Truth didnt say aint i a woman, any of that, the people who put that in her mouth dont even take step one to find out about her. I wrote a scholarly book on Sojourner Truth. There were two others that came out, and theres one since then, and we all say, look, she didnt say that. She said things that meant that, that working class women need their rights. Women need their rights and women work hard. She said that, she didnt say aint, arent, etc. Okay, thats the first thing. Lets just career clear that up. I dont want any of you [laughter] okay. The second thing, youve taken black americans and kind of shifted it over a little bit to playfulness. Playfulness is good for fashion, maybe, but my book is called creating black americans africanAmerican History and its meaning, 1619present. And the themes are creation and trauma. So each chapter starts with a fullpage image from black fine art. So if you can get a hard copy, you have a Coffee Table Book with. If you can only get the soft copy, you have a textbook. [laughter] but they all, they both have a lot of black fine art in it because artists can deal with the past in a way that scholars cant. And as we know, just look at me, im getting all worked up. [laughter] i was excited to read your book, thats why i wanted to ask you [inaudible] yeah, yeah. So we, we need to keep the creation in mind. For me, it was fine art. But it can be entertainment, it can be a lot of other things. And what was the third thing i wanted to [inaudible] no, im not going to talk about no, no. Thats for you, thats for you. [laughter] you asked about the photographs. The way i really started drifting toward the way that i ended up going to art school was through working on Sojourner Truths photographs. Sojourner truth did not read and write, but she had her pictures taken. And i started because i was really fascinated by you know that photograph of Sojourner Truth that you see a lot where shes sitting like this . You know what im talking about . Shes very prim, right . You know that photo . I mean, there are several of them, but, you know, shes never, shes never doing any of that. [laughter] shes sitting very nicely. And then before i knew anything, there was this verbal so journaller truth who was Sojourner Truth who was ripping open her bodice and aint i a woman and all that sort of thing which was a very fierce kind of person. So in order to find out what was going on here, i started it ended up a book. But the photographs were Sojourner Truths controlled selffashioning. And she showed herself as a respectable, well dressed matron. She didnt show herself as an angry black woman or a freedom fighter. She was a person of the mid 19th century, and im going to stop with this last bit saying that part of our selffashioning, all of our selffashioning, most of our selffashioning is as individuals. And i think we should be proud of ourselves as individuals. This is very hard to do in our society which only wants to make us units of race or units of sex or units of sexuality. But each of us is an individual with a particular past, a particular family, particular tastes, particular body. And we do with it and we should own doing it as ourselves. [applause] i wanted to add one of the, i love this Sojourner Truth book. It was revelatory to me. And one of the things that i was most revelatory was not that she wasnt busy opening her breasts in front of people and talking about aint i a woman [laughter] that never happened either, the whole ripping of the breast in the middle of a meeting. Also fiction. But the thing that i like the most is for a while she was part of this utopian community that had all this, like, free love going on interracial. It was interracial, but it was not free love. Okay, so i made that part up. [laughter] but i like [inaudible conversations] so that she was a part of creating this utopian, kind of idyllic community. And, again, its not how Sojourner Truth has been given to us and this is why my book is called Sojourner Truth a life, a symbol. Two different things. Yeah. Speaking of individuality, and this is a very selfish question because i admire all of your work so much and have read and used it in so many different ways. And i think it would be helpful, hopefully not just for me, but if you could talk about the individual journey that brought you to the work. Not just wanting to uncover the trauma, but the joy and the creation in the collective community creation. I think it would be helpful if you could speak to how you see your research, your writing as part of these creative, selfmaking projects and especially now with how you shifted or maybe it wasnt a shift from a historian to creating the archives, to creating with challenge and digital art. I think your individual stories of creation and fashioning are really important for all of us to understand and hear. Go ahead. Nichelle, do you want to start in. In start . Well, like i said earlier, it came from a desire to share a part of history that i didnt think people were aware of, enough people didnt know. I love history, different books from, you know, different areas. But i find a lot of people avoid it because it is traumatic, and it can be exhausting be all youre hearing is terrible things. So i found a lot of as a writer, i admire other artists in different disciplines, so i always an interest in singers and actresses and models and how they came to their art. Because a lot of them are different, very individual people and often not just like we were just talking about Sojourner Truth their journey is not the stereotypical journey that people tend to think. There was a dancer that i featured in my book, she was famous for a while, her name was margo webb. And she only died maybe ten years ago. She lived to be over 100. But she was in a dance team called norton and webb, and her dance partner was harold norton. And, you know, after their they had a short career of but after her dance career was over, she didnt just go in a corner and die somewhere. She went back to college, to Hunter College here in new york. She was born in harlem. She finished her degree, and she taught school for 40 years. She had a nice life with a family and, you know, she taught dance in many ways. I think people have this idea of people as artists if they dont become famous, they arent successful in their art, or theyre not a successful person. And thats not always the case. A lot of artists have had different journeys, or theyve inspired other artists. She is the one who kind of sent Diane Carroll on the right path. Ms. Carroll celebrated her 80th birthday yesterday. 