A college friend who’s now a middle school principal suggested that I use the black and white project as the basis of an assembly program for middle and high school students.

I’ve been thinking about that a lot lately, since children seem to have a strong gut response to the photos and a lot to say about them. Also, instead of blogging about the philosophical and political implications of the project, I'd much prefer to bring it out into the world and get people -- especially kids -- talking and participating in it.

Debby Pollack, the best art teach I’ve ever met, who used to teach my kids at Project Learn and then tried teaching in the Philadelphia public school system, told me a story about her students’ reactions to the project that finally propelled me to action.

Debby’s story: She put up a calendar of the black and white project in the art room in the nearly all-black school where she was teaching. It was over the sink where the kids washed their hands, which was towards the back of the room, not in a particularly prominent spot. Soon she noticed that kids were gravitating towards that corner of the room and looking through the calendar. Then kids started wandering into the art room and asking where “that calendar” was. One day she saw one of the kids flipping through the calendar and heard him say: “We need more white kids in this school!”

I want to talk to that kid and lots of other kids about how they view race in their school, community, and in lives in general.

My action: I sent a proposal to Kickstarter.com to try to get funding for putting together an assembly program and also to get the word out about the black and white project and my plans for it.

Hopefully, I'll have more updates to blog about soon.

If you haven't already, view the Black and White Project video on YouTube.

Beyond the artistic vision and aspirations of the black and white project, by marrying it to Obama’s race speech, I’m also placing it in the context of a political discussion, which I think is extremely important, especially as we approach another election with Obama as a candidate.

I was ecstatic about him the first time around. I will most definitely vote for him again and urge everyone who cares about this country to do the same.

My question related to this project is: Have the policies of Obama’s administration “reflected the spirit” he so beautifully describes in his speech? The spirit of being our brothers’ and sisters’ keepers and doing unto others as we would have them do unto us?

In terms of intentions, I believe that Obama would truly like to champion policies that decrease racial inequalities and tear down racial barriers. In practice, however, I’m not sure he’s been focused enough on actually championing those policies.

A friend of mine who comes from a wealthy black family complained to me recently that Obama hasn’t pushed a single policy “specifically aimed at helping black people” because he’s too worried about being a President of blacks and whites “equally.”

I told her I thought it was hard to single out policies as helping just white or just black people, and that policies to help working class people and to fight poverty might be the closest to “helping black people.”

“That’s racist!” she said. “Not all black people are poor or working class!”

Here's my response to that claim, which I hear a lot from both black and white people: Of course not all black people are poor and not all white people are rich. But for historical reasons well outlined in Obama’s speech, there is a disproportionate number of black people who are less educated and less well off than the white people in this country. Is it because something is inherently wrong with black people? Of course not. Something’s wrong with our society that both overtly and covertly continues to oppress people of color and deny them the equal opportunities they’re supposed to enjoy.

A New York Times Op Ed piece last month, entitled "On Race, the Silence Is Bipartisan," described the grim impact of the recession on all Americans in general, and on Americans of color in particular. The gaps are horrifying. Here's an excerpt from the piece, written by Desmond S. King and Rogers M. Smith:

"In July, the unemployment rate was 8.2 percent for whites, but 16.8 percent for blacks and 11.3 percent for Latinos. The Pew Research Center estimates that in 2009, the median household net worth was $5,677 for blacks, $6,325 for Hispanics and $113,149 for whites — down from $12,124, $18,539 and $134,992, respectively, in 2005.

All groups have suffered from high unemployment, the mortgage meltdown and soaring health care costs, but African-Americans and Hispanics started far behind and continue to fall behind. In 2009, 35 percent of black households and 31 percent of Latino households had zero or negative wealth, compared with 15 percent of white households."

Which is why I continue to maintain that policies aimed at social justice are policies that will help black people in addition, of course, to all disenfranchised people of all colors in this country. And I don’t think Obama has championed such policies nearly enough. 

Read the full New York Times Op Ed piece "On Race, the Silence Is Bipartisan"

Three years ago, when Obama was running for President, lots of people thought my black and white photo project would be perfect for his campaign. I even fantasized about having him participate in the project with a white presidential candidate (Hillary? Someone on the Republican side?), maybe with him in a white top hat and the white candidate in a black one. Then he gave his famous speech on race, in April 2008, in response to criticism leveled at his pastor, Reverend Jeremiah Wright.

