An Open Letter to Radha Blank
If we are going to, in your words, expect “every executive to turn in a season pilot or something,” maybe that should be the bar for entry instead of a piece of paper...
To RadhaMUSprime (AKA Radha Blank),
First off, thanks for embracing the cringe and bringing the uncomfortable parts of the creative process to the forefront in “The Forty Year-Old Version” (2020). Your example demonstrates that simply doing what one loves and desires the most can lead to a “big break.”
As a black woman who dropped out of college after completing fifty-nine credits in order to pursue my passion, it often feels like people are impressed that I have any knowledge to do anything at all, let alone all the incredible things I do constantly without anyone’s permission. Apparently, it’s shocking when someone doesn’t waste a decade of their life with proxy experience and perspective they pay to receive through things they could probably access by themselves.
After seeing you speak at the summit and complementary research, it seems as though you care deeply about the rights and voices of young black people, and especially young black artists. I’m a young black artist, and I can say definitely college is not the rite of entry I want for the future of the arts in our nation–aptitude is. If that isn’t enough to sway you to consider new “underqualified” voices for your work, the fact that the people who created higher institutions of education in this country owned enslaved peoples, should.
Can you tell I’m a little jaded? That’s because I don’t think it’s incredibly fair to lose that much time and still be expected to have three to five years of experience when job interviews come around. I’m not good at math, but I know that doesn’t add up. Money is a big part of why I have not returned. It seems like our institutes of higher education are a big performance to keep people without the resources for college from getting above the poverty line–and to keep those that may muster those resources from getting the opportunity to get a leg up, so to speak.
Jaded as I am, it still kind of shook me spiritually to see a summit of creatives in Harlem, the historical birthplace of the black art renaissance, ask an audience of mostly black creatives and art lovers to raise their hand [at] the Intersection in the Apollo if they were college educated, as though that’s a reasonable standard enough for black excellence, or perhaps the only standard, when a huge number of black creatives and individuals made a mark on the world either before their time in college, or because they lacked the resources to get a white man’s higher education. I say the “white man’s higher education” also to acknowledge that (similar to a lot of systems that exist in the U.S. today), while almost all black people are expected to ascribe to college today in order to assimilate, it was not created–at least in the United States– with black people in mind. That came later down the line. All this exclusion and violence and somehow, in 2023, we are still setting the bar of intellectualism to the standard of white supremacy. Now even other black people define black people’s worth and intelligence from within our own spaces. College is still the standard. Even after the inflation on tuition, inflation as a whole, and while the entire nation is living through multiple recessions and depressions, a pandemic, and a very real supreme court case that put an end to affirmative action indefinitely.
Wow.
Why do I as an emerging creative have to live up to standards I don’t value to prove that I am a smart person? Why do the panelists [at] the Intersection complain about a lack of perspective from new graduates just entering their field if they know they lack any and all experience besides the ones allocated by proxy? If you want authentic, spicy, exciting, dangerous and underprivileged perspectives in your stories but always pick the entry-level hire with a college education you are negating every young person who has that and experience to offer, but just lacks the resources for your approval.
It seems completely unnecessary in a field of storytellers to deem anyone unqualified at all. Why even have these standards when they were only created as boundaries and barriers to gatekeep young, poor, queer, disabled and black people from the market? It is a scam. If we are going to, in your words, expect “every executive to turn in a season pilot or something,” maybe that should be the bar for entry instead of a piece of paper that somehow makes you better or more valid than every other storyteller. Especially if the piece of paper in question is unrealistic and intangibly affordable without going into crippling debt for the rest of our lives.
As a black person with a lot of power to create great change in your industry this letter is to urge you to take your own advice! Bring others on your team and create access for new voices in media, especially black, femme, and LGBTQIA+ voices who are not working with much to begin with but still create fantastic products. Imagine what they could create if we invested in them. It may even be cheaper, and you could hold them to a higher standard. We will not disappoint you.
At the summit, you said that “they want the shine, but they don’t want to put in the time,” so please put in the time to find more types of shine. Keep the wheel turning, and use this as an opportunity to innovate. You’re the example that a passion for something someone loves is just enough to be worthy of it, so, together, let’s make that the only qualification, the only precedent for our power as creatives to thrive.
At the very least, don’t make the standard an existing, useless and exclusionary white supremacist system–let it be the reviews and recommendations from the words and actions of one’s elders, peers, mentors, ancestors and role models like you–people who are not afraid to be their authentic selves and who create genuine close-knit communities based on passion, competency, shared experiences and a genuine care for our field and our craft.
Keep setting the example and consider my plea to pass the baton to those who are just as intelligent, deserving and caring as you, but who don’t think we need to carry our “papers” to be able to prove it. In summation–poor people are smart too.
With all the love, honesty, and respect,
Maya James