80 years. [applause] but shes, you know, josephine was the p friend to her who said, oh, girl, you cant wear that. [laughter] so, i mean, i just like the little stories like that, you know, the little, the little tidbits in history, the Dorothy Dandridge and Nat King Cole going around hollywood pitching a tv series for them to star in. Turned down. Can you imagine if we could watch that on youtube today . I love that. I didnt see a lot of that in history. I saw a lot of dr. King and rosa parks. Which is fine, we need to know our history, but we need to know all aspects of our history. I want to say it was clearly so important to everybody else, because the book started from the tumbler and the images online that got such an overwhelming response. I think someone called it a bomb to the soul, to see those images. Thank you. I had the idea for the book years ago but, you know, turned down like many writers are. Its expensive to produce, were not sure theres an audience for it an audience rose up, right . They didnt believe it, so social media was a way to engage that audience and to kind of show, you know, expose people to a picture of err that kit not in a cat woman suit. Sammy davis can jr. Put his money into the 1959 film they starred in. Theres a lot of things i would like people to think about when they think of these people. Not just the onenote thing. Lena horne pinned to the pillar, you know in i want them to think of other things, you know . Thats where that came from, from the tumblr page, and my publisher actually approached me from that. So i was fortunate in that aspect. Thank you for that. Its a beautiful book. Thank you. Lets see, my honestly, i remember i sat in on a grad seminar that nell was teaching after id already published my first book. And one of the things she would always say to the graduate students was theres so many questions that have yet to be asked, right . If you wonder why isnt anybody talking about this, its because no one ever asked the question. Yo i need to ask the you need to ask the question. If you dont ask the question, its not happening. That, for me, helped make sense of the work that i had done up until that point which the very first thing that i wrote was a journal article while i was still an undergraduate at spelman that was called writing themselves into existence. And it was about black women who had been Freedom Fighters and what it meant when they started to speak and write their experience over and against the history that i learned. So, again, i was an undergraduate, so Fannie Lou Hamer was this revelation for me. But so much of the history that i was learning even about the Civil Rights Movement was still very male, and it would just say and then there was Fannie Lou Hamer, right . Right. But to really it hit me, her absence, the absence of her voice was as an undergraduate. So that piece in a way the first two books that i did have to do with writing other pieces of black womens history back into existence. So the first book about hair literally was because i understood the complexity of hair for black women as central to citizenship and femininity. Partly because i grew up in the south and in san francisco, california. My parents are divorced, so i split years. When i with when i was in florida, what hair meant, my grandmother was all about me and miss bess city and getting my hair straightened. She was not ashamed of being black, she was a part of a very specific be kind of black community. But hair for her meant one thing, and it couldnt and it would cause trouble. In a segregated florida is no joke around race really. Florida has got a whole reconstructed thing going on. For a segregated black community, she would like while you cause that trouble on yourself . That right there, of all the fights that we have, why that one . When i was with my mother in the late 60s, really 70s, you know, we were running around at the mar run county marilyn county courthouse. The differences of what hair could mean to black people in the same decade in different regions of the country and for different general rations generations, there were nuances there that were beyond politics and asimilar assimilation that spoke to the complexity of our experience, and i simply didnt see it when i was in graduate school. I simply didnt see black women i write about black communities, but my point of entry is often black women. I did not see the complex communities that a i recognize. And so hair, for me, became the first kind of thing. And while i was doing the hair book, i stumbled across this group of hair dressers that madam c. J. Walker friended a publication called womens voice, and that was published for 20 years. These hairdressers all over the country basically, like, wrote about the stuff they were interested in. If it was politics, they were not writing about how to get a man. Politics, economics. Again, talking about black women as Business People in ways i had not seen. And its publishers, we as publishers, we publish that . And the hairdressers, this is what they were doing with