Introduced and curated by Tyler Hughes, a senior majoring in English and political science.
To study at a university is to study great works of literature in the pursuit of truth and knowledge. Language is how we converse and literature is a record of the great human conversation. The written word is timeless in its ability to convey the struggle of the human condition and we can look to it not just to think about the past, but also the future. It can be a vehicle for thoughts and ideas that can uniquely provide solutions to modern-day issues.
One such issue facing the world today is racism and racial inequality. For this forum, we asked five people – two professors, a post-doctoral fellow and two undergraduate students — associated with The University of Tulsa’s Department of English Language and Literature to answer this question: How do literature and language uniquely address and help us understand race, racism and race-based inequality?
Carlos D. Acosta-Ponce
Acosta-Ponce is a post-doctoral fellow in English literature and language. His research interests include contemporary American Literature, with a focus on comic books, popular culture and media.
Although literature does not necessarily focus on facts, it does give insight into cultural opinions and attitudes, and is, as I see it, a form of historical archive. In a world where racial tensions are at the forefront of the 24-hour news cycle, literature allows scholars, educators and students to engage with the structures of inequality and recognize how those in positions of privilege can, intentionally or inadvertently, contribute to the oppression of others.
From Phillis Wheatley’s pre-Revolutionary poetry in the mid-1700s to Cristina Henríquez’s The Book of Unknown Americans (2014), the literature from racial minorities can facilitate constructive discussions without degenerating into the 30-second soundbite debates that are prevalent in popular media. Moreover, students from racial minorities benefit greatly from seeing themselves represented in contemporary scholarship while students from the dominant culture benefit from being exposed to a more diverse literary canon.
Robert Jackson
Jackson is the James G. Watson Professor of English. His research interests include modern and contemporary American literary studies and African American studies.
Toni Morrison once said that “the very serious purpose of racism is distraction.” Racism, she said, “keeps you from doing your work.” And the “work” she had in mind was that of creation, and of living life itself.
African American literature, including the work of Morrison herself, comprises the most complete body of protest culture in the history of the United States and offers a powerful brief against racism and inequality from the inside of those experiences. Yet, as Morrison also insisted, the work of literature at its most profound need not, and usually does not, confine itself to narrow political insights. George Eliot’s Midlands, James Joyce’s Dublin, Franz Kafka’s Prague, Edward P. Jones’s D.C.: these settings teem with human variety and possibility, even as they reveal the very real constraints working against the individual. An anti-racist literary vision is a long game, not a slogan; it emerges from a mature respect for human communities in all their complexity and contradiction.
Maliha Maisha
Maisha is an undergraduate student majoring in English.
When African American writer Charles Waddell Chesnutt was rejected from a prestigious literary club due to his racial identity, he wrote a satirical short story called “Baxter’s Procrustes” in 1904 mocking the club’s hypocrisy. The story tells of a man who pranks a similar fictional club by having them publish a supposedly highbrow book, which, in fact, contains only blank pages. The binding, however, is beautiful. Having judged the book by its cover, the members of the fictional club assume its contents must be as sophisticated and engage in discourse about the book, none having opened it. All are eager to establish their reputations as the sort of people who read and understand great literature.
Stories such as “Baxter’s Procrustes” offer perspective into the way racial gatekeeping has robbed the world of the ingenuity of non-white creatives in favor of even the most superficial works of white authors, because one group is considered inherently sophisticated while the other is not given a chance. Do we have the same habit of favoring certain authors due to inner racial bias? Does our definition of great literature today continue to exclude authors of color? In Chesnutt’s case, the story made an impact on the Rowfant Club he had previously applied to join. They made him a member a few years later, and in 1966 they published their own limited edition of his story “Baxter’s Procrustes.”
Don James McLaughlin
McLaughlin is an assistant professor of English. His research interests include 19th-century American literature and LGBTQ+ historiography.
This June, I had the privilege of being a collaborator (contributing copyediting and layout assistance) on the first newsprint edition of the Black Wall Street Times, a digital media company named for Tulsa’s historic Greenwood District, founded by editor Nehemiah Frank in 2017. Organized by Frank and print creative Ryan Fitzgibbon, a 2020 participant in the Tulsa Remote Program, this newsprint edition coincided with Juneteenth, a holiday commemorating emancipation. Featuring work by Tulsa Artist Fellow Crystal Z. Campbell, poet Quraysh Ali Lansana, and the artist collective Black Moon Tulsa, the newspaper upheld a deep legacy of African American print culture in Oklahoma, traceable to the Oklahoma Guide, a monthly established in 1889, considered the first Black newspaper in the state.
As a new professor of nineteenth-century U.S. literature at TU, whose research has been influenced by the history of African American print culture, I took pride in becoming involved with this local venture. In The Practice of Citizenship: Black Politics and Print Culture in the Early United States, Cornell University English Professor Derrick Spires writes of antebellum, print-mediated advocacy that “Black citizenship theorizing developed over time as a collaborative, multimedia, polygeneric cultural and intellectual process for sustaining life.” In the national spotlight this summer, Tulsa shined as a city where this tradition persists, providing circulating loci for the making of community and the expression of ideas. It is my hope that cultures of print-based participation in civic life will continue to proliferate in Tulsa in the new decade ahead.
Angela Ray
Ray is an undergraduate student majoring in English.
Being an English major, I have been exposed to the scholarship and personal writings of authors in our country and overseas who have encountered or been affected by the issues of racism and race-based inequality. One of the many things that I love about the arts and humanities is how they foster opportunities for the life experiences of others to shape our individual perspectives. The old adage “knowledge is power” speaks to the purpose of studying English literature, which is to read and then apply that which we have learned to our own lives to improve the world we inhabit and better connect with those around us.
English literature can also give us the knowledge we need to challenge and speak out against injustices. In this tumultuous cultural moment in America, there is no better time to be exposed to different viewpoints, especially ones that challenge and confront the prevalence of racism. bell hooks, known for her numerous writings concerning the variedness of black women and black feminism, is a prime example of how literature and language help to address racism. In her book Teaching Community: A Pedagogy of Hope, hooks emphasizes the importance of loving communities in overcoming the issues of race inequality, gender differences, and class differences. She writes, “education as the practice of freedom affirms healthy self-esteem in students as it promotes their capacity to be aware and live consciously. It teaches them to reflect and act in ways that further self-actualization, rather than conformity to the status quo.” Through this quote, hooks cites the importance of education, which I think can be extended to the ability to read, write and think critically, as essential tools in building cohesive, loving communities. Education helps to open our minds to new ideas that cause us to envision something different than what we currently see.
The study of English is a pathway to a world of ideas that amaze, inspire and challenge. Discover your passion for exploring human diversity with TU’s welcoming community of English students and professors.