We can pretty much give up on the hope that questions of race – or any social change for that matter – will be resolved by science or technology. Even where science and technology has the knowledge and data to effect change – to advance our evolution – it doesn’t have the human capital and the resulting financial means to do so.
For my money, it comes down to the arts which is one reason why so many in power are desperate to turn off any support for the arts or humanities. Another is that, at base, surely any artistic endeavour’s purpose is to inspire, provoke, uplift or question – and who among our politicians, ‘leaders’ and technocrats wants to be questioned by an inspired or provoked public?
But if social solutions can be inspired by the arts, the question is ‘which arts?’ Let’s face it, Picasso’s Guernica or Van Gogh’s heartbreaking studies of the miners of the Borinage might affect a tiny number of people lucky enough to see them but they ain’t going to change fuckall.
Movies like Platoon, In The Heat Of The Night, Serpico or Spotlight might affect a larger audience – but do they effect change? Real change? Ditto Shakespeare or Gabriel Garcia Marquez.
But music… isn’t that the one universal art form that touches billions?
I reckon if there were a way of feeding the uncommitted (as against the incorrigibly bigoted) through a music-driven social transformer that begins with The Blues, perhaps that might prompt change. The passion of Springsteen, the hope of Two Tone, the sheer joy of KC or Sly, Eminem, NWA, Stormzy – name your passion – could music be the so-far lacking engine of change?
If indeed there were a ‘transformer’ that began with The Blues we might also understand so much more about the racial history of the U.S.A.
Part four posts shortly