What Black artists teach me about being a good ancestor
Dear Good Ancestor,
Last week the world celebrated the posthumous achievement of Chadwick Boseman winning a Golden Globe award for Best Actor in his incredible portrayal of the character Levee Green in the 2020 film Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom.
I am not one to follow award shows, however I was so elated when I heard this news. As a huge Chadwick Boseman fan I’m still not really over his passing. Though none of us can choose our time to go, it somehow still feels unfair that he’s already gone. In every role he played, he gave his best, and instilled in so many of us a sense of Black pride, dignity, and grace. He truly was a good ancestor, using the time he had with us here meaningfully. He has left us with a legacy of healing and liberation.
As Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom was his last movie, I have been delaying watching it.
As much as I have wanted to see it, I’ve also been trying to delay for as long as possible seeing him in his final role. I felt this way about reading Octavia Butler’s books in 2019 too. I put off reading her last book for as long as possible because I didn’t want to accept that I wouldn’t get to read any more of her incredible stories. But this weekend, after seeing Chadwick’s Golden Globe win, I felt ready to watch the movie.
First of all, don’t worry I won’t share any spoilers if you haven’t seen it. Secondly, do yourself a huge favour and see it if you can. It. Is. Powerful. And Chadwick, in his role as Levee, is a portrayal that will haunt me for years to come. But the thing that really, really stuck with me was Ma Rainey herself, as portrayed by one of my other favourite actors, Viola Davis.
Ma Rainey, also called The Mother of the Blues, was a powerful Black woman in a time when being Black and being a woman meant being seen as being nothing.
She was an artistic innovator whose musical style has been imitated (but never duplicated). She was a fashion icon. She was unapologetic in her sensuality and sexuality. She was queer. She was a storyteller of the Black female experience. She was a businesswoman, and she knew her worth. But she also understood that the white record labels only wanted her for her voice, and did not pay her what her white counterparts were paid, and did not treat her with the level of respect that she deserved.
Which is why it was so powerful seeing her demand that respect.
Not bowing in subservience to the powers that be. Not compromising her artistry to please the masses or the ‘massas’. Not making herself small or apologising for her existence, but standing tall, from the inside out, and letting the world know that she knew exactly who she was, what she wanted, and what she deserved. And not leaving till she got it.
While Levee will stay with me as a sorrowful reminder of the violence of white supremacy, Ma Rainey will stay with me as an instructive reminder of the power of Black women. The power of being a Black woman. And how important that was, and continues to be, in a world that still sees being Black and being a woman as being seen as being nothing.
It’s easy to think that that was a long time ago, and being a Black woman today is different.
Especially as we see so many Black women in positions of fame, celebrity, leadership, and power. But the majority of Black women don’t have access to those things. And having access does not mean that one is protected from harm.
Just a few days ago, the US’s first youth poet laureate Amanda Gorman, who shot to global fame seemingly overnight after performing her poem The Hill We Climb at the 2021 inauguration, tweeted that she had been racially profiled while walking home.
In her own words:
"A security guard tailed me on my walk home tonight. He demanded if I lived there because 'you look suspicious.' I showed my keys & buzzed myself into my building. He left, no apology. This is the reality of black girls: One day you’re called an icon, the next day, a threat."
She continued:
“In a sense, he was right. I AM A THREAT: a threat to injustice, to inequality, to ignorance. Anyone who speaks the truth and walks with hope is an obvious and fatal danger to the powers that be.”
Ma Rainey and Amanda Gorman live a century apart.
They are both Black women. Both powerful artists and innovators who use their voices to tell the truth, inspire healing, and create liberation. Both powerful beings who are role models in the ways that they live their lives and do their work. Both successful in their time. Both good ancestors who will be remembered for lifetimes to come. And both dealing with same anti-Black, misogynistic, white supremacist BS. Fame and success did not erase any of that.
Which is to say that fighting white supremacy is not about changing the way that the world sees Black women, and Black, Indigenous, People of Colour (BIPOC).
Fighting white supremacy, and the practice of antiracism, is about people with white privilege changing the ways they see themselves.
As superior. As better than. As the arbiters of what is right, and true, and good, and worthy. As the only ones entitled to both protection and possession. As not only the standard of what it means to be ‘normal’, but also the heights of what the rest of us should aspire to become.
As if there is a way to become white.
As if that’s what we would want if it were possible.
As if being white was a biological fact, rather than a social construct.
As if the social construct of whiteness bestows those who have it with a sense of greater humanity.
As if humanity is something that can be given or earned, rather than something that just is by our very being.
Chadwick Boseman. Levee Green. Viola Davis. Ma Rainey. Amanda Gorman. Black people, real and fictional, who are doing / have done their very best to live with dignity in a world not made for their dignity.
To me they are reflections of the BIPOC I know.
The BIPOC I have interviewed on Good Ancestor Podcast. The BIPOC I read about in my favourite books (like The Prophets!). And the BIPOC everywhere who are doing their best everyday to survive and thrive, and love themselves, and love each other, despite what white supremacy says and does.
Chadwick Boseman was really intentional with the roles he chose as an actor. He chose roles real and fictional that conveyed the complexity and humanity of Black people. Viola Davis was intentional about starting her production company JuVee productions with her husband because she was tired of seeing movies that did not portray the humanity of people of colour. Amanda Gorman is an unapologetically Black woman who before every performance, recites the following affirmation: "I am the daughter of Black writers, who are descended from Freedom Fighters, who broke their chains and changed the world. They call me." Ma Rainey was a musical genius and a powerhouse of a Black woman who uplifted herself and uplifted her people.
Good Ancestors.
Good Black ancestors who model, in their mess and their magic, that it is not upon them to bend and fold themselves into the confining and oppressive boxes of white supremacy in order to be given a morsel of dignity. Their dignity is theirs by the fact of their mere being.
Rather, the burden belongs to those who believe in and protect the lie of their superiority.
To break those boxes. To transform their minds. To give up privilege. To fight oppression. To share power.
To learn to better live within their own humanity. So that they can see and honour the beautiful, complex, and sacred humanity that already exists within others.
As a Black woman, when I watch the portrayals and speeches of the Black artists I have mentioned in this letter, I am moved deeply.
I am reminded to stand tall. To root deep. To know who I am. To hold my worth without self-doubt. And to try my best to let my life speak the love that I have for Black people.