Preserving diversity
While some readers might get confused by the above headline and think the purpose of writing on this topic can’t be rooted in anything but a will to exclude or shame people from other ethnic and cultural backgrounds than the one implied by the formulation used, nothing could be further from the truth.
Blackness is not a monolith
We all come from somewhere… from a family, from a people or several, from a culture or a blend of conflicting cultural values and those of us walking in black and brown bodies are faced with a challenge we don’t always like to talk about:
A staggering number of cultures and a diaspora that’s literally everwhere
With a few individual exceptions, we’ve been raised in environments where our values, our ancestral knowledge, our history, our standards for beauty, arts, our very languages were either being ignored, belittled, erased or demonized by “mainstream society” starting with the very institutions most people rely on for information, education, health, protection…
-
Martinican vibe€5.00
DISCOVERY THE TREND OF
GLASSES
It’s like we’ve been spending years entering room after room where mirrors on the walls were reflecting the beauty of each visitor except for ours. Where the voice of each visitor would be echoed except for ours… As writers, we may feel a compulsion to stick to what we’ve learned from those foreign voices which have become so familiar as we spin our narratives into existence, for fear of being rejected, belittled or mocked. Embracing the afrocentric worldview as an illustrator may mean telling our client of predominently african descent who has chosen to write a black princess fairytale that princesses didn’t spring into existence in Europe alone and that a true representation for black children might be more powerful if the princess is wearing an undeniably african crown instead of the all too common European tiara showcased in every fairytale book or animated film.
Children of mixed heritage do not need anyone to do any type of race-bending gymnastics on existing stories and characters. Not writers, not illustrators, not filmmakers.
African history did not start with the transatlantic slave trade and the cultures that existed before and those which have evolved from them around the world have a wealth of stories, characters and symbols children of any and every background would be amazed to discover.
All that’s needed is for us to start looking in the mirror and listening for these songs we have almost forgotten to start sharing our perspective and values with a world which may not be aware of their existence.
Discovering the ancestral african heritage within ourselves helps us understand others a tad more easily…