their money . And i could not find this publication anywhere. And this is a period where all you hear about is black women as maids and black women as escaping the south from sexual abuse and black women is the underbelly of they created a magazine. And then i found out they created another magazine. [laughter] and the way that i found that magazine, and ill stop, the way that i found womens voice having gone to black college, i was looking for this magazine everywhere. I knew it existed, because people would mention it in various places. But none of the places that should have it, the library of congress, none of the black press, i couldnt find it anywhere. I just, i would keep finding just little scraps of mention about it. And finally i called because i went to black college, no disrespect to spelman whose library was actually one central library, but i knew that things were not always preserved and written down, collected in a certain kind of way. So i literally called up Fisk University. I started calling black colleges and saying can you look in the places ill pay you to get an undergraduate to look in those boxes that i know that exist and just see, Fisk University had the whole run. Wow. Yeah. And they sent it to me. [laughter] . [applause] but that has to do with knowing i knew enough to start calling howard. I knew enough to call the au center. I knew enough to call you have to know certain things about black people and black culture that a you wont necessarily learn necessarily outside of it to figure out how to research it. So thats, thats my thank you for that. Yeah. Well, i have to say that her first book was what got her to princeton. She sent me an email nell painter sent me an email from paris she sent you an email. You did. I sent her an email from paris. [laughter] ive done a lot of books, and, you know, they start in different ways. The first one was a dissertation. You write a dissertation, it becomes a book. Right, cheryl hicks . Yes. And the next book was narrative of jose hudson which is an autobiography of a black communist. And i was advised not to do that book because he was a communist, because he was a black southerner and because he was still alive. But i loved it. I still love it. The third book was a history of the United States at the turn of the 20th century. So that is not just black history, but it turns out that it turns out that a lot of things that happened to black people are useful for understanding larger societies or larger histories. And, you know, for the longest time when i was advising dissertations, i would say to my graduate students like cheryl who didnt listen to me either i would say, you know, take a topic that has, thats not just a black topic, but in which black people play a large part. And then you can claim that you have mastered this big thing. And you have also read a lot about black people. I dont think anybody took that advice. [laughter] black people are just too interesting. No, thats not true, because i had some i had all of my graduate students were not writing about black topics. But the ones who wanted to write of black topics continued to write about black topics and didnt take the tack that i had suggested. Standing in armageddon, the United States history, kind of limped along for a while. The only reason i have a career worth seeing is thanks to the New York Times book review. The New York Times book review has reviewed all of my books. Standing in armageddon is a very progressive history of the United States which the radical historians did not review. And the problem was that i am not the right kind of black people for the editors of the thenradical journal. Middle class. Female. But standing in armageddon still lives, its in its second edition, and its selling very nicely. The next book was so journal iser truth Sojourner Truth which my colleagues here have mentioned very generously. Lets see, what came after that . Southern history across the color line which is a collection of essays about southerners, some of whom are black and come come and some of whom are not. And then there was creating black americans which came to me, which was proposed to me. And if i had known how much work it was going to be, i wouldnt have done it, because it was a hell of a lot of work. I didnt know art history at the time. So it was a lot of work to write a synthesis of history by yourself. But i did learn a lot about black artists because all of the images are black fine art. I decided i was only going to use black artists. And black artists who work on historical topics. So its not an art history, but since most people dont know any black art history, its way in. The its a way its a way in. And then the history of white people, which started, like Sojourner Truth, the the history of white people started with a question. I started working on it at the turn of the 31st sent century when the russians were bombing children any ya. And there was a photograph on the front of the New York Times of chech ya looking like berlin in 1945. It was the capital of chechnya. And im thinking why are white americans called czech ans . Does that make any sense . So i asked people, and nobody had a good answer. So took a while to answer the question, and then i had to go in front of the answer and then after the answer, so it took a long time. But that book became a New York Times best seller, and people carry it on the subway like a secret, you know . People look over and think, what are you reading . [laughter] so that book, that book has done well. At the moment i am writing a memoir, which is the hardest thing ive ever written. Its called old in art school. T because i was old because i was old in art school. [laughter] and people say, well, why do you use the word old . Cant you say older . [laughter] no. Say it loud. Im old and im