Kathleen Collins says that Black people have been projected by YTs to be seen as extraordinary, Saint OR Sinner, as a means to dehumanize us. Remove our normalcy, disarming our right to simply be ordinary.

Charles Burnett does an amazing job embracing and celebrating our normal.

I think that due to the history of abuse, neglect, murder, cultural eradication, and so on that we’ve experienced, we are adamant at using the idea of us being extraordinary to remind ourselves we’re valuable.

But Charles reminds us even when we don’t dazzle under the light.

As a storyteller, escapism has been my go-to coping mechanism. A world outside of reality painted in colors only my mind could see.

As I’ve grown, I’m learning reality, as gray as it might appear, does not have to be so ugly. Whose idea was it that it was?

We are reluctant to embrace normalcy as is. We even try to glam normal UP, still, as a means of making it more presentable. As if it’s not enough.

What is that saying that we can’t rest in the gray? Are we, in some ways, still perpetuating the extraordinary as a PREFERENCE?

The love I have for magical realism is because it allows normalcy room to be magic as is OR magic has moments of elevating normal.

And while I love to play, I can’t lie that there weren’t moments I felt my story wasn’t magical ENOUGH. “Do people want ordinary? Will they watch?”

While YTs are not my audience and they do not sit on my shoulder as a spectator, my audience/my people have been and in many layers are STILL impacted by whiteness.

In this way, I think I am, too.

Gray skies are still a color.
They still harbor a mood; a feeling.
They still have impact; memories are still made and stored in them.
Even in their ugliness, they are valid.
If not for gray skies, could we enjoy those skies when crystal blue or midnight?

If we’re going to play, then let’s PLAY. Even if we use escapism to do so, let’s hope that is still leads us back to embracing the fact that we can just be, whoever we are, and it will always be enough.

Getting back to the purity of our souls, which we are robbed of. The simple.

Watch “Losing Ground,” the debut film by Kathleen that couldn’t get the distribution is deserved bc YTs didn’t know “Black people like that.”

Watch “Killer of Sheep,” the debut film by Charles that doesn’t sugar coat the gray of Blackness + remains a classic neorealistic piece.