Black Renaissance: The Power of Words
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President Barack Obama talks about how powerful art and expression are to Black American culture in a heartfelt tribute to prolific novelist Toni Morrison.
By YouTube Originals
The Power of Words
President Barack Obama talks about how powerful art and expression are to Black American culture in a heartfelt tribute to prolific novelist Toni Morrison. He’s joined by Jason Reynolds, Desus & Mero, Nicole Byer, and more who highlight the power that comes from words in this Black Renaissance short. Watch the full show here: https://youtu.be/aGMVFnnXUpM
Transcript provided by YouTube:
00:04
– When you don’t have a voice,
00:06
art’s how you express yourself.
00:09
And that applies to all cultures,
00:10
but especially black American culture.
00:14
It’s been through art that our story’s been reflected–
00:19
the resilience, the setbacks, the joys, and the hopes.
00:24
– TONI MORRISON: My grandfather bragged all the time
00:27
that he had read the Bible through five times
00:33
And it was illegal in his life to read,
00:37
and it was illegal for white people
00:39
to teach black kids to read.
00:42
But ultimately I knew that words have power.
00:49
– OBAMA: I first picked up Toni Morrison’s novels
00:52
when I was just entering college.
00:56
She became one of my heroes, somebody who helped me
01:01
understand myself and the world around me.
01:04
I was lucky enough to get to know her later in her life.
01:07
This is where she was as much a poet as a prose writer,
01:12
and she brought an intensity to that world
01:17
even beneath obvious meaning
01:23
an extra force, an extra power.
01:26
How she worked that magic is something that
01:30
I can’t completely describe, because that’s what it was.
01:34
One of the lines that always stuck with me
01:37
was her belief that language arcs toward
01:41
the place where meaning might lie.
01:44
When she wrote a story, it seemed as if
01:48
she was tapping into something that went beyond
01:53
just the intellectual understanding
02:00
She was able to locate her stories
02:04
specifically to the African-American community,
02:07
and yet, as all the best writers do,
02:11
create universal meaning in those narratives,
02:16
and that’s what art at its best can do.
02:21
– When it comes to life-changing storytellers,
02:24
Frederick Douglass is definitely a cultural oak,
02:30
in an expanse of literary forest.
02:31
You see, he isn’t the beginning of our relationship
02:36
Whether it be the hieroglyphs of ancient Egypt
02:38
or even the Adinkra symbols of the Akan people,
02:41
we have always used some form of written language
02:44
through letter or character to document our existence.
02:49
And over time, as we found ourselves
02:51
in places that work to deny our lives,
02:54
our written testament became one of our greatest weapons.
02:59
Though there were prominent black writers
03:00
in the early 1900s, nothing could prepare America
03:04
for what was coming in the 1920s.
03:08
This movement was as bustling as the city that birthed it
03:12
and would change literature forever.
03:14
There was a freedom in Harlem, and you know what you do
03:18
when you feel like you free?
03:21
But mostly, you tell the truth.
03:24
So, writers like Richard Wright and Langston Hughes
03:27
and Zora Neale Hurston began to write
03:29
the different versions of black life.
03:31
The good stuff, the not so good stuff.
03:35
You know, the human stuff.
03:38
And with each story, each poem, each play,
03:41
our voices grew bolder, bigger, braver.
03:45
We’d see this again during the black arts movement
03:48
of the ’60s and ’70s,
03:50
where “black power” became a refrain,
03:53
where poets shifted and shaped the new black stance
03:58
where the novelists and playwrights spun our world
04:01
onto pages and stages with precision
04:11
what’s precision, rebellion, and love without laughter?
04:14
What’s telling our stories
04:16
if we can’t make light of our struggles?
04:18
Not because our struggles are light,
04:20
but because there’s always light to be found there.
04:23
And so with the influx of all these poets
04:26
came the influx of all these comedians,
04:29
street philosophers who could turn reality
04:32
on its head for “ha ha” and “a-ha” moments.
04:35
So, yeah, we write stories.
04:38
Been writing. And we write jokes.
04:43
We write poems and we write plays.
04:47
We write shows, we write sermons,
04:52
and write ourselves into the world.
04:55
Sometimes punctuated, sometimes not.
04:58
Sometimes misspelled and messy,
05:01
sometimes in gorgeous calligraphy.
05:05
we write ourselves as un-erasable.
05:11
– DESUS: My favorite book growing up,
05:12
I can name it off the top ’cause I’ve read it
05:13
a million times, “Black Boy” by Richard Wright.
05:16
I read it and I didn’t think– I was like,
05:18
“This can’t be real. This isn’t what real life is.”
05:20
But by that age, I had already started having interactions
05:23
because of race, and that book was like
05:25
the first time other than my family,
05:26
I was like, yo, black people all over the country
05:29
are going through stuff and this is what we go through.
05:31
And it kinda connected me to my blackness.
05:33
– “I Don’t Want To Die Poor” by Michael Arceneaux
05:36
Is a dope collection of, you know, stories and essays and stuff like that.
05:40
He makes these, like, kind of like sad situations,
05:43
like, you know, student loan debt
05:45
and everyday problems and, like, finds humor in them.
05:47
– When I first started acting,
05:50
I discovered “A Raisin in the Sun”
05:54
There’s so many wonderful black playwrights.
05:57
I just really admire black women who are fearless.
06:02
I love those women for making a space for me.
06:05
I think the most powerful word in the English language
06:08
is the word “no” because
06:11
“no” is a full sentence
06:12
and it’s also one word.
06:14
We spend a lot of time trying to explain to people
06:17
why you’re saying no, but you don’t have to.
06:19
You can truly just say, “Mm, no,”
06:22
and that’s the end of the sentence.
06:24
– The word that has the most power
06:25
in the English language is “yes.”
06:28
– I think the word that has the most power
06:30
in the human language is “help.” It’s such a powerful word.
06:32
It’s one of the hardest words for people to say.
06:34
It’s hard because of pride and ’cause of certain situations
06:37
for people to ask for help.
06:39
– I think I realized how powerful words can be
06:44
when I said the word “bitch” in front of my mother
06:47
and she was like, “What did you say?”
06:49
And I was like, “Uh-oh! She mad at me!”
06:50
– I realized the power of words very early on with my jokes
06:55
and with my impressions and whatever.
06:56
My dad would make me get up, do impersonations of
06:59
all of my uncles in their various stages of drunkenness.
07:03
– Being funny can save your life sometimes
07:05
because I was in the Bronx House of Detention.
07:06
I was in a 40-man cell, and you know what?
07:09
Those people got the tightest two days of comedy
07:12
I ever done in my life, I tell you what,
07:14
because that’s what you gotta do.
07:15
We’re just sitting there, ain’t no TV.
07:17
So, I’m cracking jokes, and I just remember
07:18
people were just like, they were like,
07:20
“Yo, you’re funny, you’re funny.
07:21
I’ma keep my eye out for you.”
07:22
Also, I’d be remiss if I didn’t mention
07:24
I learned the power of words from, where? Hip-hop, hip-hop.
07:26
– Real hip-hop, you know what I’m saying?
07:28
You know that. Shout out to Nas.
07:30
First time I heard “Illmatic,” I was like, “Yo!”
07:32
– “Whoa!” [imitating explosion]
07:34
Yo. Whoa! – The lyrics.
Photo credit: Screenshot from video
This post was previously published on YouTube
