Report on Event

THE GROUND TOGETHER II: ASSESSING THE STATE OF BLACK ARTS FOR 2000 AND BEYOND: AN INTERDISCIPLINARY CONFERENCE

Saturday, March 4th 2000

i'm just back from washington, d.c. making a presentation at the ground together 2 conference at howard university. anyone who knows me, knows that i am not the academic type. as they say in recovery workshops, i have issues with the ways of higher education. that is my challenge and i struggle to overcome that because i recognize we need each and everyone to forward our struggle. nevertheless, sometimes i fail and this weekend was one such failure.

i went to the opening session and heard the first keynote speaker, mrs. dorothy gilliam, director of young journalist program for the washington post. she spoke on the "art of writing." it struck me as an introduction to a journalism seminar, good for what it was but not a visionary or even critical statement about the art and future direction of black writing. and as i looked over the rest of the program it became startling clear to me that for the most part these were academic oriented papers and presentations. my feet started itching.

back in the late sixties & seventies we struggled mightly to institute black studies, to transform black colleges. thirty or so years later, it's obvious that the rock has rolled back down the hill, because for all practical purposes academe has turned in on itself and is now replicating the mainstream approach of microscoping, i.e. looking at the details of a given event, process, cultural product and explicating it using the language and theories currently happening in mainstream study. gone is the struggle, the fire to challenge and change the status quo. or at least that's my perception.

at the same time, it is abundantly clear to me that there is a core of committed and serious professionals at the college level who very much want to make some serious conributions. thus, you have a dr. sandra shannon who did everything humanly possible to develop this conference into a major dialogue about the state of black arts. unfortunately, the overwhelming majority of the participants were academics, who were at best knowlegable critics. there were not that many practictioners there, not that many black artists who actually create the art. i believe if there is to be a meaningful dialogue we need both practictioners and critics to dialogue. but, again, this shortcoming was undoubtedly due to the fact that there were limited resources to put this one on.

believe it or not, the black arts is not a sexy topic on today's college campus be the campus "historically black" or otherwise. sure there are students who might attend and there are a number of faculty who have a deep interest, but the upper echelons of faculty and adminsitration would just as soon do another harlem renaissance program, if we "must" have a "black arts" program. all of which is to say, i felt and feel uncomfortable reporting on the conference.

why "uncomfortable"? because people like dr. shannon deserve our full support. they are in the minority on these campuses. they battle against all kinds of odds, many of the struggles they wage to put these types of programs together are struggles we on the outside can not even begin to guess at. in cases like this, i tend not to say anything rather than say something negative. i wish i could report that i enjoyed the program, that i heard insightful and visionary presentations, that the program was the bomb. but, that's not what happened.

after, the opening keynote. we went across the hall to prepare for our panel. i had sent in a proposal to convene a panel on using the internet to promote black literature. there is a small group of us who have begun to meet and exchange emails around the questioning of how to promote black literature by using the internet--you'll be hearing more about this in a minute. in any case, i knew there were two folk in the d.c. area i could pull on, dr. askhari hodari who moderates de griot space, an online black writers workshop, and jiton davidson who publishes fyah.com, an online black literary publication. also, i called on troy johnson the founder of aalbc.com, an online source of info about black authors and book. troy and his wife gaby agreed to drive down from new york. i flew in from new orleans. and the four of us were the panel.

we were in the newly remolded, hi-tech equipped auditorium in the blackburn center. this is a "smart room" meaning it is wired for computers and the use of state of the art audio-visuals. we were told that we were the first to use the auditorium. our presentation was supported by audio-visuals projected on a movie-sized screen. the way the conference was organized we were one of three concurrent sessions. i estimate there were about 75 people in attendance at the conference and we had 30 to 35 people at our presentation. most of those present were either academics or friends, family and supporters. i was the panel moderator and we each spoke for ten minutes about our online projects. the set-up allowed us to go online and project websites or whatever on a large screen in the auditorium. there was also a smaller touch screen next to the lecturn. it worked just like a touch screen on the computer. the use of this hi-tech equipment ranged from troy who surfed through aalbc.com including his audio stream of poets reading from their work, to my standing at the lecture and passing out a handout (which means i made no use whatsoever of the equipment).

after our brief presentations we did q&a. after the presentation was over we received a number of positive responses about the effectiveness of our presentation. all in all, i think we did well. one question that came up was how to get this information to people who don't have computers. i think that is part of our job--to inspire our people to become more involved in using computer and internet technology. but more on that later.

i want to thank askhari, jiton and troy for volunteering their time and assuming the full expense of attending and participating in the conference. i am writing this report partially to raise the issue of how do we become involved with and transform what does exist. rather than turn our backs on programs that we don't think are on point (for whatever reason), how do we become involved and help take those programs to another level. i'm still working on that one.

stay strong/be bold
a luta continua
kalamu