I think it’s a great speech. It’s a powerful demonstration not just of Obama’s fantastic oratory talents, but also of his willingness to tackle difficult issues head-on, and to call things as he sees them. And it goes well with my project.

View black and white project video with excerpts from Obama's speech

But not everyone sees the speech the way I do. In the New York Times recently, I read a review of a book by Harvard Law Professor Randall Kennedy, called The Persistence of the Color Line: Racial Politics and the Obama Presidency. Although I haven’t read the book yet, I was struck by Kennedy’s criticism of Obama’s race speech, as presented by the reviewer:

The messianic glow that surrounded Obama’s candidacy — Kennedy and others call it “Obamamania” — precluded closer scrutiny of his pronouncements, especially those having to do with race. The widely held notion that the now-famous race speech, “A More Perfect Union,” ranked with the Gettysburg Address or “I Have a Dream” strikes Kennedy as delusional. The speech, he writes, was little more than a carefully calibrated attempt to defuse the public relations crisis precipitated by the Wright affair. Far from frank, it understated the extent of the country’s racial divisions and sought to blame blacks and whites equally for them, when in fact, Kennedy writes, “black America and white America are not equally culpable. White America enslaved and Jim Crowed black America (not the other way around).” The speech was in keeping with the candidate’s wildly successful race strategy, which involved making white voters feel better about themselves whenever possible.

Quite a critique! I agree that the speech was brilliantly crafted to defuse the Rev. Wright p.r. crisis. However, I disagree that the speech blames blacks and whites equally for our racial divisions. It does not let either side off the hook in terms of  taking responsibility for trying to heal those divisions. But attributing some responsibility to both black and white communities for trying to heal the divisions is not equivalent to ascribing equal blame to both sides for creating those divisions.

Reading the entire speech, it’s very clear to me that Obama is presenting the racial division issue from the point of view of a black person who understands and even identifies with Reverend Wright’s passionate, righteous anger, although he disagrees with some of the more extreme statements made in the heat of that passion. Obama also spends a large part of the speech discussing how the black community has come to be what it is today – mostly as a legacy of slavery and racial discrimination, for which whites are entirely to blame.

Obama also asks both communities to work on understanding where the other is coming from. Arguably, it’s not fair to ask both sides to work toward “a more perfect union” when the sorry state of that union was caused by historical atrocities, prejudice and discrimination practiced by just one of the sides. I agree that white people should take on much more responsibility than many of us have up to now for healing racial rifts and ensuring social justice in this country. Maybe Obama should have highlighted that even more. But I do agree that healing racial wounds will take efforts from both sides.

Am I just a deluded white person who was lulled into feeling better about myself by Obama’s speech? I hope not! To me, the speech is a call to talk about, think about, and address racial issues as openly as Obama does. It's also a call to action – to pay attention to all types of injustice in our society and work to overcome them. 

Does focusing on injustices that are not uniquely perpetrated against blacks, but that disproportionately affect the black community (e.g., educational and socioeconomic disparities) serve to lull whites into complacency about egregious racial injustices? You could argue that.

But I believe that the vision Obama expresses in his speech, of both black and white communities striving toward a more perfect union, is like the idealistic vision in my black and white project: It’s not a representation of how things are, it’s a description of how we wish things could be – all of us together striving toward social justice for all.

Is it a “realistic” vision? Maybe not at this point in our history when, for example, as Obama himself describes:

“A lack of economic opportunity among black men, and the shame and frustration that came from not being able to provide for one's family, contributed to the erosion of black families ... And the lack of basic services in so many urban black neighborhoods - parks for kids to play in, police walking the beat, regular garbage pick-up and building code enforcement - all helped create a cycle of violence, blight and neglect that continue to haunt us.”

But I believe, like Obama, that it’s a vision worth striving toward.

Read a transcript of Obama’s race speech

Read the review of The Persistence of the Color Line

So far I’ve had overwhelmingly positive responses to the black and white photo project from participants and from people who have seen the photographs.

