Topics: Diversity, Langston Hughes, Martin Luther King, Speculative Fiction
Of late, I have been thinking of stories and diverted eyes. This is an encore as I've used a form of the title before in a similar post.
We've told stories for our own entertainment and for the dispensation of knowledge of our culture. We've told stories in poetry, prose and fiction: classical and science fiction. We've told stories as many people - the sea of humanity that we all belong to - have told stories in the past: to preserve histories; to teach lessons; to make people love us as us; more importantly, to uplift and love ourselves.
The physics and science posts will occur at their usual time: 7:00 AM EST; 4:00 AM PST. I actually have enough STEM material for February 2016! It will be hard and tempting to not publish it before then.
The posts for the month will be on the Diaspora's contributions to STEM as well as speculative fiction, A.K.A. science fiction. I will start with someone you may or may not know and intersperse that person with persons you also may or may not know. The Internet has freed many to not seek the approval of mainstream publishers, though many who started their literary journey as independent have; some stayed entrepreneurs and prefer it. As I said, I've been thinking about stories, self-images and stereotype threat.
Carter G. Woodson had a whole other purpose for what was then known as Negro History Week, then Negro History Month, now African American/Black History Month:
"If you can control a man's thinking you do not have to worry about his action. When you determine what a man shall think you do not have to concern yourself about what he will do. If you make a man feel that he is inferior, you do not have to compel him to accept an inferior status, for he will seek it himself. If you make a man think that he is justly an outcast, you do not have to order him to the back door. He will go without being told; and if there is no back door, his very nature will demand one."
Dr. Carter G. Woodson, The MIS-Education of the Negro
I prepared this post 20 January and scheduled it to appear on 1 February. All the other posts regarding the month were so pre-planned in a similar fashion. It allows me to then read physics/STEM posts; keep up with my own studies and speak on hopefully up-to-date topics as I celebrate the month. It is also frankly, a pacing that keeps me from getting too exhausted.
For those that must believe in Bigfoot, fairies, pixie dust, racism, unicorns and xenophobia, please feel free to carry on personal delusions. You are free to divert your eyes elsewhere this month: I won't be talking to you, straightening your backs or changing your minds. I will be telling of triumphs and stories in science and modern myth for the interested, the intelligent, and those that want to stretch their knowledge of their fellow humanity, but more particularly as a group: the young, our collective futures in this country and world.
Just as (Dr. King and Langston both say below), we are free...within ourselves to straighten our own.
"Change does not roll in on the wheels of inevitability, but comes through continuous struggle. And so we must straighten our backs and work for our freedom. A man can't ride you unless your back is bent."
Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr - and, a seldom-quoted riff (embed) below...
Let the blare of Negro jazz bands and the bellowing voice of Bessie Smith singing the Blues penetrate the closed ears of the colored near intellectuals until they listen and perhaps understand. Let Paul Robeson singing "Water Boy," and Rudolph Fisher writing about the streets of Harlem, and Jean Toomer holding the heart of Georgia in his hands, and Aaron Douglas's drawing strange black fantasies cause the smug Negro middle class to turn from their white, respectable, ordinary books and papers to catch a glimmer of their own beauty. We younger Negro artists who create now intend to express our individual dark-skinned selves without fear or shame. If white people are pleased we are glad. If they are not, it doesn't matter. We know we are beautiful. And ugly too. The tom-tom cries and the tom-tom laughs. If colored people are pleased we are glad. If they are not, their displeasure doesn't matter either. We build our temples for tomorrow, strong as we know how, and we stand on top of the mountain, free within ourselves.
"The Negro Artist and the Racial Mountain," Langston Hughes, The Nation, 1926
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