Horizons 2017: NICHOLAS BYRON POWERS, Ph.D. "Black Masks, Rainbow Bodies: Race and Psychedelics"

SYNOPSIS: Psychedelics is a "white thing". It is a common idea. Many people of color view "tripping" as an effete practice of the privileged that the oppressed cannot afford. The sentiment is mirrored by the near invisibility of race as a topic in official, often all white, psychedelic conferences. Against white silence and black suspicion, more youth of color, some affluent and integrated are experimenting with psychotropics. Using literature, history and personal testimony, we can map how psychedelics have been interpreted by Black America. What did Malcolm X say about it? Or modern day Afro Futurists? Can the promise of ego dissolution work when black ego defenses are needed to withstand racism in America? Does the black experience re-frame as hypocritical, the grandiose, Utopian claims of the psychedelic movement? Or does it free people of color to embrace a radical humanism, where the spirit arcs across the sky of history like a rainbow?

NICHOLAS BYRON POWERS, Ph.D.
Poet, journalist, and Associate Professor of English, SUNY Old Westbury

BIOGRAPHY: Nicholas Powers is an Associate Professor of Literature, poet and journalist. He has written for Truth Out, The Indypendent and The Village Voice. His book "The Ground Below Zero: 9/11 to Burning Man, New Orleans to Darfur, Haiti to Occupy Wall Street" was published by Upset Press.

Horizons: Perspectives on Psychedelics is an annual forum that examines the role of psychedelic drugs in science, medicine, culture and spirituality.
More information at HorizonsNYC.org