Haven't seen it yet? Watch the black and white project video.

However, one of my very best friends who’s a professor of English and who specializes in African American history and literature, doesn’t like the project. She says it “reifies the racial binary.” (HUH?)

In non-academic-speak, that means it treats race as a black and white issue, instead of recognizing the endless combinations and shades of color in between, and it reinforces the way people see race, instead of undermining it.

I respect Martha’s views very much, so her criticism stings. Am I being racially insensitive here? Is this project helping to perpetuate stereotypical black-white dichotomies instead of subverting them?

I’ve thought a lot about it, and although I can see where a superficial glance at the pictures might lead to Martha’s conclusion, I believe if you look at the project more carefully, and approach it as a utopian artistic vision, rather than an attempt at realistically depicting racial issues, you might come to a different understanding.

For one, in this black and white project, you can’t separate the medium from the message. In fact, the medium is a large part of the message: Black and white photography is all about how black and white work together to create an aesthetic whole. It’s about a unified whole being more than just the sum of its contrasting parts. Which is why using black and white photography to create a utopian vision of black and white in a racial context is so appealing to me.

For two, humor and surprise are essential aspects of the black and white project. Many of the scenarios in the photos have a twist: something you wouldn’t necessarily expect to see in black or in white, like black spaghetti or white lipstick. Once again, this removes the photos and scenarios they depict from the realm of “how we’re stuck in our perception of race as either black or white” to the artistic/idealistic realm of “how I wish we could perceive black and white as 2 colors that complement each other perfectly.” 

Does this project cover all people of all races? No. It’s a symbolic attempt to visualize a superficial manifestation of racial difference (i.e. skin color) as a desirable aesthetic ideal, using visual beauty and harmony to try to transcend historical racial rifts and prejudices.

Would this project look different if I were a black artist? Probably. As a white person, I bring a whole bunch of guilt and self-consciousness to any discussion of race. I think white people – whether our ancestors were actually slave owners or not – need to actively and constantly strive to rectify the heinous crimes of slavery and the undercurrent of racism that has marred our public discourse and institutions -- as well as our private interpersonal relations – ever since.

Bottom line: I think we have to talk about race, make art about race, and deal with race as a crucial issue in our lives. If this project can contribute to the discussion even a little bit; if it can jar even a few people out of their racist thought habits or their “post-racial” delusions; if it helps people from different racial backgrounds get even a little bit closer to mutual trust, respect and understanding; it will be worth it.

Welcome to my blog!

I’m calling it “the black and white project” because I’ll be writing about issues of race and color, and because it grew out of my black and white photography project. If you haven’t seen the photographs yet, there’s a YouTube video that showcases some of them, along with excerpts from Obama’s speech on race, which he gave when he was running for president.

View Black & White Project Video

Here’s my artist’s statement for the black and white photography project:

The idea for the black & white photo project occurred to me several years ago, when I realized my young kids (then around 7 and 5) had no words for, and no emotional baggage around, racial differences. They were in a relatively integrated school in a relatively integrated neighborhood and they didn’t call people “black” or “white,” because we didn’t use those words at home or at school. They just described what people looked like, using “brown-skinned” or “light-skinned” when they wanted to make that distinction.

So I thought: Wouldn’t it be nice if we all looked at each other with that kind of innocence? Yet, of course, we as grownups already have black and white ingrained in our culture and psyches as racial descriptors, with all the associated historical pain. But what if we could see black and white, instead of as conflicted opposites, as perfect compliments and reflections of one another, and celebrate how well we all go together?

When a very dear and wonderful art teacher at the kids’ school saw the project for the first time she said: “This could heal the world!”

I wish!

On a slightly less lofty scale, my hope for all of us who participate in the black and white project is perhaps to experience a shift in perception – an enhanced ability to see ourselves in each other and the “other” in ourselves.

Ideally, this would be an installation where all four walls would be covered from floor to ceiling with all the many variations on the different black and white combinations – each with its own delight and humor.  The floor and ceiling would be painted in black and white checkerboard. A person visiting the installation, in my ideal scenario, would then leave the room with a changed – albeit every so slightly – consciousness. (If anyone wants to sponsor this type of installation, please let me know!)