Its a piece by Glenn Ligon ("We are the ink that gives the white page a meaning").
Negro. Sunshine. The irony... I love it. Something tells me that the average person would be hesitant to put the two words together. They appear to be polar opposites. Negro literally means Black... in more languages than one. And sunshine refers to those direct rays of light, unbroken by cloud. Therefore, it seems contradictory to combine them. But why? Isn't it in the darkest of corners where a ray of light has the most meaning? Don't you need the dark to be able to recognize the light? The existence of one, allows for the existence of the other. This is not to say that Black people need White people in order to define themselves as a group, or vice-versa. It is simply a thought that without the social construct known as race, that we use and enforce, one's "Blackness," or "Whiteness," or "Asian-ness," or "Latino-ness" might simply be lost and defined only as "selfness." At least the way I see it, in order to have a distinct and collective identity, there needs to be something to which it compares - something it is distinct from.
Just a thought...
"There is a light that shines, special for you and me..."
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