Most
individuals, apart from the special scholars of a highly educated discourse,
can be accused of taking the term ‘race’ in its most literal sense. This very
truth is exactly what hinders a population from progressing towards a more
racial equality in society, particularly in the arena of literature. Though a
broad and generic statement, what Gates argues for is new approach to racial
theory in efforts to combat this ignorance. In a perfect coincidence, I have
just completed another reading from Gates called “Talking Black” in my Critical
Issues in Literary Studies course where we have been unpacking ethnicity and
race theory. I have come to find that this essay provides a fresh perspective
on race as an action, just as Burke combines language with action.
As we know,
Burke introduces “language as an aspect of action” (44), empowering language as
an agent for change. While I will not dive into agency as most of my blogs and
short critical discussions have, it is still important to acknowledge the great
ability that language has for action. Most obviously, Burke asserts his notion
that language constructs realities.
Gates’ focus in
“Talking Black” innately follows this very same methodology that language
“reflects”, “selects”, and “deflects” reality. Being that Gates is an advocate
for black literature, his arguments centered around how language is the
catalyst for racial upheaval. Black writers are oppressed into their exclusively
black culture and discourse for two reasons: they do not act outside of it, and
whites do not assimilate into it. He argues that whites cannot understand black
literature because they do not understand blacks’ reality. The language in
which blacks produce literature or art is the only way for them to represent
their reality. Gates asserts that in order for blacks to establish their footing
in a mixed culture discourse, they must use their language as the affect for
change. In this sense, race is a terministic screen.
-Samantha Stamps
I had much of the same response to Gates' text as you did. Gates is trying to explain that by obvious ignorance the separation, particularly in literature, of races grew from a refusal to assimilate and include. "Once the concept of value became encased in the belief in a canon of texts whose authors purportedly shared a common culture, inherited from both the Greco-Roman and Judeo-Christian traditions, there was no need to speak of matters of race, since the race of the authors was "the same,""(Gates 4). By deflecting language, the more dominant culture of a time, used rhetoric and literature to prohibit the minority from rising to statuses of power. This goes to show, literature and the arts are what move societies forward. They are the grading rubric for the level of progression a culture makes.
ReplyDelete-Valerie Gardner