"The Year We Obessessed Over Identity" by Wesley Morris

On the front cover The emptiness and silence of the afternoons, 2015 Gouache, house paint, acrylic, acetate, colored paper, naturally dyed paper, and found images 10 x 8 inches

Ecclesiastes King Solomon

“The Year We Obsessed Over Identity” Wesley Morris

Collages Xochi Solis

Gender roles are merging.

Races are being shed.

In the last six years or so, but especially in 2015, we’ve been made to see how trans and bi and poly-ambi-omni- we are.

Kiss all the pretty ones goodbye, 2014 Gouache, house paint, acrylic, acetate, colored paper, and found images 7 x 5 inches

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Everything Is Meaningless 1 The words of the Teacher, son of David, king in Jerusalem: 2 “Meaningless! Meaningless!” says the Teacher.

“Utterly meaningless!

Everything is meaningless.”

3 What do people gain from all their labors at which they toil under the sun?

4 Generations come and generations go, but the earth remains forever.

5 The sun rises and the sun sets, and hurries back to where it rises.

6 The wind blows to the south and turns to the north; round and round it goes, ever returning on its course.

7 All streams flow into the sea, yet the sea is never full.

To the place the streams come from, there they return again.

8 All things are wearisome, more than one can say.

The eye never has enough of seeing, nor the ear its fill of hearing.

A few weeks ago, I sat in a movie theater and grinned. Anne Hathaway was in ‘‘The Intern,’’ perched on a hotel bed in a hotel robe, eating from a can of overpriced nuts, having tea and freaking out. What would happen if she divorced her sweet, selfless stay-at-home dad of a husband?

Would she ever meet anybody else? And if she didn’t, she would have no one to be buried next to — she’d be single for all eternity. And weren’t the problems in her marriage a direct result of her being a successful businesswoman — she was there but never quite present? ‘‘The Intern’’ is a Nancy Meyers movie, and these sorts of cute career-woman meltdowns are the Eddie Van Halen guitar solos of her romantic comedies.

But what’s funny about that scene — what had me grinning — is the response of the person across the bed from Hathaway.

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What has been will be again, what has been done will be done again; there is nothing new under the sun.

10 Is there anything of which one can say, “Look! This is something new”?

It was here already, long ago; it was here before our time.

11 No one remembers the former generations, and even those yet to come will not be remembered by those who follow them.

After listening to her tearful rant, this person has had enough: Don’t you dare blame yourself or your career! Actually, the interruption begins, ‘‘I hate to be the feminist, of the two of us. … ’’ Hate to be because the person on the other side of the bed isn’t Judy Greer or Brie Larson.

It’s not Meryl Streep or Susan Sarandon.

It’s someone not far from the last person who comes to mind when you think ‘‘soulbaring bestie.’’ It’s Robert freaking De Niro, portrayer of psychos, savages and grouches no more.

On that bed with Hathaway, as her 70year-old intern, he’s not Travis Bickle or the human wall of intolerance from those Focker movies. He’s Lena Dunham. The attentiveness and stern feminism coming out of his mouth are where the comedy is. And while it’s perfectly obvious what Meyers is doing to De Niro — girlfriending

him — that doesn’t make the overhaul any less effective. The whole movie is about the subtle and obvious ways in which men have been overly sensitized and women made self-estranged through breadwinning. It’s both a plaint against the present and a pining for the past, but also an acceptance that we are where we are.

And where are we? On one hand: in another of Nancy Meyers’s bourgeois pornographies. On the other: in the midst of a great cultural identity migration. Gender roles are merging. Races are being shed. In the last six years or so, but especially in 2015, we’ve been made to see how trans and bi and poly-ambi-omni- we are. If Meyers is clued into this confusion, then you know it really has gone far, wide and middlebrow.

We can see it in the instantly beloved hit ‘‘Transparent,’’ about a family whose patriarch becomes a trans woman whose

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Pleasures Are Meaningless 1 I said to myself, “Come now, I will test you with pleasure to find out what is good.” But that also proved to be meaningless. 2 “Laughter,” I said, “is madness. And what does pleasure accomplish?” 3 I tried cheering myself with wine, and embracing folly—my mind still guiding me with wisdom. I wanted to see what was good for people to do under the heavens during the few days of their lives.

10 I denied myself nothing my eyes desired; I refused my heart no pleasure.

My heart took delight in all my labor, and this was the reward for all my toil.

11 Yet when I surveyed all that my hands had done and what I had toiled to achieve, everything was meaningless, a chasing after the wind; nothing was gained under the sun.

4 I undertook great projects: I built houses for myself and planted vineyards. 5 I made gardens and parks and planted all kinds of fruit trees in them. 6 I made reservoirs to water groves of flourishing trees. 7 I bought male and female slaves and had other slaves who were born in my house.

