For Future Generations, It’s Time to Reflect on Black Art

Shifts in politics, performance and protest have all altered our culture in a way not seen in years. I grew up in Southern California neighborhoods that were overwhelmingly white — white schools, white teachers, white curriculum. I remember visiting the Los Angeles County Museum of Art where a cast of Auguste Rodin’s monumental sculpture of Balzac towered over me. My friends and I immersed ourselves in the works of white authors, and I can still recite vast sections of T.

S. Eliot’s “The Hollow Men,” William Butler Yeats’s “The Second Coming,” and, if I squeeze my eyes real tight, the final luxurious paragraphs of “The Dead,” James Joyce’s masterful short story. But I am black — African-American, if you will — and unambiguously of African heritage. Thanks to my father, the rhythms and melodies of Charlie Parker, Dizzy Gillespie, Miles Davis and John Coltrane flowed through our household during my childhood.

Yet, as an adolescent, Led Zeppelin, Cream and the Who were favored by my friends and me. (My enthusiasm for bluesmen such as Sonny Terry, Brownie McGhee, Howlin’ Wolf and Muddy Waters was rooted in my rock ’n’ roll fandom. ) In short, I felt only incidentally “black,” despite being harassed by the local police, who frequently stopped me as I walked home from school or rode my bike to the grocery store. That feeling slowly changed, of course, as I became an adult.

But I didn’t feel I became fully black until the birth of my first child. His arrival brought into focus the usual parental responsibilities of providing food, shelter and moral support. But I also felt a special duty to imbue my son — and later my daughter — with a sense of what it means to be of African heritage in America.

“Not “the talk” about navigating encounters with the police.”

I felt the need to address meta-questions pertaining to the frame of mind that would help my children prosper in the world, not only survive. So, I wrote a cookbook whose recipes from the African diaspora were anchored by stories from the black cooks who contributed them, as well as the wit and wisdom from black cultures around the world and across time. Then came a series of what I call “affirmative action” books — collections of pithy proverbs and quotes from prominent historical and contemporary black people meant to inspire the desire to implement concrete positive action. More recently, my thoughts turned to internalizing black culture in a more formal way, especially after seeing Jacob Lawrence’s “The Migration Series” at the Museum of Modern Art in 2015.