IMAGINATIVE LITERATURE AND RACE RELATIONS

In: Race: the journal of the Institute of Race Relations, Heft 3, S. 336-339

Abstract

It is noted that the 'committee approach to soc problemsolving' tends to exclude artists & writers from such committees. Yet both art & writing are seen as capable of making an important contribution to an individual's racial & soc identity. The present black cultural revolution in the US stresses the primacy of black consciousness. Literature can be used both as a means of expressing racial identity & as a means of expressing a more personal identity. In broadening the conception of reality, art has a natural tendency to make people more aware of other life styles & more tolerant of diversity. In literature one tends to understand first & judge later. It is in the area of race relations that the skills & perceptions which are developed & sharpened by the study of imaginative literature can come into full play. But whatever racial insights can be gained from such involvement must always be regarded in the context of a total literary experience-racial understanding being only a component of aa larger psychol'al awareness. The scope of the black literature curriculum, whether focusing on African, West Indian, or Amer black literature, should include not only imaginative literature written in the traditional genres -the novel, the short story, poetry, & the drama-but should also include `non-literary' forms such as the folktale, which has so influenced the style & content of more formal black literary expression, or the blues. The emphasis is on works of the imagination; the appeal is to the imagination. Somehow the gap between the races must be bridged. It will take an extraordinary effort on the part of the imagination of people everywhere. M. Maxfield.