Painting the Portrait of African Americans

In her article "Between the Eyes: Racialized Gaze as Design," Sue Hum writes, "we invent what we see" (Hum 191). The assigned readings by Sue Hum, Henry Louis Gates Jr., and Anna Julia Cooper contain a common idea: that for African Americans who have been dehumanized and stereotyped, who "internalize the white racial gaze," and who have been silenced in literature and art, it is nearly impossible to invent without limitation or to create without first responding to traditions of abuse and mockery (Hum 194).
Hum addresses this idea by breaking down the racialized gaze as Design. She argues that in order to fully understand Design we must first understand the various dominant perceptual habits that constrain and restrict English studies. The racialized gaze is one example of a perceptual habit, and it is the standard/dominant way of viewing race-related images and/or visuals. Under the white racialized gaze, African Americans are unable to invent an accurate depiction of themselves due to internalization and self-alienation (Hum 194). As such, they must instead turn to racialized gaze as Design in order to address issues of authenticity and universality. 

Gates is more focused on how race has become a trope that silences African American authors. When race is used metaphorically, or as a sign in language, it becomes oppressive. Gates writes, "current language use signifies the difference between cultures and their possession of power, spelling out the distance between subordinate and superordinate, between bondsman and lord in terms of their 'race'" (Gates 6). In order to gain humanity in the eye of racists, African Americans had to demonstrate a mastery of literature and writing. But in most cases, even if they were published people wouldn't believe that an African American was the author. 

Lastly, Cooper discusses the implications of silencing an entire race of potential creators. She argues that an accurate portrait of the black man can only be painted by "the brush of the colored man himself" (Cooper 382). But before African Americans can paint this image or write freely in whatever genre they choose, they first had to respond to preexisting rhetoric. "And so the black man's vexations and chafing environment, even since his physical emancipation has given him speech, has goaded him into the eloquence and fire of oratory rather than the genial warmth and cheery glow of either poetry or romance" (Cooper 382).

Without the ability to write, create, or otherwise make their voices heard, African Americans are unable to invent, unable to "create, or re-create, the image of the race in European discourse" (Gates 11). And even when they were able to speak, they first had to respond to the preexisting racist discourse.