Opinion: Suppressing Black literature's cultural context is unjust

When people like Ron DeSantis have been swept up and discarded with the detritus of American fanaticism in the dustbin of history, Martin Luther King, Jr.’s Letter from Birmingham Jail will still be read and celebrated as one of the most important documents of Western civilization. Just as Socrates is remembered today, King will be honored as one of the greatest voices of all time.

And King will not be alone in the pantheon of great American voices. Anyone who is in any way aware of Black literature knows the stunning works of Toni Morrison, Richard Wright, James Baldwin, and so many more. Langston Hughes. Ernest J Gaines. Maya Angelou. Ishmael Reed. Gwendolyn Brooks. I taught AP English and American literature in public, parochial, rural, and inner-city schools for years and I know what I’m talking about. I have a PhD in literature from the University of Texas. I’m aware of what makes literature great, and these writers and others like them are great.

But these great writers are also the product of an American culture difficult to access if you are not Black; if you do not grow up “smothering in an airtight cage of poverty in the midst of an affluent society,” as King put it, or have not seen “vicious mobs lynch your mothers and fathers at will and drown your sisters and brothers at whim; when you have seen hate-filled policemen curse, kick and even kill your black brothers and sisters” (Letter from Birmingham Jail, April 12, 1963). Fifty years later, black men are still being murdered by policemen during otherwise trivial incidents, apparently as was Tyre Nichols in Memphis just weeks ago. Trying in some way to extract these writers from their culture and history, full as it is of slavery, humiliation, rape, and murder, demeans their work while also preventing American students from achieving the enlightenment their work gives. It is, in short, a double sin: it suppresses human intellectual growth, and it is a lie.

By razoring out the cultural contexts and centuries’-long effects of racism and slavery, an essentially false picture of American history and social behavior emerges. We cannot be a better nation if we do not acknowledge the truth of our behavior, but here we are still, after such a history of inhumane and immoral treatment of others, giving to liars and demagogues our public platforms to feed an untrue narrative about the American experiment, no matter how uncomfortable the truth may be.

King himself used his Letter to describe the difference between just and unjust laws. He noted that everything Hitler did was “legal,” just as DeSantis is engaging in “legal” suppression of human genius. But a legal law is not necessarily a just law. When 56 British colonists signed the Declaration of Independence, their act was “illegal.” Jesus performed an “illegal” act by curing a lame man on a Sabbath. Unjust laws must be broken for the sake of humanity itself, in other words. Suppressing the cultural context of Black literature is unjust. The context may be inconvenient and white children may be disturbed by the actions of their ancestors, but the cultural contexts of Black literature define the humanity that makes us who we are. All of us. Of every color.

We are not yet a perfect Union and our work is not done. The goal of our Constitution and the hope of our democracy is to move always toward perfection. Sometimes it looks, from my perspective as an old man, like we have a long way yet to go, but we cannot go toward truth if we allow our public discourse to be led by liars, bigots, and those like Ron DeSantis. Let’s do better.

Yearwood is a former educator of 30 years and contributor to The New York Times. He lives in Austin.

This article originally appeared on Austin American-Statesman: Opinion: Suppressing Black literature's cultural context is unjust