The New Face of Arts Leadership in the West - westaf - The Western ...

the chorus, he says, “Am I the man I want
to be? Am I the man I used to be? Or am
I the man that I will become?” 4 We don’t
know what our identities are at this point.
James Early: “America, you are not America
to me/ America you will be.” 5 That was the
voice of Langston Hughes, a poet. A spoken
word person. Read that poem. What is America
if it is not becoming? What is Mongolia if it
is not becoming? What is Alaska if it is not
becoming? It is important for us to reconnect,
but why reconnect if we are going to be what
has already been? If we are just going to be
that? We are in a global moment, and I think
that all of our speakers manifest that. This notion
that we are one thing and not anything else is
not true by the very fact that we are here. We
are connected not in abstract ways to many
things; we are connected to different countries
and traditions and times, even in the present.
We are something new that has never been
seen at this scale before. The real question is
will we be the ones who we are, or will we try
to fit the mold of whatever tradition, whatever
identity, has already been and is becoming
something else but does not want to give it up?
Brenda Allen: One of the issues that arises
from your presentations is when we think about
language and we think about communication
and we think about audience, always when
we speak or we write or whatever it is we
do, to some extent we have an audience in
mind. Threading through your conversations is
this idea of this really powerful audience. The
mainstream that begins to dictate what you
say or the mainstream is what you are resisting
in using your language. This relates to how
much power is given to the audience. When I
teach communication, I say, “Think about your
audience.” But I believe there is room to revisit
that advantaging of audience. Perhaps there is
a way I can revise that notion of playing to the
audience and make it more of a notion of being
flexible in terms of how they might interact with
me—how they might present themselves to me.
I like the idea of thinking about creating something
new, which suggests that there may be
ways again for me to reconsider the relationship
with audience. I can start to think about how
the language of the person with whom I am
interacting affects our interaction. I should be
thinking about how they might want to express
themselves. I should be thinking about what
might I learn from them. This is something, again
as leaders, we might begin to think about in
ways we may not have thought about before.
In the area of allowing different modes of
expression, I have begun to be a little more
flexible with that with students, even in terms
of a final project, where the tradition would
be a word-processed document that follows a
certain style and so forth. This also goes back
to something I struggled with earlier, which is
asking the questions, “What are you really trying
to do? What is the root here?” If I, as teacher,
really want students to feel empowered to
express themselves, then I should not limit them
in terms of “this is how you need to do it.”
One of my sister’s kids said recently as an adult,
“Aunt Brenda, I like how you made us talk
right.” They would use the Black vernacular,
and I would correct them. What I learned to
do, however, was to intervene in a way different
from what I did initially—the way people
treated me, which was very punitive: “Don’t
say that like that!” What I learned to do was
to help them understand you will be in different
kinds of situations, and you need to read
them and present yourself in ways that you
can be effective, right? So this relates back
to that notion of improvisation. But in doing
so, we need to avoid any tendency to give
up your power. I value the fact that, in some
ways, I am multilingual. I don’t speak a lot of
languages, but I can move across vernaculars.
I can be in a board room and use mainstream
language or I can be at a bar in the ‘hood and
use the appropriate type of language there.
Annette Evans Smith’s point of what language
does and why we want to preserve and invite
a variety of ways of expressing is important.
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