The intro to the NYT article 

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. The 60 small panel paintings illustrating the movement of black Southerners to the North had affected me tremendously. The formal beauty of the work and the message of black agency felt like an oasis of pride and inspiration in a world of stop and frisks, police killings of black men and women, and the general denigration of “black culture.”

Then, in 2018, there was “Black Panther,” the first major superhero movie with an African protagonist; Beyoncé’s Coachella performance, during which she presented over a century of black musical traditions; and, performing as Childish Gambino, Donald Glover’s violent, darkly comic video, “This Is America.” These works seemed to amount to encyclopedias of black cultural touchstones, resources of strength in racially fraught times.

I began to wonder: What particular pieces of music, film, sculpture, dance or other artistic expression do some of today’s best and brightest black creators find important? What aspects of the kaleidoscopic collective black soul as expressed in the arts would they want to emphasize and remember 25 or 50 years from now? Should such a list include Public Enemy’s 1990 album “Fear of a Black Planet”? The “Wade in the Water” segment of Alvin Ailey’s “Revelations”?

That’s a lot to bite off when talking about centuries of global black artistic expression, but what about narrowing it to black arts created over these first two decades of the 21st century? Shifts in politics, performance and protest have all altered our culture in a way not seen in years. The beauty of this exercise in reflection is not only to celebrate black cultural contributions to art but also record a pivotal time for our country — indeed the world. It’s a starting place for further exploration for my 18-month-old granddaughter and many future generations after hers.

To play on the words, but not the meaning, of John Milton’s “Paradise Lost”: Such a survey would be the latest hopeful sally to make darkness not just visible, but aspirational. Works that bear witness to what black people went through and still endure; works that reveal past and continuing struggles and successes.

Nothing divisive. A celebration. You don't get it.
I don't care that you are bored.