Out of the Sun: On Art, Race, and History by Esi Edugyan

Author:Esi Edugyan [Edugyan, Esi]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: art, Criticism & Theory, Social Science, Discrimination, Black Studies (Global)
ISBN: 9781487010508
Google: dytWzgEACAAJ
Publisher: House of Anansi Press
Published: 2021-09-28T23:50:47.884747+00:00

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Does the good that Doležal and Krug did change how we might view them? It is undeniable that both women made valuable contributions to the Black community. In her roles as president of the NAACP and head of the city’s police oversight commission, Doležal forced complacent Spokane officials to confront the passive racism and racial violence that mark their city. Krug’s 2018 book, Fugitive Modernities, is an examination of colonialism in the seventeenth century, looking specifically at Kisama, a region in present-day Angola that fended off enslavement by the Portuguese. By all accounts the book is exemplary and ground-breaking, and it established Krug as a rising star in African American scholarship. Both women shed light on the unseen, and insisted hidden histories be reckoned with.

That level of advocacy on behalf of others is a rarity — and sorely needed. The work of equality is the labour not of the few but the many, including those who have benefited and continue to benefit the most from an unequal system. Change that must take place on a broad social scale must be just that — broadly social. Everyone has their part to play. But it is not for advocates to occupy spaces intended for the very people they are fighting for.

Having watched in real time as the stories of Doležal’s and Krug’s public shaming played out, I was left wondering: Why did they do this? They had risked so much. How difficult must it be to live every day with the pressures of possible discovery, knowing that at any moment the life you have elaborately built for yourself can be openly destroyed?

While historically crossing racial lines has, almost exclusively and for obvious reasons, been from a powerless group to a powerful one, today it seems the opposite can happen. And one of the most interesting things about Doležal’s and Krug’s passing is that they were criticized not for relinquishing their privileges but for taking privileges away from marginalized groups. Seen in that light, theirs is a movement not away from power but again towards it — not power in the context of our larger social hierarchies, but power on the margins. For both women, this took the form of activism in the Black community and prestigious university posts reserved for people of colour. As white women, they seemed to live out their power more passively, as privilege. Only as Black women did they don their armour for war.

It seems, then, that part of their crossing the racial divide was to acquire something. Is it ever any different? Does anyone ever “pass” without such self-interest?

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