THE PEOPLE CAN FLY

A scholar, poet, and writer examines the not-so-hidden assumptions of race and class that constrain Black genius.

When he was 11, writes MIT humanities professor Bennett, he and some fellow sixth-graders were introduced, courtesy of a math teacher, to a summer program in New York where “we received instruction in math and science, music, foreign languages, while also learning to swim, playing chess and tennis, and otherwise expanding our horizons.” That encouragement was essential, as well as its underlying thesis that Black children were not, as widely thought, “generally incapable of extraordinary intellection, of genius.” In several case studies, Bennett delivers sharply contrary evidence. One is Thomas “Blind Tom” Wiggins, who, enslaved, earned his owner thousands of dollars as a composer and virtuoso pianist, a musical genius on a par with Thelonious Monk, Nina Simone, and Stevie Wonder. Of the last, Bennett delivers a telling anecdote: As a child, Wonder astonished house guests by identifying coins based on the sound each made when dropped on the floor. Another case is that of 6-year-old Oscar Moore, with a prodigious memory that allowed him to repeat long poems and other texts after having heard them only once. In a time when the mainstream view “denied the presence or possibility of black interiority,” such gifted, sometimes neurodivergent figures—James Baldwin, Malcolm X, and Nikki Giovanni among them—may have seemed distant outliers. But what, Bennett asks, might happen if the assumptions were turned around to suppose instead that each person contained the potential for “unchained expressiveness” and indeed genius? Bennett closes with a resounding defense of ethnic, literary, and historical studies in a time when all are under attack, using them to craft a future world “that is more loving, more free,” and certainly more ecumenical in its outlook.

An inspiring invitation to welcome creativity and intelligence wherever they may be found.