proud. [laughter] [applause] i want to go to q a, but can you give just a few sentences on the transition to art school from being a historian to yeah. So it started with Sojourner Truth, the Sojourner Truth photographs. I didnt know anything about photographs, so i went over to mark han which is the art a History Library of princeton which is, its just its heaven. So there are all these books on everything on art. The only problem is you cant take them out. So i would just sit there and is read and read and read and learn about photographs and images and the rhetoric of the images, and i just loved it. So that started me. And then i thought my mother, actually, started a new career. You knew my mother, didnt you . Yeah. We share the bay area, and i know her mother, and my mother is deceased, but she knew my mother to. I loved your mother. Yeah. My mother was fabulous. Dont get me talking about my mother. [laughter] but my mother wrote a book after she she wrote two books after she retired. The second one is a memoir, and its called i hope i look that good when im that old. [laughter] because thats what people would say to her. And now theyre saying it to me. [laughter] so when i get old to, im going to write a book called i hope i look that good when im that old, volume ii. [laughter] anyway, my mother said you can do something after right. So i took painting classes at princeton, and i did the drawing and painting marathon at the new york studio school. So i would get up at 6 30 in the morning and take the newark light rail and then take new Jersey Transit and then take subway and then get to a street before the youth. And i would stand up for eight hours and draw and paint, and i loved it. And then my mentor, bill gaskins here, would give me bits of wisdom every now and then to keep me grounded. And also to answer questions that the rest of my Art Education wasnt answering. So i did a bfa in painting at Mason Gross School of the arts at rutgers. Yea, rutgers. And then i did an msa at the Rhode Island School of design which was the hardest educational experience ive ever had. Thank you for that. So much more to talk about. I want to open it up now to questions and comments. And open up the conversation. So theres a microphone here theres microphones in these aisle ways, so please. And we can just alternate mics, right . Okay. Hi. Hello. Thank you all for being here. I appreciate your conversation and your comments. I am an elementary teachereducator, meaning that i work with older folks who want to become elementary schoolteachers. Ive been seated behind some young people, and i know there are some in the audience. And what id like to hear from you, tapping into your words of bits of advice, is maybe some counsel, some recommendations and some suggestions to young people especially where they have access to a range of technologies and tools but many times dont have the opportunities in schools to use those. So how would you begin to give just a little bit of advice, motivation and encouragement to young people to write, to write about themselves and begin to look for their own stories and narratives . Thank you for that, yeah. I have one suggestion. Take them to the library. Yeah. Im, actually, its funny, the book that im working on right now is about White Supremacy and black education. So what to tell young people, im going to, you know, tear it down, and weve got to rebuild it. Which is a whole longer thing because im in the middle of a book thats looking at how black people have been educated and how lucrative our miseducation and undereducation thats right. Often is with certain segments. And were in a period right now where thats the case. So its, but its funny, im thinking a lot about k12 education. But in terms of how to save yourself, i do think youve got to get off the internet. Technology is a fabulous thing, but it is literally one of the things that socalled reformers and people who are running both how education is talked about at the government and corporate and business level is all the same thing right now. Its one of the ways that they, that an education is being unmade. Its a tool. Its a tool. And the ways that some in power are using that tool mean that you may not ever see the book. If its not a kindle book. If its theres not a web site with it. To start to ask the kinds of critical questions still takes people in rooms with young people. Teaching them how to think critically, how to ask your own questions. All we need to do is give you the tools to answer them, but if you dont know that there are questions to be asked, and unfortunately at this moment in my cynical and im pessimistic right now, not optimistic at this moment its the question of thinking if theyre reduced to a test score which doesnt have a lot to do with it. So find ways to question. Find people who will question you. Ask questions. Demand answers to your questions. From your peers, from your family, from people in the grocery store. It doesnt really matter. [laughter] but become a questioning human being. [applause] i agree. I wanted to add one thing. I came up before the age of facebook or social media, so for me it was essence magazine. I love the library, i love the smell of books, i loved going to the library, but i had this conflict because i loved the library, but i didnt see myself in the library. What i would say to those young people is to trust what you know and not just what you read, but what you know deeply about yourself and what you love and to create from that place. So i think for me it was loving books and loving the word and loving art but not seeing myself reflected and knowing that as much as i could take in knowledge, i could also produce knowledge. And so to trust where i came from and what i knew to be true and to work from that place. But thank you for the work you