I also owned more herds and flocks than anyone in Jerusalem before me. 8 I amassed silver and gold for myself, and the treasure of kings and provinces. I acquired male and female singers, and a harem as well—the delights of a man’s heart. 9 I became greater by far than anyone in Jerusalem before me. In all this my wisdom stayed with me.

kids call her Moppa, or in the time we’ve spent this year in televised proximity to Caitlyn Jenner, or in the browning of America’s white founding fathers in the Broadway musical ‘‘Hamilton,’’ or in the proliferating clones that Tatiana Maslany plays on ‘‘Orphan Black,’’ which mock the idea of a true or even original self, or in Amy Schumer's comedic feminism, which reconsiders gender confusion: Do uncouthness, detachment and promiscuity make her a slut, or a man?

We can see it in the recently departed halfhour sketch comedy ‘‘Key & Peele,’’ which took race as a construct that could be reshuffled and remixed until it seemed to lose its meaning. The sitcom ‘‘Black-ish’’ likewise makes weekly farcical discourse out of how much black identity has warped — and how much it hasn’t — over 50 years and across three generations.

‘‘Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt’’ turns selfhood into a circus, introducing us to a lowermiddle-class Native American teenager who eventually succeeds at becoming a rich white lady, and to other characters who try out new selves every 10 minutes, as if they’re auditioning for ‘‘Snapchat: The Musical.’’ Last month, Ryan Adams released a remake of Taylor Swift’s album ‘‘1989,’’ song for song, as a rock record that combines a male voice with a perspective that still sounds like a woman’s, like Lindsey Buckingham trying on Stevie Nicks’s clothes. Dancing on the fringes of mainstream pop are androgynous black men like Le1f, Stromae and Shamir.

What started this flux? For more than a decade, we’ve lived with personal technologies — video games and social-media platforms — that have helped us create alternate or auxiliary personae. We’ve also

spent a dozen years in the daily grip of makeover shows, in which a team of experts transforms your personal style, your home, your body, your spouse. There are TV competitions for the best fashion design, body painting, drag queen. Some forms of cosmetic alteration have become perfectly normal, and there are shows for that, too.

Our reinventions feel gleeful and liberating – and tied to an essentially American optimism. After centuries of women living alongside men, and of the races living adjacent to one another, even if only notionally, our rigidly enforced gender and racial lines are finally breaking down. There is a sense of fluidity and permissiveness and a smashing of binaries. We’re all becoming one another. Well, we are.

And we’re not.

In June, the story of a woman named Rachel Dolezal began its viral spread

Yet when I surveyed all that my hands had done / and what I had toiled to achieve, / everything was meaningless, a chasing after the wind; / nothing was gained under the sun.

Ecclesiastes 2:11

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A Time for Everything 1 There is a time for everything, and a season for every activity under the heavens: 2 a time to be born and a time to die, a time to plant and a time to uproot, 3 a time to kill and a time to heal, a time to tear down and a time to build, 4 a time to weep and a time to laugh, a time to mourn and a time to dance, 5 a time to scatter stones and a time to gather them, a time to embrace and a time to refrain from embracing, 6 a time to search and a time to give up, a time to keep and a time to throw away, 7 a time to tear and a time to mend, a time to be silent and a time to speak, 8 a time to love and a time to hate, a time for war and a time for peace.

for people than to be happy and to do good while they live. 13 That each of them may eat and drink, and find satisfaction in all their toil — this is the gift of God. 14 I know that everything God does will endure forever; nothing can be added to it and nothing taken from it. God does it so that people will fear him.

9 What do workers gain from their toil? 10 I have seen the burden God has laid on the human race.

11 He has made everything beautiful in its time.

He has also set eternity in the human heart; yet no one can fathom what God has done from beginning to end. 12 I know that there is nothing better

This is a country founded on independence and yet comfortable with racial domination, a country that has forever been trying to legislate the lines between whiteness and nonwhiteness, between borrowing and genocidal theft. We’ve wanted to think we’re better than a history we can’t seem to stop repeating.

She sings hymns out of tune, 2014 Gouache, house paint, acrylic, acetate, colored paper, and found images 10 x 8 inches

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through the news. She had recently been appointed president of the local chapter of the N.A.A.C.P. in Spokane, WA. She had been married to a black man, had two black sons and was, by most accounts, a black woman. Her white biological parents begged to differ. The ensuing scandal resurrected questions about the nature of identity. What compelled Dolezal to darken her skin, perm her hair and pass in reverse? She might not have been biologically black, but she seemed well past feeling spiritually white.

