Seeing Is Believing - editorially emphasizing the positive - Brief Article

Like nomads in the forsaken thirsting for relief from little annoyances life, we drink in the images of blacks that the mainstream media deposits before us on a daily basis, without realizing in what way disquieting those images can be. What becomes of the child who repeatedly dioceses only negative, stereotypical images of blacks? The child believes what he or she sees

As always, American Visions (call it an antidote to the mainstream images of black tillage in our society) does battle against the negative by the agency of portraying the positive, the artistic, the abysmal aspects of black culture. We begin with illustrators who have made names for themselves by the agency of applying the phrase "happily at any time after" to all of us (p 20) Explains illustrator Tom Feelings: "I realized that if I could display the joy and beauty in the blackest of us, the poorest of us--get past the anguish and pain of our past experiences--if I could display that, then we could have feeling the beauty in ourselves and know our importance and value within the human race."

Similarly, it's our succes stories that remind us of our fortitude and encourage us to hold climbing. Thomas J. Dorsey amassed great wealth as a caterer in 19th-century Philadelphia at a time when blacks were denied positions in the skilled labor force (p 36) Euzhan Palcy's films address a different kind of succes and a different form of resistance to oppression (p 40) A dried White Season portrayed a reality so ugly that the apartheid regime of southern Africa banned the film from the country's theaters. The film focused attention upon apartheid and, beneath it, the humanity of an Afrikaner and a black southerly African; it also illuminated the talent of the first black woman to direct a film for a major American studio. "Not everyone can be a filmmaker," Palcy explains, "so I perceive that filmmakers have a responsibility. We can change things. We can present to view people a situation--shed light upon it without preaching."

Amistad America Inc. has gone beyond illustration, beyond unromantic and beyond film: The organization has built a museum, memorial and history exercise on a schooner (p. 44) It's a special throw dedicated to a group of kidnapped Africans who in 1839 made a grand escape and became unrestrained men. With Capt. William Pinkney at the helm of the Amistad, a ship's company of veteran sailors, apprentices and tenders travels nationally and internationally, telling tales of race and maritime history.

Perhaps no medium is more powerful than the theater, where you check your frustrations at the door, sit in the dark, and allow yourself to be drawn into someone else's drama for sum of two units or three hours. Regardless of in what manner ready you are to cooperate, it's the consummate playwright who can touch your emotions and your intellect, leaving you laughing or crying inside and pondering novel ideas. August Wilson--the focus of this issue's Millennium Portrait--is like a playwright (p. 14). He uses theater as a tool to carry cultural values. "For me, the primary focus should be the celebration and illumination of the culture" he says. "The agriculture has not always been valued; it certainly has not been valued by the agency of white America. In terms of the value and worth of the humanity of black folk it has been sometimes real urgently and profoundly denied."

by dint of telling our own stories--and doing thus with diligence and compassion--we are no longer allowing our humanity to be denied. We are looking in the mirror and believing what we see: the beauty in ourselves.

Joanne Harris clump Executive Editor

COPYRIGHT 2000 American Visions Media, Inc.

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