do, by the way. So a hand [applause] good afternoon. My name is tyrone nero. Im a social worker and also a veteran. And i just started a nonprofit organization, its called black diaries. And my business part her and i, we both graduated from columbia, and the whole premise is qualitative stories that black folks are going through. Like get those stories out there that really are meaningful. And one of the things i think thats important as i listen to editors and writers is, like, how do you find the right story to tell and then the right, meaningful, powerful, like story . Because we all go through things. Everybody goes through stuff. And one of the things, the challenges that we have is we just came back from haiti, and we have a big chunk of stories that we heard there. We were in baltimore, theres these huge stories. And our whole goal is community organizing. And i understand that art is a part of it, i understand that being empowered is a part of it. But i am utilizing the internet because we are all videobased and documentarybased on telling our stories from our perspective. And i just would like to get insight on when you choose what to talk about or what to write about, im sure its all internal, but how do you get outside resources to as noted by a hemowho was arrested, as noted by shah question that who was dealing with these type of things. Like how do you get your motivation from folks that are in the communities . I would say that the question to ask is for what purpose. Because you have a lot of material, and some of a lot of it is probably really interesting even though it does not necessarily suit your purpose. So if your purpose is to illustrate how someone got from being aimless to going to the library to going to community college, then you find the story that furthers that narrative. So in art we call it cure rating, in publishing we call it editing. So you have a lot of stuff, and you need to edit toward your end. Thank you fir that question for that question. My name is edward harris, and my question is do you find it almost your burden to address the, i guess, the basic narrative thats out there now . So with it being the mary jane girl or cookie, do you find that in your writing and your editing process that you try to steer away from the archetypes and maybe lend them to something thats nontraditional . For instance, sister, you said you were being a little pessimistic right now about some things. I get that. Im a filmmaker myself. Belief me, i get that. Believe me, i get that. But on one end of saying, okay, its typical that you have the fly sister thats looking for, i guess, the perfect scenario as opposed to someone whos saying, you know, im not going to buck the system, im going to go try something else, im going to try an ago regaron lifestyle, you know, maybe im going to have a mushroom farm be as opposed to try to fight through the corporate ladder. Do you find that you have to offer those options in your writings and in your process . I think, if i understand your question, i think that there is a cultural appetite for certain kinds of narratives and images of black people. Yes. And when i say cultural appetite, we have to almost feed a machine that sees it happens with women. Like, theres the same kind of cultural appetite for specific images of women across race. Theres a certain cultural appetite of images of black people. Not so much well, yeah. Anyway [laughter] before i start, like [inaudible] and i think, and this kind of goes back to the question over here, in terms of how do you pick stories, again, you have to know that such stories exist. And then you tell stories that can deepen and broaden and widen. Youre not going to displace. I dont pessimistic here. [inaudible] i dont think youre going to make it [inaudible] certain options. I mean [inaudible] i have a 16yearold daughter. And when you start looking at even with the documentaries, the options that are generally there right. They all colored within the lines. Whereas 80 of us live somewhere along the line or completely outside of the line completely, right . So how to function in those options, you know . Do you find it sort of incumbent upon you guys, you know, because youre the ones who are doing, or the ones who are out there on that particular front . I know as a filmmaker, i kind of feel like, yeah, you know, i can discuss what the issue is, and, you know, be very scholarly about what the problem is without offering some sort of substantive right. Solution at the end of my process. Uhhuh. Then youre just kind of pimping, youre sort of poverty pimping in a way, you know . Youre making money off of explaining the problem without actually taking it upon yourself to throw a solution out there and to be criticized for that solution. So do you find that a hard balance in what you do . Yeah. I mean, i can answer that, for sure. Im a cultural anthropologist, and i did ten years of field work in detroit in a homeless shelter for girls in detroit, and this was an issue that came up for me and still does again and again and again through every part of that process. So i initially started out thinking i was looking at this shelter as i was going to analyze the shelter. And it ended up becoming about those young women and not just the young women in that shelter who lived there, but their mothers and their aunts and whether grandmother came. Because it was exactly that, right . It gets to a point where you feel like and were talking about real, live people, right . Not creating a fictional story, but real, live people whose narratives seem to so easily fit into these tropes weve heard before, these very simplistic tropes, the single mother with three children or, you know, everybodys living with the grandmother. And the thing was, that was true for a lot of those young women, but that wasnt