There is no single Black perspective. Nor is “The Black Experience” a concept that can be easily captured, branded, and packaged with a beautiful design bow. The essence of Blackness is simultaneously complex, deeply rooted, deeply felt, and above all else, human.

Critical theorist Walter Benjamin once distinguished between two types of storytellers: one is a keeper of the traditions; another is the one who has journeyed afar and tells stories of other places. But there is a third, and that is the exile. The exile, with a gaze that is obscured by distance and time, may not always be precise in terms of

White people love black art until it forces them to see or engage black pain beyond caricatures and stereotypes. To avoid confronting black pain, white audiences turn to white artists who appropriate black art without substance.