Some people called her ‘‘transracial.’’

Others found insult in her masquerade, particularly when the country’s attention was being drawn, day after day, to how dangerous it can be to have black skin. The identities of the black men and women killed by white police officers and civilians, under an assortment of violent circumstances, remain fixed.

But there was something oddly compelling about Dolezal, too. She dementedly but also earnestly represented a longing to transcend our historical past and racialized present. This is a country founded on independence and yet comfortable with racial domination, a country that has forever been trying to legislate the lines between whiteness and nonwhiteness, between borrowing and genocidal theft. We’ve wanted to think we’re better than a history we can’t seem to stop repeating. Dolezal’s unwavering certainty that she was black was a measure of how seriously she believed in integration: It was as if she had arrived in a future that hadn’t yet caught up to her.

It wasn’t so long ago that many Americans felt they were living in that future. Barack Obama’s election was the dynamite that broke open the country. It was a moment.

It was the moment. Obama was biological

proof of some kind of progress, the product of an interracial relationship, the kind that was outlawed in some states as recently as 1967 but was normalized. He seemed to absolve us of original sin and take us past this stupid, dangerous race stuff.

What if suddenly anything was possible?

What if we could be and do whatever and whoever we wanted? In that moment, the country was changing. We were changing.

Before Obama ran for president, when we tended to talk about racial identity, we did so as the defense of a settlement. Black was understood to be black, nontransferably.

Negro intellectuals like Ralph Ellison, Albert Murray, and James Baldwin debated strategies for equality and tolerance. Some of them asserted that to be black was also to be American, even if America begged to differ. For most of those many decades, blackness stood in opposition to white-

After centuries of w and of the races liv even if only notion gender and racial lin There’s a sense of and a smashing of one another. Well, What you won’t do for love, 2016 Gouache, house paint, acrylic, spray paint, acetate, naturally dyed paper, colored paper, and found images 20 x 15 inches

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women living alongside men, ving adjacent to one another, nally, our rigidly enforced nes are finally breaking down. fluidity and permissiveness binaries. We’re all becoming , we are. And we’re not.

This radical hope, triggered by Obama, ushered in a period of bi- and transracial art — art that probed the possibility that we really had transcended race, but also ridiculed this hope with an acid humor.

The great hidden sea of the unconscious, 2015 Gouache, house paint, acrylic, acetate, colored paper, and found images 8 x 6 inches

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Oppression, Toil, Friendlessness 1 Again I looked and saw all the oppression that was taking place under the sun: I saw the tears of the oppressed— and they have no comforter; power was on the side of their oppressors— and they have no comforter.

2 And I declared that the dead, who had already died, are happier than the living, who are still alive.

3 But better than both is the one who has never been born, who has not seen the evil that is done under the sun.

4 And I saw that all toil and all achievement spring from one person’s envy of another. This too is meaningless, a chasing after the wind.

5 Fools fold their hands and ruin themselves.

6 Better one handful with tranquillity than two handfuls with toil and chasing after the wind.

7 Again I saw something meaningless under the sun: 8 There was a man all alone; he had neither son nor brother.

There was no end to his toil,

ness, which folded its arms and said that was black people’s problem. But Obama became everybody’s problem. He was black. He was white. He was hope. He was apocalypse. And he brought a lot of anxiety into weird relief. We had never really had a white president until we had a black one.

This radical hope, triggered by Obama, ushered in a period of bi- and transracial art — art that probed the possibility that we really had transcended race, but also ridiculed this hope with an acid humor.

During Obama's past year in office, those works of art have taken on an even darker, more troubled tone as we keep looking around and seeing how little has really changed.

When the Dolezal story broke, I was partway through Nell Zink’s ‘‘Mislaid,’’

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yet his eyes were not content with his wealth.

“For whom am I toiling,” he asked, “and why am I depriving myself of enjoyment?”

This too is meaningless— a miserable business!

Two are better than one, because they have a good return for their labor: If either of them falls down, one can help the other up.

But pity anyone who falls and has no one to help them up.

Also, if two lie down together, they will keep warm.

But how can one keep warm alone?

Though one may be overpowered, two can defend themselves.

A cord of three strands is not quickly broken.

one of the four new satirical novels of race I read this year — Jess Row’s ‘‘Your Face in Mine,’’ Paul Beatty’s ‘‘The Sellout’’ and Mat Johnson’s ‘‘Loving Day’’ were the others. (I also read Fran Ross’s long-lost, recently reissued ‘‘Oreo.’’) But Zink’s was the only one that felt like an energy reading of Dolezal. Zink’s white heroine, Peggy, has run off with her daughter, Mireille, and decided to take the birth certificate of a dead black girl named Karen Brown and use it for Mireille, while changing her own name to Meg. The next year, Karen was 4 years old going on 5 and still blond. Nonetheless registering her for first grade as a black 6-year-old was easy as pie.

