We Come From Memory...

Western cultural philosophy has long presented itself as the universal standard—the measure of intellect, beauty, morality, and civilization. This worldview claimed objectivity, yet it depended on erasing and diminishing the identities and histories of others, particularly people of African descent. To justify enslavement, colonization, and extraction, the West created a hierarchy of human worth. Blackness was positioned outside the boundaries of “full humanity,” not because it lacked value, but because the world needed a way to rationalize domination.

These narratives did not remain confined to political systems or academic theories; they entered daily life. They shaped education, religion, art, and social structures. They governed who was allowed to speak and who was expected to listen. Over generations, the echo of that lie could seep inward. Some African Americans learned to doubt their own narratives, question their own beauty, or believe their creativity needed external approval to be valid. This internalization is not evidence of failure—it is evidence of how thoroughly the world tried to convince us to forget ourselves.

But forgetting is not the end of the story.

Across forced migrations, violence, and erasure, African-descended people carried memory. Not always the kind written in books, but the kind held in rhythm, in intuition, in the shared consciousness of community, in the sacred, in the kitchen table stories, the church fan whispers, the drumbeat and the breath. We carried knowledge that life is relational, spiritual, and rooted in connection—not defined by domination.

The task today is not to reject Western thought entirely, nor to prove our humanity to those who questioned it. The task is to remember. To restore our own ways of knowing. To center our history, our voices, our aesthetics, our symbols, and our joy. To teach our children that the story did not begin with struggle—struggle is simply one chapter in a narrative that began long before.

Art becomes one of the most powerful sites for this restoration. Image and story allow us to reclaim presence where absence was once imposed. Through making, we speak back to the world—not to seek permission, but to reveal what has always been true.

We are not rediscovering ourselves.

We are returning to what we never lost.