Poet Claudia Rankine’s ‘genius grant’ win is a victory for African Americans. But there’s something devastating approximately the context in which it was awardedBlack Americans are in challenging,critical times. We matter enough to sell out concert stadiums and win prestigious awards touting our intellectual prowess – as Claudia Rankine did this week, when she won the MacArthur genius grant. But we don’t matter enough to withhold us from being murdered by the police. There is something devastatingly perverse approximately that fact.
Claudia Rankine’s win is one of the best things to happen to black folks in 2016. Her award, or along with those of her fellow black recipients in this year’s MacArthur crop – the art historian and curator Kellie Jones,the film-maker Barry Jacobs-Jenkins and the sculptor Joyce Scott – signals a moment of nationwide reckoning. It is also a reminder that we cannot and will not – stand for the routine violence or the default dehumanization of black bodies. Related: I thought I was a gorgeous kid until I learned I was just 'pretty, for a black girl' | Rebecca Carroll Continue reading...
Source: theguardian.com