AT THE HEART OF RACISM

I always check out my e-mails from Education Revolution from among several others. This morning there was an especially poignant movie referenced by one of the participants, +Kay Brought. The movie was Rise Dark Girls.  It was one of the first times I was really moved by what seemed to be a hidden truth in black mentality. It was not a confession or an echo of social media; it was perhaps a sincere revelation. I had encountered something similar years ago.

My wife and I traveling from artistic workshop to artistic work shop in and around Harare, Zimbabwe. Our guide was the wife of a fellow professor from the University. She, like my wife, was an art collector. We stopped in front of a shop that appear no different from any other we had visited; disordered, tools, a bench, rock tailings scattered about, an unfinished un-carved black rock poised on a low table in front of the bench, and all of his finished products on display. The young smiling artist appeared and stood silently as we inspected the results of his skill, of which he had in abundance. A statue of a beautiful girl, an obviously mature young woman, really stood out.  Standing in a slightly crouched position, with one arm covering her breast and one hand over her crotch, she was both graceful and beautiful. The artist had skillfully carved her from black rock and polished her to a high luster. There was no question in my mind; she was the best he had to offer. However, at three feet tall and made of sold rock, she would not be the kind of thing we could easily carry back to the Untied States in our luggage. Talking about that possibility while looking at the statue made it obvious we were interested, which I am sure caused the artist to step forward saying something to the effect that the name of the statue was “Shame”. How cold something so elegantly rendered represent “shame”?

He explained. The girl was bathing in the river when a “white” man came by. She covered herself in shame; hence the name. I studied the artist for indications of cynicism. There was nothing in his face or demeanor to indicate sarcasm or disparagement toward his white customers, something often encountered in post revolutionary Zimbabwe. With the name of his statue, he was tells us what +Kay Brought was telling us by recommending the movie Rise Dark Girl. There seems to be a deep, deep feeling of black inferiority—genetic and innate—akin to a cultural universal. This sense is what a black artist in a black culture was revealing to his white customers when he named his stature. Scientists cannot explain it but that is not important; what is important is that we, yes, we, both white and black, shed ourselves of this inane ungrounded feeling. As a person interested in evolutionary psychology, I feel it is perhaps a reflection of our xenophobia coupled with the impact of what Jared Diamond so eloquently talked about in his books Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies. Our differences as people are the result of geography on societies and culture and not skin pigmentation. Isn’t it about time we, as an all-inclusive society, grow up?

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