the story. Right . And that was such a simple story. And that story could become so dangerous if that story wasnt unpacked. And if those young women and their mothers and their aunties werent able to also tell that story in their own way through their own voice. And i just want to say one thing especially when we talk about young black people, we tend to talk about them as if they dont come from families unless the problem is a family. We talk about them as if theyve dropped from the sky and arent tied to communities and arent tied to larger histories. So when i initially started the field work, i cant write this just about the shelter, because its recreating these same narratives that are not helpful. This is no solution. Its just telling us what we think we already know. So thats why i stayed there for ten years, almost twelve, because i really started to live with those young women and their families to think about what does this mean beyond this superficial trope that we think we understand . It also, honestly, forced me to look at that shelter differently. I was ready to be like, oh, this shelter is a bad institutional space, and its just recreating, you know, oppression. That wasnt the case either. You know what i mean . Its complicated. And with were not if were not brave enough to play in the nuance and the gray area and to be wrong and to revise what we thought before, then were just going to keep recreating these same dangerous stories that do nothing but allow us to live in a fantasy that we think were right and we have the answers when we actually dont. But thank you for that question. Thank you. [applause] oh, theres hi. Hi. My name is ronnie, im a fulltime ph. D. Student at university of houston studying urban education. And in texas we have adopted new textbooks in history that mention, they talk about the civil rights im sorry, the civil war, and they mention slavery as a very side issue and that the civil war was about states rights. Not that states not states rights to own people, but it was about states rights. So this sort of revisionist history, we see it often in houston and in texas thats where im from. [laughter] help us. [laughter] but im sort of wondering, what do you think our responsibility is as and i wont say the learned, but just conscious people, people who know, like, were retelling the story wrong or were making it up as we go, or were making the story that it looks better for some people and not as bad for other people. What is our responsibility as writers . I think in my mind i think maybe i am a writer. But what is our responsibility as parents, as educators, as teachers to tell history well . Because, yeah, it is all an interpretation, but also to tell it well. So when you were speaking about Sojourner Truth, and its like that didnt happen. So what is our responsibility, again, as parents, as educators, as teachers, anybody in this room. How do we get those stories to our kids right . You go buy them. [laughter] you go buy them. We now have we are 30 years into africanamerican studies, and in those 30 years we have produced a bounty. I have written a textbook, you know, a general study. Cheryl hicks here has written about incarcerated back women which is a case study. Youre looking in front, youre standing in front of authors. We have the books exist, the films exist, the stuff is out there. So as a parent, youre asking a question as a consumer, the stuff is there. Its in the library. Its in the bookstores. Weve done our part. You do your part. [applause] about texas in particular, let me just say because, again, ive just been reading about it. And your state is no joke. Theres a lot of nojoke states, florida is too. But texas has got a whole other thing because what we order in textbooks, people say, oh, texas ordered that, we should all because texas is the biggest market, texas and california. People want shapes of what everybody else sees. But one thing i will see is there have to be consequences for people for getting this wrong, right . [applause] right. There has to be consequences and almost at this point almost community by Community People are going to have to figure out what those consequences are. Yes, we have textbooks are one issue that certainly need to be addressed, but theres all kinds of ways that Public Education right now is being undermined. And im sure as you all know right now, the Public Education system is majority of color and majority people who are poor. Right . So when these big decrees start coming down from the department of education, theres certain people who are being impacted. And if were not organized, if we dont even think about a response, if we just say, oh, the textbooks, you know, texas and california, theyre rewriting the whole thing. Although this thing about the civil war having nothing to do about slavery, thats not even new textbooks. Thats theres a strain of American History thats happy to tell the whole history of the civil war and not mention black people. Like really its an afterthought. Thats not even the most egregious ways of retelling, i think. Because that one, we see it. Theres all kinds of other ways that narratives get shaped about black people as pass i have consistently passive consistently. Theres a whole way not even just about the ways that we were not passive slavery, our history is one of trauma can be. There is a narrative. There is a way that people can the tell the whole history of black people in the diaspora. The Department Im in now, we do african and caribbean and theres a whole way you can tell our history where we are constantly having things done to us and you would never know ever, that we ever did anything for us. That we ever fought back and won. Like right . And theres no consequences for anyone. So as nell said, but the knowledge is out there. Its not secret. Theres