Maybe you have to be from the South to get your head around blond black people.

Virginia was settled before slavery began,

and it was diverse. There were tawny black people with hazel eyes. Black people with auburn hair, skin like butter and eyes of deep blue-green. Blond, blueeyed black people resembling a recent chairman of the N.A.A.C.P. Zink’s marveling description of what blackness looks like implies that it could welcome anyone. She draws a phenotypic loophole through which a sympathetic impostor or a straight-up cynic can pass.

Each of these books wrestles with the fact of race while trying to present it as mutable, constructed, obscuring. In Beatty’s novel, a young black farmer in modern Los Angeles reluctantly takes on a vulgar former TV minstrel star as his slave.

Blackness, according to this book, is as much a scam as it is a cultural identity; the undercurrents of tragedy keep lapping at the harbor of farce. Row’s novel is also

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Riches Are Meaningless 8 If you see the poor oppressed in a district, and justice and rights denied, do not be surprised at such things; for one official is eyed by a higher one, and over them both are others higher still.

9 The increase from the land is taken by all; the king himself profits from the fields.

10 Whoever loves money never has enough; whoever loves wealth is never satisfied with their income. This too is meaningless.

11 As goods increase, so do those who consume them.

And what benefit are they to the owners except to feast their eyes on them?

12 The sleep of a laborer is sweet, whether they eat little or much, but as for the rich, their abundance permits them no sleep.

13 I have seen a grievous evil under the sun: wealth hoarded to the harm of its owners, 14 or wealth lost through some misfortune, so that when they have children there is nothing left for them to inherit.

15 Everyone comes naked from their mother’s womb, and as everyone comes, so they depart.

They take nothing from their toil

that they can carry in their hands.

16 This too is a grievous evil: As everyone comes, so they depart, and what do they gain, since they toil for the wind?

17 All their days they eat in darkness, with great frustration, affliction and anger.

18 This is what I have observed to be good: that it is appropriate for a person to eat, to drink and to find satisfaction in their toilsome labor under the sun during the few days of life God has given them—for this is their lot. 19 Moreover, when God gives someone wealth and possessions, and the ability to enjoy them, to accept their lot and be happy in their toil—this is a gift of God. 20 They seldom reflect on the days of their life, because God keeps them occupied with gladness of heart.

Artistically, Miranda has created a great night out. Racially, the show tags the entertainment industry status quo with color.

It’s obviously musical theater. But damn if it’s not graffiti too.

Motions aren’t emotional, 2013 Gouache, house paint, acrylic, acetate, colored paper, naturally dyed paper and found images 12 x 9 inches

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a satire, but an eerily calm one in which a white man has ‘‘racial reassignment’’ surgery and becomes black. Row, who like Zink is white, takes guilt to an astounding allegorical extreme: The surest cure for white oppression is to eliminate whiteness. Whatever else is going on with Dolezal psychologically, you can read into her proud reassignment a sense of shame.

But racial transgression works the other way too. ‘‘Hamilton’’ is a musical biography about the very white, very dead Alexander Hamilton, in which most of the cast is ‘‘other,’’ including Lin-Manuel Miranda, the show’s Nuyorican creator and star. Some of its audacity stems from the baldness of its political project: In changing the races of the founding fathers from white to brown, it pushes back against the currents of racial appropriation. It

also infuses the traditional melodies of the American musical with so many genres of hip-hop and R & B, sometimes in a single number, that the songs themselves become something new. Political debates are staged as rap battles. Daveed Diggs’s Thomas Jefferson becomes the best good thing that never happened at the Source Awards. Artistically, Miranda has created a great night out. Racially, the show tags the entertainment industry status quo with color. It’s obviously musical theater. But damn if it’s not graffiti too.

Naturally, this new era has also agitated a segment of the populace that is determined to scrub the walls. That, presumably, is where Donald Trump comes in: as the presidential candidate for anyone freaked out by the idea of a show like ‘‘Hamilton.’’ Trump is the pathogenic version of Obama, filling his supporters with hope based on a promise to rid the

country of change. This incarnation of Trump appeared not long after Obama’s election, determined to disprove the new president’s American citizenship.

On Trump’s behalf, an entire wing of conservatism — the so-called birthers — devoted itself to the removal of a mask that Obama was never wearing. Part of Trump’s appeal is his illusion of authenticity. His blustering candor has currency in a landscape of android candidates. Yet his magnetism resides in paranoia, the fear that since Obama’s election ushered in this shifting, unstable climate of identity, the country has been falling apart.

