It seems like sermon consultation is just one kind of white-demanded “performance of blackness” that is happening around us. Secular, liberal white folk aggressively demand Black artists doing blackness so that whites can feel virtuous—different versions of what Tom Wolfe mocked as radical chic in the 1970s. Playwright Aurin Squire surely speaks for many when he says that African American artists don’t want to have to simply create a Black self to be consumed by whites who want to be seen as “woke.” “We don’t want to be pandered to, infantilized, castrated, and turned into helpless victims. …don’t want to speak on your diversity panel, listen to white liberals on instagram crying about their privilege, or placate corporate America with a black square on a social media profile.”[2] As James Baldwin once discovered, white media, white theater, white critics, white educational systems all thirst for a very narrow version of Blackness like that in Richard Wright’s Native Son.

My Black colleagues in academia and journalism all complain of their extraordinary service requirements, often consisting of sitting on committees where “diversity” is a mandate. I don’t want to be just another white woman asking a Black colleague to make me look woke. At the same time, I want to include and listen to Black and Brown voices. I certainly don’t want to speak for them. I could choose not to write about these moments at all and leave these realities to Black authors and scholars to ponder, but if racism (meaning disproportional imbalances of power and economic security tied to one’s culturally assigned race) persists—and of course it does—then staying silent by those who hold most of that power only feeds the problem.

Perhaps the answer those of us who recognize the immorality of the imbalance should tread humbly to address it—do the research, write the stories we are able to see from our limited vantage points, apologize for our mistakes, make clear that we are trying to be a part of the solution, and leave the generalizations to the politicians and the pundits.

Notes

[1] Emma Green, “The Unofficial Racism Consultants to the White Evangelical World,” The Atlantic, July 5, 2020, https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2020/07/white-evangelicals-black-lives-matter/613738/.

[2] Aurin Squire, “The Return Of A Native Son,” Talking Points Memo, July 2, 2020, https://talkingpointsmemo.com/cafe/cafe-return-native-son.

[3] Larry Buchanan, Quoctrung Bui, and Jugal K. Patel, “Black Lives Matter May Be the Largest Movement in U.S. History,” The New York Times, July 3, 2020, sec. U.S., https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/07/03/us/george-floyd-protests-crowd-size.html.