Sublime
An inspiration engine for ideas
creator of the Smithsonian Museum’s “Programs in Black Culture,” and one of the leading authorities on Black American music culture,
Leonard Brown • John Coltrane and Black America's Quest for Freedom: Spirituality and the Music
“Black culture traditionally hasn’t told you to be smart in school and to work hard, because your effort would benefit the slave-owner, not you.”
Winifred Gallagher • Rapt: Attention and the Focused Life
W. E. B. Du Bois
Clyde W. Ford • Think Black: A Memoir
He conducts an ongoing interrogation about what it all means. What’s black culture? What’s hip-hop? What are the responsibilities of a society and the people in it? And his inquiry isn’t bloodlessly academic, either; there’s something very consequential about his approach.
Ahmir "Questlove" Thompson • Mo' Meta Blues: The World According to Questlove
Paradoxically, many of these disciplinary policies are akin to the progressive vision espoused by eugenicists like Karl Pearson, justifying harsh discipline as a means to “close academic disparities.” Schooling becomes standardized testing without creative expression, arbitrary rules without room to breathe, Black Excellence without Black Joy.
Ruha Benjamin • Imagination: A Manifesto (A Norton Short)
Education must not simply teach work. It must teach life.
W.E.B. DuBois