Shaping Imaginations

We’re in a very bad place in this country. The Supreme Court is likely set to overturn Roe v Wade and make it so that women don’t have bodily autonomy. According to a recent poll, 76% of Republicans surveyed don’t think Biden legitimately won the 2020 election. Republican legislatures all across the country are writing laws that restrict access to the ballot, especially for Black, Brown, and young people, all of whom are the base of the Democratic party. And, we’re being held hostage to the gun lobby because the GOP won’t do anything to curb easy access to assault rifles and, as a result, we lead the world in mass shootings.

We can talk about all the reasons why we got to this point. You probably know them. But here’s one that I’ve been thinking about for a while. One of the big problems is the lack of imagination on the part of those in power, and many of the people who support them. I recently listened to a podcast conversation between Ezra Klein and fellow journalists Nikole Hannah-Jones and Ta-Nehisi Coates. Ta-Nehisi was asked why he’s been spending so much time writing fiction, comics and screenplays (he’s writing the script for the next Superman movie!) versus doing the deeply researched journalism that brought him to prominence. Ezra’s point, I believe, was that Ta-Nehisi’s voice is needed now more than ever.

In his response, Ta-Nehisi talks about the importance of shaping imagination. For some portion of the audience/electorate, their imaginations are fixed and they’re unable to imagine anything more than what they’re already capable of. But there’s another portion–especially young people–whose imaginations can still be shaped. And those are the ones we have to fight to influence.

Here’s Ta-Nehisi’s response:

And so I went through this period and I started blogging about the facts of it. And I would get people that just couldn’t face it. I mean, evidence was right there, it was so clear. And eventually what became clear to me was this is not — and I think this is even true today. Obviously I believe in the importance of history and the importance of facts given the conversation that we’re having here, but some of this ain’t fact based man. Some of this is like back in the lizard brain or whatever brain we assign to deciding what the world should look like.

This is rude to say, but there are people that I recognize I can never get to because their imagination is already formed. And when their imagination is formed, no amount of facts can dislodge them. The kids, however, the kids who are in the process of having their imagination formed, who in the process of deciding, or not even deciding but being influenced in such a way to figure out what are the boundaries of humanity, that’s an ongoing battle. 

And so like I think about 2018 the movie “Black Panther,” and I think about seeing white kids dress up as the Black Panther. This sounds small. This sounds really, really small. And I want to be clear, there’s a way in which this kind of symbolism certainly can be co-opted and not tied to any sort of material events. But I keep going back to this, there’s a reason why in 1962 they raised the Confederate flag over the Capitol of South Carolina. The symbols actually matter because they communicate something about the imagination, and in the imagination is where all of the policies happen. All the policy happens within there.

And I just think so much of our rhetoric about what we think is quote unquote “politics” actually displays our imagination. There’s an old New Republic cover that I go back to time after time, and on it ostensibly the cover story is supposed to be about passing welfare reform in 1996. And a picture is of this caricature of this Black woman sitting there smoking with a child next to her. And it just plays on the worst stereotypes and the worst ideas about Black people that you can imagine. I think it would be significantly harder to do that cover today. I think part of it is that the imagination at least a little bit has shifted. Certainly the newsrooms have shifted too, but the imagination has shifted.

And so for me I could advocate for all of the policies in the world, I continue to advocate for those policies. I’m not I’m not done with journalism yet, I’m not done with opinion journalism yet, but it really, really occurred to me that there’s a generation that is being formed right now that’s deciding what they will allow to be possible. What they will be capable of imagining. And the root of that isn’t necessarily the kind of journalism that I love that I was doing, the root of that is the stories we tell. And I just I wanted to be a part of that fight.

The breadth of humanity will only ever be as big as the limits of our imagination. I believe this is also the work we’re engaged in at the Sugar Hill Children’s Museum: We’re trying to reach those young children whose imaginations are still being formed. We’re exposing them to an array of rich storytelling traditions from a variety of cultures. Human stories. We’re also giving them the opportunity to take the same materials and processes they see in the art that’s on the walls of the museum and create something of their own. I can’t think of anything more demystifying, democratizing and empowering.

We’re laying the groundwork for a broader set of possibilities in their heads. Maybe we’re even expanding the set of possibilities in the minds of their parents. In that way, I hope we’re doing our part to build ideas about what constitutes stronger communities and better citizenship, both of which will make for a safer and more equitable nation for everyone.