It’s a paranoia that pop culture captured first: In the last six years, Hollywood has provided a glut of disaster spectacles, armageddon scenarios and White House sackings. But the USA Network’s ‘‘Mr. Robot,’’ which ended its first season last

They seldom reflect on the days of their life, because God keeps them occupied with gladness of heart.

Ecclesiastes 5:20

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1 I have seen another evil under the sun, and it weighs heavily on mankind: 2 God gives some people wealth, possessions and honor, so that they lack nothing their hearts desire, but God does not grant them the ability to enjoy them, and strangers enjoy them instead. This is meaningless, a grievous evil.

3 A man may have a hundred children and live many years; yet no matter how long he lives,if he cannot enjoy his prosperity and does not receive proper burial, I say that a stillborn child is better off than he. 4 It comes without meaning, it departs in darkness, and in darkness its name is shrouded. 5 Though it never saw the sun or knew anything, it has more rest than does that man — 6 even if he lives a thousand years twice over but fails to enjoy his prosperity. Do not all go to the same place?

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Better what the eye sees than the roving of the appetite.

This too is meaningless, a chasing after the wind.

10 Whatever exists has already been named, and what humanity is has been known; no one can contend with someone who is stronger.

11 The more the words, the less the meaning, and how does that profit anyone?

12 For who knows what is good for a person in life, during the few and meaningless days they pass through like a shadow? Who can tell them what will happen under the sun after they are gone?

Everyone’s toil is for their mouth, yet their appetite is never satisfied.

What advantage have the wise over fools?

What do the poor gain by knowing how to conduct themselves before others?

month, might have gotten at that sense of social collapse best. Created by Sam Esmail, an Egyptian-American, the show pits technology against the economy and its unstable protagonist against himself.

The plot concerns a group of anarchist hackers conspiring to topple a corporation; with it go the stability of world markets and everybody’s financial debt. But it’s also a mystery about the identity of its protagonist, a mentally ill, morphine-addicted hacker named Elliot. We think he’s obeying the commands of the show’s title character, the head of a hacktivist outfit, but it turns out that he has been commanding himself all along. Significant parts of this world are figments of his delusion. Elliot is at least two people. Some of the dark excitement of this show is that he might be even more. ‘‘Mr. Robot’’ is worst-of-times TV, reflect-

ing a mood of menacing instability. Over the course of its 10 episodes, almost no one was who they appeared to be. A straight married man seemed to think nothing of his sleeping with a gay work underling (and neither did his wife). A character who seemed, to my eyes at least, to be a transgender woman at some point appeared as a conventional man.

Was that a coming out? A going in? Both?

This isn’t a show I watched for what was going to happen but for who people were going to turn into, or who they wanted to turn out to be. It’s a show about the way your online profile can diverge from your real-life identity, yes, but also the way you can choose a self or a self can choose you.

There’s also the choice to ignore the matter of identity — until, of course, it starts to aggravate your complacency.

Not far into the flap over Dolezal, another alarming story took over the news, a story that challenged the myths white America tells itself about progress. This story was about Atticus Finch, the protagonist of Harper Lee’s 1960 classic, ‘‘To Kill a Mockingbird.’’ Atticus single-handedly fought racism in the fictitious Alabama town of Maycomb, and he became a window through which we could see a version of tolerance, someone holy enough to put on stained glass or money. But in ‘‘Go Set a Watchman,’’ the sequel to ‘‘To Kill a Mockingbird,’’ published in July, Atticus was given a scandalous status update: He had been aged into a racist.

I can’t recall the last time the attitudes of a single fictional character led the national news. But there was bigoted old Atticus, on the front pages, being discussed on cable. One of the most iconic

Whatever exists has already been named, / and what humanity is has been known; / no one can contend / with someone who is stronger.

Ecclesiastes 6:10

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Wisdom 1 A good name is better than fine perfume, and the day of death better than the day of birth.

2 It is better to go to a house of mourning than to go to a house of feasting, for death is the destiny of everyone; the living should take this to heart.

3 Frustration is better than laughter,

because a sad face is good for the heart.

4 The heart of the wise is in the house of mourning, but the heart of fools is in the house of pleasure.

5 It is better to heed the rebuke of a wise person than to listen to the song of fools.

6 Like the crackling of thorns under the pot, so is the laughter of fools. This too is meaningless.

7 Extortion turns a wise person into a fool, and a bribe corrupts the heart.

8 The end of a matter is better than its beginning, and patience is better than pride.

9 Do not be quickly provoked in your spirit, for anger resides in the lap of fools.

10 Do not say, “Why were the old days better than these?” For it is not wise to ask such questions.

11 Wisdom, like an inheritance, is a good thing and benefits those who see the sun.

12 Wisdom is a shelter as money is a shelter, but the advantage of knowledge is this: Wisdom preserves those who have it.

