The situation was and is not much better in the academy, where proportionately few black students enroll in creative writing classes in highly ranked programs. Race is culture. Race is experience. Race is language. Race is modes of expression.
Race is history.
Du Bois argues that possession of culture for African Americans must include their own experience in addition to providing access to classical signposts of civilization. Moore also discusses the need for a black writers' collective in terms of positive identification. This is a danger facing all writers' collectives both within and outside of the academy. If writers' collectives provide safe harbor, this is an undeniable good. But if they are sufficiently supple to provide for genuine individuation, and the growth of participants into mature writers with unique voices, their value exponentially increases.