I would like to say two things about Sidney Poitier.
First, he was one of the people who created the world I grew up in.
I grew up in a world where it was normal for a 'white' kid and a 'Black' kid to not only go to the same school- there were probably more black kids in my high school then white kids like me, though it was highly, highly diverse- but where it was normal for a 'white' kid and a 'Black' kid to be friends.
Where every 'white' kid my age grew up with a beloved 'Black' uncle- Gordon from Sesame Street.
Thank you, Sindey Poitier!
I may be 'white', but the way of thinking that I was brought up in does not exist without Sidney Poitier.
The way of thinking that I was brought up in does not exist without a diverse, racially inclusive society.
And inclusive in all the other ways too.
Sidney Poitier helped create the world I grew up in.
And thus he gets a share of the credit for David S. Annderson's works.
For David S. Annderson learned a lot of what he learned from the world he was brought up in.
The world people like Sidney Poitier created.
Second, is that I am like Sidney Poitier as an artist in one way.
And that is that what I do is a corrective.
Sidney Poitier said that he would have loved to play flawed 'Black' characters. The kind of flawed, grey-area characters that actors love to play. But that as long as virtuous 'Black' characters are underrepresented, he knew that he had a responsability to play morally pure, upright characters.
What he was doing was a corrective.
He knew that he had to keep representing what was woefully underrepresented.
What I do is a corrective as well.
Bad things are so massively overrepresented that I feel a responsability to show people how good things can be.
Artists often show how people overcome darkness and difficulty.
But darkness is so massively overrepresented, especially here in mainstream America since about 1992 (this is 2022), that I know that I need to show people how good things are.
And that is my mission.
That is what I yearn to do.
Other artists might yearn to show people dealing with darkness.
I yearn to show them the light.
I yearn to shout it out to the rooftops all the wonderful things out there.
I love my role as a corrective.
And those good things do matter.
What is more, I write history.
And you hear so much about bad things in history.
You hear so much about the Cold War, the Korean War, commies in China, the red scare in America
And you don't hear about the kid driving his 57 Chevy listening to Chuck Berry, talking about Explorer 1 and the newly chosen Mercury astronauts.
Especially when they are covering Ming China or the Ottoman Empire rather than America in 1959.
In my histories I am a corrective to what I call the Historian's Illusion.
You list every bad thing across an entire continent over 100 years, and of course it sounds bad.
That in addition to our darkness and despair in modern America, overrepresenting the darkness in general.
Look, I know that in Ming China and Gupta India there were little problems.
But they were little.
Not that important most of the time.
You read history, you hear about the Cold War, the Vietnam War, the terrors of Red China in the 1960's when it really was still Communist.
You hear nothing about the joy of the kids greeting The Beatles at the airport in new York City
Or the kids joyfully following the great Gemini missions in outer space while cruising in their family's classic 57 Chevy Nomad
Or the 'Black' man who joyfully celebrates the fact that he can drink from the good drinking fountains for the first time in his life
And that people like him are working at NASA sending people into outer space, charting the path of those Gemini flights that thrill kids of all ages
And the problems and flaws in Ming China and Gupta India and Golden Age Baghdad are miniscule, insignificant, almost nonexistent compared to the Cold War and the Vietnam War!
But how often to you ever hear of the wonderful things in Ming China or Golden Age Baghdad?
I am like Sidney Poitier.
I am representing the light.
And I am creating a corrective.
Thank you, Sidney Poitier!
God loves you! All of you!
Sincerely,
David S. Annderson