another, since the charlton atrocity charleston atrocity, and here i will brag about another one of my former ph. D. Students chad wilson who started a bibliography of essential reading. It is there. Its there. I also want to add the essential reading with kids or with adults, sometimes people can feel like weve mentioned being exhausted before. There are ways to enjoy it organically and, you know, just naturally through different avenues. If you have a kid thats interested in sports, maybe a sports biography would be a biography of muhammad ali or joe lewis may interest them. If someone is interested in culinary arts, theres an author who wrote a book about africanAmerican History through food. I believe its Jessica Jessica something, i forget. And ill tweet about it or something later, because that bugs me. But there are different entry points that you can take in there while we are fighting the good fight with these textbooks or whatever instead of losing time and in ten years the 5yearolds are 15, you know . We can fill in those blank withs now organically blanks now organically. Theyre on on netflix there are different documentaries on there from different aspects of black life. As everyone said here, the material is out there. Its there. Thank you. This is our last question. Hi. My name is a. D. Mentor, and you brought up a point, a very interesting point, and i figure i better ask this question, because if i didnt, id lose my mind. You mentioned that when you were doing research for a particular magazine, in order for you to get that information, you had to choose a nontraditional way of getting that information. Part of im big history, i love history. Historys primarily what i read, and im a consummate researcher. And i often find that to be absolutely true for black people in america. One of the things during my undergrad years, one of my first jobs was working at my colleges library, specifically in archives. And i was great until i got fired. [laughter] and i got fired because one day an alumni had delivered information on my schools connection to the underground railroad. And im the only black person in the whole place. You put that in front of me, im not getting any work done. But years later when i talk and communicate to people on research, i always say have you gone to the university and find out what they have in their a archives . And its never, it never comes to peoples mind that there are what we call nontraditional ways in which we can find our history. With that being said, the question is are there resources or institutions or just people that are actually doing this nontraditional research on black people that can be passed down to younger people especially since a lot of this stuff is starting slowly becoming digitized, or a lot of the universities are starting to open up their archives to allow regular folks like me and the people here to actually look and see, you know, the complete story of our history . Let me say really quickly, because i know that were out of time, my issue right now is not the lack of different kinds of Research Tools that have like black newspapers going back to the 19th century. There is microfilm sets of those. The National Association of colored womens papers which is fabulous and covers all kinds of stuff [inaudible] its not. Its still on microfilm. It hasnt been digitized. The issue starts to become we did a project on cointel pro, and i made them go to the library and look at the papers, and it was like a hunt. I told them go find out when this happened, this happened, this happened. Theres indexes and stuff. It wasnt like i was telling them to go through 150 reels. And they literally were, like, what is microfilm . Right . You mean i have to actually go where now . [laughter] to the archives . And they were hostile about not being able they werent mad, if they werent mad they had to spent four or five hours discovering that theyd have to go to the library, and the project would have taken them an hour and a half maybe [laughter] if they had gone like i told them to do in the first place. If its not easily accessible yeah. And if its not digitized, right . We thats where were getting lost. Things may still be in boxes, but if you have to go to a guide, an actual paper guide like if you have to go to the collection and request the boxes and then look at the guide and then tell like, thats a foreign, that is becoming for a whole generation, even for graduate students, more work. Because theres so much available online. Theyre kind of like maybe i can just look at the stuff thats online. And so thats a different kind of battle that has to do with just teaching. Teaching, training, learning. And i keep saying stuff is hidden that you really want to know about. The stuff thats in plain sight, the stuff thats easy is not always whats best for you. I know that we are at the wrapup stage. [inaudible] [inaudible conversations] we can talk, we can talk afterwards. Ill be here. This is fascinating. We just need to wrap up. I just want to say thank you so much to all of the panelists. What weve covered [applause] in 90 minutes is really astounding. And thank you to all of you for your comments, for your attention, for your presence. And thank you, Aimee Meredith cox for moderating an amazing panel. [applause] thank you so much. Youll pardon me for a little bit of housekeeping. These amazing womens books are available. Painter, rooks and cox, at the barnes noble tent directly outside. Nichelle gainers book is at the schomburg book shop directly upstairs. Please thank our panelists once again. [applause] we will be back near a half an hour for the final panel of the day, race and politics in a time of crisis. Please come back, but get some books. Thank you. [inaudible conversations]
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