The Gaps In the Stacks

In the discourse on double-consciousness, I feel that what often gets foregrounded is the phenomenology of Blackness, the experience of physically navigating within this harrowing spectrum of White supremacy.  Indeed, this splitting of cells/selves is a large and vast canvas of inquiry, one in which much of the (relative) minutiae gets relegated to the back of the endless list of the catalogue of impropriaties and inequities that people of color find themselves mired in within daily existence.  

Of that (relative) minutiae is that of the continuum of historical narrative, or rather the degree to which people of color must not only learn the histories we are forcibly taught, but must also discern and interpret the gaps in those chronicles, thus becoming de facto historians by virtue of survival (which in itself continues to be living proof of the fallacy of documented histories).

Within popular culture and mass media, this is us living out two separate truths, the doubling of points of reference: what they see (mandatory) and what we see (reality).  This thing that marks us as other is also one of the most beautiful things about us. It is the thing that requires us to be twice as good, for we must hold twice as much in order to be our true selves.  It sometimes breaks us and/or makes us stronger; sometimes tricks us into thinking we must/can choose; always keeps us floating within a banality that is always anything but.

-Melanie Stevens

wtf is blankman? // by maximiliano

for our part of self at cooley gallery, we showed a video and curated a truth library. the truth library is made up of books, articles, movies, and albums chosen by melanie and i that speak to us on a variety of levels. for example i put in the film to sir, with love with sidney poitier, a movie i remember watching with my dad, sidney poitier is one of his favorite actors. or the album the miseducation of lauryn hill which is seminal in hip-hop lore.

then there was blankman. blankman was yet another experience pulled from my early youth in my grannye’s basement in dayton, ohio. i would watch this with my brother, we would love things involving brothers like blankman, where the two main characters lived together. damon wayans plays blankman, a nerdy inventor, and david alan grier plays his brother.

an often forgotten entry in the black superhero genre.