I have recently, in the past few years, witnessed a slight shift in conversations with Black artists. The sentiment from some is that they would like to make art that does not have to speak to blackness or to The Struggle. I slightly understand this thought process, but I do not think that it’s that easy. After all, there isn’t an on/off switch for your emotional intellectual self. Now, you can choose to have a conversation about computers, for instance, which does not have to speak to your personal experiences. The same applies to most things that you would want to speak to with your art. You can literally make it about anything you want. There are several caveats though. First, if you are tired of hearing the narrative, or you think that the art market is saturated with stories of experiences in the Black body, then I would urge you to think about the history of being able to openly express The Struggle. The tiny blip of time that Black people have been able to speak out about The Struggle has been mostly violent and tragic. And when I say tiny blip, consider the following: Ruby Bridges was six years old in 1960 when she attended the first desegregated school and right now she is 68 years old. The first African slaves landed on this dump of a rock in 1619. That is 341 years of violent and disgusting oppression. Even after that period of time, the prevalent Black voices that weren’t murdered were mostly kept in academia or in music studios. Popular American activists for civil rights have continued to be assassinated into the mid 90s and it's still happening today here and around the world. It has only been the past five to ten years that Black people have been able to express our art loudly, truthfully, on our own terms and even earn money from it casually. The Black artist who gets to type, paint, photograph, draw, sculpt and broadcast “KILL WHITEY” can do so on a pedistole and get paid for it these days. Our parents couldn’t do that and their parents obviously could not even dream of that freedom. Which brings me to my second point. 90 percent of the older Black generation (our parents and grandparents) would probably tell us to preach our truths. Again, they did not have as much freedom to do so, and again, that was very recently. If you were to talk to a Black icon from the civil rights era, through the 1980s, what do you think they would say about this? I’m sure that they would reassure us that burn out was a thing before it was a buzzword. They would tell us that the fight for our rights and our truth to be told can be utterly exhausting. But, they would also tell us that speaking our truth is absolutely necessary at all costs in order to achieve progress. Everyday is a struggle. We as a population know that, and it is so tiring. It can seem like everything is about race, and there is an argument to be made about how potentially futile this decades long conversation is to keep having. It can feel like “Dam. We have told yall literally everything about the details of The Struggle and you have done literally nothing with it.” We talk and talk and can’t steer conversation away from ourselves most of the time. Yelling into what feels like a void about the abuse and destruction of our bodies is heartbreaking for us and does break you down at times. Sometimes you wonder if anyone can see past your blackness. But can we escape it? Is it something we need to escape? Caveat three. We are stuck. Barring surgeries or skin treatments to make yourself white or even just not black, you are in a Black body. Regardless of how you feel about it, it is what you can not hide. I am a Black writer, scientist, musician, queer, auto enthusiast, father and so on, but only one of those is obvious when I walk into a room. Whereas most people are mysteries and things you should wonder about and ask questions to, Black peoples' histories are often presumed. By this I mean, that when a white or non Black person sees a Black person, specifically in the city, they consciously or subconsciously assume a portion of your story. You know, the parts where none of us have dads or that we all have cousins in prison, or that we probably went through sooooooo much to get to where we are today. Rather those things are true to your life or not, they are presumed and presumptions can really fuck up you ambitions as an artist. Your blackness is inherent no matter what. The things that you went through in your life were as a Black person and that changes almost every interaction you have had. So really no matter what you are speaking to or about with your art, you are sharing it from the Black experience. You could not separate yourself from it if you wanted to, but you don’t want to anyway because we are proud to be black, right? So many moments in our lives have been against us. That's not grandstanding or preaching, it is a fact. Housing, healthcare, childcare, finance, education and all of these other systems have been proven to be inherently against the Black population. So, rather you had a life where blackness was at the forefront or you had a life where being called “one of the good ones” didn't bother you, you were resisted because of your color. The skin that you wear proudly has made it harder for you to succeed, and rather you focus on that or not, it did shape you and will continue to shape you and your interactions. I can choose to have a conversation about computers, but I can’t forget about the racist Russian kid in my high school computer class. I can’t forget that I have applied at over 200 computer programming jobs and had less than a handful of interviews. I can’t forget that I know that the computer technology field is filled with white men (and women). And I can imagine that they probably seemed like a”better fit” because of their profile photo and not their skills. That has shaped me. That has taken a dream I had and made it less desirable and maybe I hate it now. I love computers, but I don’t love the community I would have to be surrounded with. I did it once before. Automotive engineering is mostly white men and I don’t wish to be in those environments anymore. Those experiences made me feel less than and not as intelligent as I should be considered to be and they also made me feel lonely. Our art and expression will always be from a place of blackness and we are lucky to be able to shout about it now. Recently. There are so many stories about our lives that are impacted by who we are or what we look like. You can choose to not tell that part of the story, but it doesn't mean that it doesn't exist, or that you can ignore it. We all know that not dealing with something is not a good way to get it to go away. With Love