The Compass and the Map: Navigating Academia, Entertainment, and Culture

Eric J. Henderson (speaking) with Courtney Bryan, John McCluskey, Jr., and Erica R. Edwards

Photograph by A. H. Jerriod Avant © 2014

In this short history of the United States, 2014 marking the 50th anniversary of the country as a nominal full democracy according to definitive civil rights legislation, the volume of untold stories is what concerns me.

What I am calling “stories” includes fiction, nonfiction, poetry, research, etc.—all the things that make up the record, whether passed on verbally, by visual art, music, or writing. Stories.

What I knew, in principle, was made vividly real at the Callaloo Conference: there are many people working diligently to deliver these untold stories, both of the past and the present. I met the people whose spirit and joy of sharing did not show any dirt from the gritty work in the trenches, long hours, and teeth-pulling that it must have taken to produce the bodies of work offered by these world-leading writers, thinkers, and curators.

My reflection on the conference starts here and is summed up in two items: a compass and a map.

Stories make up these two elements in one, and they guide policy and culture—culture as the “national mood.” The myth of the rational consumer, policymaker, and citizen has long been exposed, especially since WWII. We are informed by rational discourse and debate, but any click on the television or small mobile screens today will show that as mostly fancy clothes that dress up the alarmingly static nature of progress. Grab a stack of annual reports and turn to the back for the photos of the board of directors membership. It will look much like 1950.

Entertainment, for better and for worse in this intensely visual age, drives policy but without any footnotes in policy discussion. The maelstrom from The Interview would be the roughest example of the phenomenon going public, but going back to DW Griffith and walking forward to the perpetual call for blacks to have access beyond “black” roles in the arts and business or to the lack of representation in major film, gaming (have we even run out of black ink?), and other media—on the assumption of some positive social impact—we have to say that the arts comprise the unspoken rudder. Not a single government has ever been confused on this point, agitprop being the most base form of acknowledgement.

In that context, a tiny, wayward tick of degrees on the compass can represent a course that is miles away from any egalitarian objectives. We do have a map, but one with too many buried, potential landmarks (try Ira Aldridge.) That fact has us leaning on the same Civil Rights era superheroes and their impact on today’s institutions. But, we have more than King and Baldwin. They told us that themselves. There are superheroes passed over and superheroes in the making.

At the Callaloo Conference, it became viscerally clear: we have to tell the stories. It was a stunning moment to hear Barbara Chase-Riboud in her own words.

For the stories to be told, however, there must be a closer, high-volume connection between the producers of content and media channels beyond traditional audiences for those works. Stories must land in multi-dimensional formats appropriate for the channels. It should not be strange to convert a research document into a screenplay, a commercial, a game. Accordingly, we need shepherds at the intersections. A poet is concentrated on being a poet. The discipline must remain pure but the output should go beyond the poet’s world.

The potential is mind-blowing. I’m reminded of Newton’s thought recorded in memoirs just before his death: “I was like a boy playing on the sea-shore, and diverting myself now and then finding a smoother pebble or a prettier shell than ordinary, whilst the great ocean of truth lay all undiscovered before me.”

Personally, I feel that. My version is that of a boy playing in a sunny meadow...