Blog / 2017 / Antiracist Artist
September 25, 2017
Artists evolve in public. The sharing of our growing pains is part of what makes art so vital. It’s also a sensitive process. If you add race into the mix, it can feel impossible—like making art is just too vulnerable. But I’d like to remind white artists that artists of color don’t get to decide whether or not to “add race into the mix.” Are you okay with having this advantage over artists of color who are not allowed by our society to avoid the rawness of race?
The article on Hyperallergic that I refer to at the end of the video is here.
And, for the record, I’m still proud of Apple Pie even though it caused a number of people to question my values. I learned a lot making the series. I went into it thinking that American immigrants were generally as patriotic as I was because, like me, they knew what it was like to actively choose between being in the US and being elsewhere. I came out of the work with a new understanding that at least some of my love for the US came from being a white immigrant who speaks English without an accent.
UPDATE
November 25, 2018
In regards to “On Hating the Straight White Male” (the blog post that has caused so many to call me racist), I removed it when I rebuilt my site. If you want to read it, the text lives on in the video, but I was tired of all the web traffic that article was getting. Now, anyone linking to that old page gets redirected to this video about antiracism. I doubt this post will change any MRA minds, but at least my words can’t be used to bolster their wrong-headed ideas anymore.
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