13 Consider what God has done: Who can straighten what he has made crooked?

14 When times are good, be happy; but when times are bad, consider this: God has made the one as well as the other.

Therefore, no one can discover anything

white antiracists had grown fond of white supremacy. It raised an uncomfortable question: If you had identified with the original Atticus Finch, did his Archie Bunkerization make a racist out of you too?

The public hand-wringing was a perverse refreshment because, even if only for a few days, it left white people dwelling on race as intensely as nonwhite people. This new Atticus was a betrayal of white liberal idealism, feeding a suspicion that that idealism was less than absolute — that it could suddenly, randomly turn against the people it purported to help.

the ensuing debate over the Confederate flag; about the fear of inevitable, inexorable racial, gender and sexual evolution; about the perceived threats to straightwhite-male primacy by Latino immigrants, proliferating Spanish, same-sex marriage, female bosses and a black president.

It was almost as if Lee knew, in 1957, about the mood of the country in 2015 — about the way a series of dead black men and women would further cleave apart the country; about the massacre of nine black churchgoers by a young white supremacist in a South Carolina church, and

The yearning to transcend race keeps coming up against the bedrock cultural matter of separateness. But the tectonic plates of the culture keep pushing against one another with greater, earthquaking force. The best show in our era about that quake — about the instability of identity and the choosing of a self — has been ‘‘Key & Peele.’’ For five seasons, in scores of sketches, two biracial men, Keegan-Michael Key and Jordan Peele, became different women and different men of different ethnicities, personalities and body types. They were two of the best

actors on television, hailing from somewhere between the lawlessness of improv comedy and the high-impact emotionalism of Anna Deavere Smith’s one-woman, zillion-character plays. ‘‘Key & Peele’’ granted nearly every caricature a soul.

The show started as a commentary on the hilarious absurdity of race, but it never fully escaped the pernicious reality of racism. The longer it ran, the more melancholy it became, the more it seethed. In the final episode, its anger caught up with its fancifulness and cheek, exploding in an old-timey musical number called ‘‘Negrotown,’’ which opens with a black man (Key) being arrested by a white cop one night while walking down a dark alleyway.

He says he’s innocent of any wrongdoing and asks why he’s being arrested, intensifying the cop’s anger. Entering the police cruiser, he hits his head on the car

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The yearning to transcend race keeps coming up against the bedrock cultural matter of separateness. But the tectonic plates of the culture keep pushing against one another with greater, earthquaking force.

All tomorrow’s parties, 2015 Gouache, house paint, acrylic, acetate, colored paper, and found images 20 x 15 inches

There’s also the choice matter of identity — unt starts to aggravate your The deepest vows are not always spoken, 2015 Gouache, house paint, acrylic, acetate, colored paper, naturally dyed paper and found images 7 x 5 inches

to ignore the til, of course, it r complacency.

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8:1-8

1 Who is like the wise? Who knows the explanation of things? A person’s wisdom brightens their face and changes its hard appearance.

Obey the King 2 Obey the king’s command, I say, because you took an oath before God. 3 Do not be in a hurry to leave the king’s presence. Do not stand up for a bad cause, for he will do whatever he pleases.

4 Since a king’s word is supreme, who can say to him, “What are you doing?”

5 Whoever obeys his command will come to no harm, and the wise heart will know the proper time and procedure.

6 For there is a proper time and procedure for every matter, though a person may be weighed down by misery.

7 Since no one knows the future, who can tell someone else what is to come?

8 As no one has power over the wind to contain it, so no one has power over the time of their death. As no one is dis charged in time of war, so wickedness will not release those who practice it.

door. Suddenly, a homeless man (Peele) arrives on the scene and offers to take the black guy off the cop’s hands. The cop gratefully acquiesces.

Taking the disoriented man by the hand, the homeless guy leads him through an alley door. They find themselves on the threshold of a sunny neighborhood. The homeless guy is now dressed in a threepiece suit the color of pink grapefruit meat, and he begins to sing in a campedup, zero-calorie Paul Robeson baritone about this new place, ‘‘where there ain’t no pain, ain’t no sorrow.’’ Black people in bright clothes are dancing in the streets, singing in giddy verse about the special virtues of their town: You can get a cab to pick you up, have a loan application approved, even wear a hoodie without getting shot. Plus: ‘‘There’s no stupid-ass white folks touching your hair or stealing

your culture, claiming it’s theirs.’’

