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ACCORDING TO LIZ - In his recent book, The Message, Ta-Nehisi Coates posits that the task of writers is to save the world. I would opine that the task of each writer is to save their individual world.
That many writers share similar perspectives will only strengthen the messages in the stories we share, each the more powerful for it being from the heart about what is urgent for them personally.
That can certainly spring from the desire for a world that is fair to all as part of their self-image about the world in which they live. But from their perspective encompassing the larger whole.
It is through words that we can reach out and touch someone and it is the physical permanence of the written word that encourages people to take risks, to defy the status quo and open possibilities of change in all our futures.
Speechwriters and bombastic politicians repeat their personal messages that so often are reported and amplified ad infinitum through traditional media and social networks.
But because most of us, even popularly published writers such as Ta-Nehisi Coates, do not have the broad media access that those whose speeches are delivered in arenas holding tens of thousands and on national television, it is through our written words that we can reach out and touch people’s consciences and try to make a difference.
What we choose to write about and how we frame it can go far in how much it is repeated and how great an audience we can reach.
For me it’s not my words I want held close but the ideas behind them that I urgently hope to spread in an effort to make people think that not only is change for the better possible but that they can have a role in collectively ensuring it happens. And soon.
Some of my articles may be read by only a few followers of my work; others can draw thousands of hits and, hopefully through republishing and word-of-mouth, the content then reaches even further.
Along with many others, I share significant concerns about how our educational systems are failing the majority of Americans by existing to reinforce the powers of the elite and restricting opportunities for change that would improve the lives of those not so favored.
Do our traditional approaches to learning, especially in the United States, lead to developing critical thinking and analytical skills? Or is the intent to brainwash our children into docile compliance with just enough education to perform rote jobs but not to question the underlying assumptions of the society in which we live?
In my world, everyone should have the right to aspire to be the best they can be. The world of Ta-Nehisi Coates is framed by the challenges he faced as a black child of parents with limited finances, and a divergent learning style.
He aspires first to enable his peers break those same barriers.
While I can empathize with him, I can’t write about his world at a gut level with the passion and fervor that comes from living black and poor in urban America.
But I can write about my experience of my world based on my own experiences.
I can observe how political systems treat different categories of people differently which may not have the immediate intensity of those who lived it but allows me to express my emotional indignation.
Which, when shared with others like me – those closer to my world, allows them to enter in and share that indignation, hopefully inspiring them to invest in the changes needed to right such wrongs.
What I can never do is write detached, I am always part of my narrative whether directing my readers’ eyes or pleading with them to act. Like Ta-Nehisi Coates asserts, as a writer I am the steward of what I observe and understand; I have a responsibility to both those to whom I am relating these stories and to those against whom injustices are perpetrated.
That sense of responsibility roots the foundation of the stories I am telling in my emotional reality and makes them all the more powerful.
Respect for readers that may hold opinions that differ from mine is essential for building those bridges, and learning to love and understand them forms an essential part of debate and communication.
I seek intentionality in the words that I use to convey what I mean and want to say, and I need to speak to others using their symbols and stories or they won’t be able to understand what I am trying to convey.
In some manner I may be more of a threat as a storyteller speaking from within the elite because I can spur others like me to topple the narrative of and erode the claims justifying the transcendence of those currently in power.
The key to change is through education.
Yes, there are still challenges for change emanating from universities, but these are self-limiting because fewer outside views and voices are allowed, and the vast majority of those students are set to benefit from the status quo.
As we have seen more clearly over this past year, protests and cries to revolutionize the system have become progressively more restricted with free speech is curtailed on campuses and in classrooms, while the tyranny of the established order continues its mission within the halls of power to create laws protecting their institutions from the righteous anger of the oppressed.
Beyond what is published in articles and books, proclaimed in public meetings, and promulgated in groups organizing for change, it is only within the American school system that the next generation can learn the real history of their country and develop the skills to identify and demand changes in charting its future.
Brainwashing begins in preschool with cookie-cutter learning styles, where the ability to conform and obey instructions is commended and those who question or think different or process information differently are criticized.
Doctrinally correct answers are drilled in, and diplomatically incorrect questions are never allowed to be asked.
Their peers see praise heaped on those who, like circus animals, perform well in the existing educational system, exhibiting compliant behavior and adapting to the world as presented, rather than taking action to make it better.
Learning without context is unusable: as Ta-Nehisi Coates puts it, we cannot reduce the world and its affairs to flash cards and pop quizzes, we must marry education to our experience of that world.
Rote regurgitation of the lies underpinning the authority of those in power may score high marks in gradebooks but doesn’t develop the critical consciousness necessary to analyze and confront the world around us.
The profiteers, cosily in bed with our elected officials, do not want analytical and critical thinking skills developed in children who might then question conformity and their place within the system. Demand change of what benefits the few.
Current elites consider writers who can connect on a gut level armed and dangerous: they can craft the stories to convince people, especially children, to break from that inculcated herd mentality that the builds bulwarks protecting the status quo, to grant individuals the ability and strength to form their own assessments, create their own reality, and reject today’s toxic self-serving plutocracy.
Writers can shine a light on the idea that new policies are possible, illuminate a future where their readers can become a powerful force for change.
It is up to we who write, whether blogs or magazine articles, whether fiction or talking points, to convey possibilities through stories that connect viscerally and resonate and, like a piece of sand stuck in their reader’s conscience, create pearls of progress.
That individuals contain within themselves the magic to cultivate and care for opportunities imagined, and the power to make them real.
(Liz Amsden resides in Vermont and is a regular contributor to CityWatch on issues that she is passionate about. She can be reached at [email protected].)
