70 Time February 15/February 22, 2021
showing that our Black lives have mean-
ing and depth beyond white people.
At the height of the Harlem Renais-
sance in 1926, Langston Hughes ex-
pressed a similar sentiment to the one in-
spiring 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 in-
secure, hardworking and lazy. The racial
groups are equals, and what makes the ra-
cial groups equals is our common human-
ity; and our common humanity is imper-
fect and complex.
The creators of this new renaissance
have been expressing their own human-
ity in myriad ways. Cardi B, Megan Thee
Stallion and the hosts of The Breakfast
Club are modeling our freestyling pos-
ture. Issa Rae told our stories about dat-
ing and sex and work and friendship in
Insecure. 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 un-
finished 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 inter sect; 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 some-
thing 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 some-
thing 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 conscious-
ness, and banging on the door of the clas-
sical 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 Nod, the poetry of
Amanda Gorman and Jericho Brown, the
novels of Colson Whitehead, the illustra-
tions of Kadir Nelson and Vashti Harri-
son, 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 hu-
manity. Black creators have inspired Na-
tive, 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 cre-
ators 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 peopleTHE NEW CANON
The Black Renaissance ESSAY
I AM NOT YOUR NEGRO Raoul
Peck’s documentary revisits
James Baldwin’s unfinished
book about his friendships
with Medgar Evers, Malcolm X
and Martin Luther King Jr.SING,
UNBURIED, SING
Jesmyn Ward’s
novel follows
three generations
of a Mississippi
family on a
road trip haunted
by ghostsCODE SWITCH Co-hosts Gene
Demby and Shereen Marisol
Meraji tackle race and identity
head-on in an insightful, often
personal podcastINVASION OF PRIVACY On
Cardi B’s debut album, the
Bronx rapper brings her
blend of humor, swagger and
vulnerability to songs about
success and self-doubt