But it’s clear from the start that the ‘‘neighborhood’’ is a studio backlot, and the dancers are costumed in the colors of Skittles, and their dancing involves a lot of grinning and spinning and stretching out their arms — shuffling. Black freedom looks like a white 1940s Hollywood director’s idea of it. At the end of the number, the dancers stand frozen with their arms raised in a black-power salute, as if waiting for someone to yell ‘‘cut.’’ No one does.

The dream melts away, and we’re back with the guy being arrested, passed out on the ground. The cop starts shoving him into the cruiser. ‘‘I thought I was going to Negrotown,’’ he says. ‘‘Oh, you are,’’ the cop replies, as the

piano riff from the song starts to play and the car drives off.

The show left us with a dream of Edenic self-containment as the key to black contentment — a stunning contradiction of all its previous sketches. It was a rebuke to both racial integration and ghettoization.

It split me open. I cried with laughter at the joke of this obviously fake place as a kind of heaven. I cried with sadness, because if you’re in Negrotown, you’re also in a special ring of hell.

The bitterness of the sketch made me wonder if being black in America is the one identity that won’t ever mutate. I’m someone who believes himself to have complete individual autonomy, someone who feels free. But I also know some of that autonomy is limited, illusory, conditional. I live knowing that whatever

Who is like the wise? Who knows the explanantion of things? A person’s wisdom brightens their face and changes its hard appearance.

Ecclesiastes 8:1

22

9:1-10

A Common Destiny for All 1 So I reflected on all this and concluded that the righteous and the wise and what they do are in God’s hands, but no one knows whether love or hate awaits them. 2 All share a common destiny— the righteous and the wicked, the good and the bad,the clean and the unclean, those who ofher sacrifices and those who do not. As it is with the good, so with the sinful; as it is with those who take oaths, so with those who are afraid to take them. 3 This is the evil in everything that happens under the sun: The same destiny overtakes all.

The hearts of people, moreover, are full of evil and there is madness in their hearts while they live, and afterward they join the dead. 4 Anyone who is among the living has hope—even a live dog is better off than a dead lion!

7 Go, eat your food with gladness, and drink your wine with a joyful heart, for God has already approved what you do. 8 Always be clothed in white, and always anoint your head with oil. 9 Enjoy life with your wife, whom you love, all the days of this meaningless life that God has given you under the sun—all your meaningless days.

For this is your lot in life and in your toilsome labor under the sun. 10 Whatever your hand finds to do, do it with all your might, for in the realm of the dead, where you are going, there is neither working nor planning nor knowledge nor wisdom.

5 For the living know that they will die, but the dead know nothing; they have no further reward,and even their name is forgotten.

6 Their love, their hate and their jealousy have long since vanished; never again will they have a part in anything that happens under the sun.

my blackness means to me can be at odds with what it means to certain white observers, at any moment. So I live with two identities: mine and others’ perceptions of it. So much of blackness evolving has been limited to whiteness allowing it to evolve, without white people accepting that they are in the position of granting permission. Allowing. If that symbiotic dynamic is going to change, white people will need to become more conscious that they, too, can be perceived.

It could be that living with recycled conflict is part of the national DNA. Yet it’s also in our natures to keep trying to change, to discover ourselves. In ‘‘Far From the Tree,’’ Andrew Solomon’s landmark 2012 book about parenting and how children differentiate themselves, he makes a distinction between vertical and horizontal identity. The former is defined by traits you share with your parents, through genes and norms; the latter is

defined by traits and values you don’t share with them, sometimes because of genetic mutation, sometimes through the choice of a different social world. The emotional tension in the book’s scores of stories arises from the absence of love for or empathy toward someone with a pronounced or extreme horizontal identity — homosexuality or autism or severe disability. Solomon is writing about the struggle to overcome intolerance and estrangement, and to better understand disgust; about our comfort with fixed, established identity and our distress over its unfixed or unstable counterpart.

His insights about families apply to us as a country. We’re a vertical nation moving horizontally. We’re daring to erase the segregating boundaries, to obliterate oppressive institutions, to get over ourselves. Nancy Meyers knows it. Sam Esmail knows it. So, in his way, does Donald Trump. The transition should make us

A sunrise makes you feel so small, 2016 Gouache, house paint, acrylic, acetate, colored paper, and found images 6 x 8 inches

stronger — if it doesn’t kill us first.

Wesley Morris is the new critic at large for The New York Times and a contributing writer for the magazine.

Originally published in The New York Times Magazine, October 11, 2015.

