Saul Williams Speaks Up About The Dress Code Situation At Morehouse

But some of the comments are heartbreaking. 

The transformative power of art was harnessed and used to knock down the walls of the music, fashion, and film industries, while the art itself suffered. Music no longer pushed against the status quo, rather, it upheld it. Movies amounted to soup'd up church plays. Public schools lost their music and art programs. Colleges and universities, such as Morehouse, found bank and business CEOs to manage their affairs and became little more than product assembly lines turning out the latest in a conservative male model that simply saw art as escape.

Freedom of expression is Art Appreciation 101 and a tenant deeply rooted in American democracy. The fight for those freedoms has placed American arts and artists in a category all their own. The role that art plays in shaping American society is unparalleled and quite often unpredictable. And the role that African-American artists play and have played in defining exactly what American art is, is undeniable. These lessons, which for me, came as a male visitor on Spelman's all-female campus serves as the basis of the sort of dialogue that has all but skipped a generation born after the Black Arts Movement.