BLACK GENIUS

A spirited presentation of the manifold accomplishments of Black creators as an instrument of resistance—and of love.

“We’re utterly amazing, yet Black folks are consistently, persistently, intentionally, conveniently, diabolically left out of conversations about genius all the time.” So cultural critic and commentator Johnson observes at the outset of this collection of essays, returning to the theme at several points, as when he writes of sitting in a New Orleans restaurant where everything but the clientele was Black: “It all brought up the issues around appropriation, cultural extraction, gentrification and the sort of ­dark‑humor irony of how often our music is good enough but we aren’t.” The author’s humor is underscored with righteous indignation, as when he writes of going from a private church school where “as Black kids a lot of us thrived because we had a strong mixture of play, practice and positivity (prayer, too, obviously)” to a public middle school and high school where his abilities were constantly demeaned by white classmates and teachers—cause for his call to pay attention today to young Black students who “might’ve shown up with B or C grades but had A+ curiosity and social skills and the ability to think on their feet.” Johnson celebrates the Black genius that society throttles through a wide range of examples, from comic books to music (with a lovely remembrance of the peace-and-love groove of the Fifth Dimension and even an understanding word or two for Kanye West) and from comic Dick Gregory to Black Panther. Johnson even closes with a sort of Aquarian evocation of a Black community that is truly communal, one that can “afford opportunities to make choices in community with others and minimize some of the additional risks of trying and discovering things on your own,” creating into the future in common cause.

Readers will leave this provocative book wanting to hear much more from Johnson.