10:1-14

1 As dead flies give perfume a bad smell, so a little folly outweighs wisdom and honor.

2 The heart of the wise inclines to the right, but the heart of the fool to the left.

3 Even as fools walk along the road, they lack sense and show everyone how stupid they are.

4 If a ruler’s anger rises against you, do not leave your post; calmness can lay great offenses to rest.

5 There is an evil I have seen under the sun, the sort of error that arises from a ruler: 6 Fools are put in many high positions, while the rich occupy the low ones.

7 I have seen slaves on horseback, while princes go on foot like slaves.

8 Whoever digs a pit may fall into it; who ever breaks through a wall may be bitten by a snake.

9 Whoever quarries stones may be injured by them; whoever splits logs may be endangered by them.

10 If the ax is dull and its edge unsharpened, more strength is needed, but skill will bring success.

11 If a snake bites before it is charmed,

24 the charmer receives no fee.

12 Words from the mouth of the wise are gracious, but fools are consumed by their own lips.

13 At the beginning their words are folly; at the end they are wicked madness— 14 and fools multiply words. No one knows what is coming— who can tell someone else what will happen after them?

11:1-10

Invest in Many Ventures 1 Ship your grain across the sea; after many days you may receive a return.

2 Invest in seven ventures, yes, in eight; you do not know what disaster may come upon the land.

3 If clouds are full of water, they pour rain on the earth. Whether a tree falls to the south or to the north, in the place where it falls, there it will lie.

4 Whoever watches the wind will not plant; whoever looks at the clouds will not reap.

5 As you do not know the path of the wind, or how the body is formed in a mother’s womb, so you cannot understand the work of God, the Maker of all things.

6 Sow your seed in the morning, and at evening let your hands not be idle, for you do not know which will succeed, whether this or that, or whether both will do equally well.

Remember Your Creator While Young 7 Light is sweet, and it pleases the eyes to see the sun.

8 However many years anyone may live, let them enjoy them all. But let them remember the days of darkness, for there will be many. Everything to come is meaningless.

9 You who are young, be happy while you are young, and let your heart give you joy in the days of your youth. Follow the ways of your heart and whatever your eyes see, but know that for all these things God will bring you into judgment.

10 So then, banish anxiety from your heart and cast off the troubles of your body, for youth and vigor are meaningless.

12:1-14

1 Remember your Creator in the days of your youth, before the days of trouble come and the years approach when you will say, “I find no pleasure in them”— 2 before the sun and the light and the moon and the stars grow dark, and the clouds return after the rain; 3 when the keepers of the house tremble, and the strong men stoop, when the grinders cease because they are few, and those looking through the windows grow dim; 4 when the doors to the street are closed and the sound of grinding fades; when people rise up at the sound of birds, but all their songs grow faint; 5 when people are afraid of heights and of dangers in the streets; when the almond tree blossoms and the grasshopper drags itself along and desire no longer is stirred. Then people go to their eternal home and mourners go about the streets.

6 Remember him—before the silver cord is sev ered, and the golden bowl is broken; before the pitcher is shattered at the spring, and the wheel broken at the well, 7 and the dust returns to the ground it came from, and the spirit returns to God who gave it.

8 “Meaningless! Meaningless!” says the Teacher.

“Everything is meaningless!”

26 The Conclusion of the Matter 9 Not only was the Teacher wise, but he also imparted knowledge to the people. He pondered and searched out and set in order many proverbs.

10 The Teacher searched to find just the right words, and what he wrote was upright and true.

11 The words of the wise are like goads, their collected sayings like firmly embedded nails— given by one shepherd. 12 Be warned, my son, of anything in addition to them. Of making many books there is no end, and much study wearies the body.

13 Now all has been heard; here is the conclusion of the matter: Fear God and keep his com- mandments, for this is the duty of all mankind.

14 For God will bring every deed into judement, including every hidden thing, whether it is good or evil.

Now that all has been hea conclusion of the matter: keep his commandments, duty of all mankind. For G every deed into judgement every hidden thing, wheth good or evil.

Ecclesiastes 12:13-14

ard; here is the Fear God and , for this is the God will bring t, including her it is

28

This book was created by Nancy Fang, a candidate for a BFA in Communication Design at the Sam Fox School of Design & Visual Arts, for Type II in the fall of 2016. This book is set in Meta Serif, Meta Book, and Meta bold.

Heavenly Father, I release to You the burdens that I carry.

I cast all my worries and fears upon You. You have told me to not be anxious about anything but rather to bring everything to You in prayer with thankfulness. Calm my restless spirit with the assurance that You are in control. With open hands, I go to You. I release to Your will all that I am trying to manipulate; I release to Your authority all that I am trying to control; I release to Your timing all that I am trying to make happen.

Amen.

On the back cover Cutting up the marble canyons, 2016 Gouache, house paint, acrylic, spray paint acetate, colored paper, and found images 6 x 8 inches