Black Heritage?

So what's so special about Black Heritage? Black Heritage is in a sense greater than the sum of its parts. Black Heritage is special, not only because it has been unappreciated, but also because it has been misrepresented--even by Black folks themselves. Typically, Black Heritage with a capital H is limited to music, sports, and a kind of homespun, native wisdom. What I am going to argue for is our revolutionary heritage, the heritage of intellectual and creative greatness. The heritage influences every achievement by the human species, from science and art to religion and philosophy. In the book Invisible Man there was a character who worked in a paint factory. The biggest selling paint was this extremely pure and bright white paint. The character who was the only one who could make this paint, ironically, was this old Black man. There are many symbolic meanings behind this, but from my perspective, this passage means that there is an ancient Black intellectual spirit that runs deep in the DNA of all creative pursuits that comes directly out of Africa. This is Black Heritage to me. In the posts that follow, the constant theme will be the resilience and greatness of that ancient Black intellectual spirit that exists today in our best and brightest creators.