Benjamin A. Railton's Blog, page 391
February 8, 2013
February 8, 2013: Remembering Baldwin and Buckley
[Last year, to honor Black History Month—which was created by my first Memory Day nominee!—, I remembered amazing African American writers: Lucille Clifton, Harlem Renaissance authors, Anna Julia Cooper, Frances Ellen Watkins Harper, and David Walker. This year, I’ll focus on complex and compelling historical conversations. Please share your suggestions for figures, histories, and other African American and American stories and memories for the weekend post!]
On the civil but definitely combative debate that helped signal two distinct but interconnected cultural and social shifts.On October 26, 1965, novelist, essayist, and cultural critic James Baldwin met journalist, essayist, and cultural critic William F. Buckley, Jr. in a televised debate at Cambridge University’s Cambridge Union Society. The debate’s topic was “The American Dream is at the expense of the American negro,” and the liberal African Amercian Baldwin and conservative white Buckley took the respective positions on that theme that you would expect. As voted on by the (almost entirely white) Cambridge audience, the contest wasn’t close—they scored the debate 540 to 160 for Baldwin. And I would argue that anyone who watches the debate in its entirety would have to come to the same conclusion—Baldwin, who spoke first, simply owned the occasion with his combination of eloquence, passion, personal appeals, and logical arguments; Buckley, while as erudite and witty as ever, had few if any rejoinders of substance.The debate is well worth watching for its own specific ideas and exchanges, as well as an introduction to both of these influential and talented American voices and figures. But it also illustrates a couple of complex and significant American shifts taking place in this 1960s moment, both of which have continued into the early 21st century. For one thing, thanks to the Civil Rights Movement and parallel developments, African American figures such as Baldwin were beginning to be granted the possibility that their voices could participate in conversations at every level and in every community within American (and world) society. Anyone familiar with David Walker, Frederick Douglass, Sojourner Truth, Ida B. Wells, W.E.B Du Bois, and so many other Americans is of course well aware that African Americans could have participated at that level—at any and all levels—throughout American history; but for the most part, those individuals and their contemporaries were met by a very circumscribed sphere of activity. The broadening of that sphere took many decades, many figures, many moments like Baldwin’s invitation to, and dominant performance at, the Cambridge debate—but the debate can nonetheless highlight that shift very clearly and powerfully.The 1960s also saw another national shift, however, one in a very different direction from—and indeed in some key ways inspired by—the broadening of African American possibilities. The simplest way to describe that shift is with the political concept referred to as the Southern Strategy: that Southern white supremacists switched political parties and/or were wooed away from their prior party, changing in either case from old-school Southern Democrats to Nixonian Republicans (a shift that culminated in the 1980 election of Ronald Reagan, but that perhaps is still unfolding and hardening). Yet I would argue that this shift was generational as well as regional—that whereas the white supremacy of prior decades had been, in its defining qualities, an aging philosophy, one longing for the distant Southern past; this new racism was embodied by younger (Buckley was not yet 40 at the time of the debate, younger by two years than Baldwin) and more forward-looking perspectives, arguments not about a lost or ideal past but also the kind of future America that these Republican racists hope to achieve. Which, to my mind, made this new racism even more dangerous and destructive—for when Buckley argued, in a 1961 editorial endorsing segregation, that “the cultural superiority of White over Negro … is a fact that obtrudes, one that cannot be hidden by ever-so-busy egalitarians and anthropologists,” he did so to argue for policies and goals that had real and lasting impact on our politics and society.Crowd-sourced post this weekend,BenPS. So what do you think? Responses to these figures and this moment? Other Black History Month connections you’d share for that weekend post?
On the civil but definitely combative debate that helped signal two distinct but interconnected cultural and social shifts.On October 26, 1965, novelist, essayist, and cultural critic James Baldwin met journalist, essayist, and cultural critic William F. Buckley, Jr. in a televised debate at Cambridge University’s Cambridge Union Society. The debate’s topic was “The American Dream is at the expense of the American negro,” and the liberal African Amercian Baldwin and conservative white Buckley took the respective positions on that theme that you would expect. As voted on by the (almost entirely white) Cambridge audience, the contest wasn’t close—they scored the debate 540 to 160 for Baldwin. And I would argue that anyone who watches the debate in its entirety would have to come to the same conclusion—Baldwin, who spoke first, simply owned the occasion with his combination of eloquence, passion, personal appeals, and logical arguments; Buckley, while as erudite and witty as ever, had few if any rejoinders of substance.The debate is well worth watching for its own specific ideas and exchanges, as well as an introduction to both of these influential and talented American voices and figures. But it also illustrates a couple of complex and significant American shifts taking place in this 1960s moment, both of which have continued into the early 21st century. For one thing, thanks to the Civil Rights Movement and parallel developments, African American figures such as Baldwin were beginning to be granted the possibility that their voices could participate in conversations at every level and in every community within American (and world) society. Anyone familiar with David Walker, Frederick Douglass, Sojourner Truth, Ida B. Wells, W.E.B Du Bois, and so many other Americans is of course well aware that African Americans could have participated at that level—at any and all levels—throughout American history; but for the most part, those individuals and their contemporaries were met by a very circumscribed sphere of activity. The broadening of that sphere took many decades, many figures, many moments like Baldwin’s invitation to, and dominant performance at, the Cambridge debate—but the debate can nonetheless highlight that shift very clearly and powerfully.The 1960s also saw another national shift, however, one in a very different direction from—and indeed in some key ways inspired by—the broadening of African American possibilities. The simplest way to describe that shift is with the political concept referred to as the Southern Strategy: that Southern white supremacists switched political parties and/or were wooed away from their prior party, changing in either case from old-school Southern Democrats to Nixonian Republicans (a shift that culminated in the 1980 election of Ronald Reagan, but that perhaps is still unfolding and hardening). Yet I would argue that this shift was generational as well as regional—that whereas the white supremacy of prior decades had been, in its defining qualities, an aging philosophy, one longing for the distant Southern past; this new racism was embodied by younger (Buckley was not yet 40 at the time of the debate, younger by two years than Baldwin) and more forward-looking perspectives, arguments not about a lost or ideal past but also the kind of future America that these Republican racists hope to achieve. Which, to my mind, made this new racism even more dangerous and destructive—for when Buckley argued, in a 1961 editorial endorsing segregation, that “the cultural superiority of White over Negro … is a fact that obtrudes, one that cannot be hidden by ever-so-busy egalitarians and anthropologists,” he did so to argue for policies and goals that had real and lasting impact on our politics and society.Crowd-sourced post this weekend,BenPS. So what do you think? Responses to these figures and this moment? Other Black History Month connections you’d share for that weekend post?
February 7, 2013
February 7, 2013: Remembering Booker and Teddy
[Last year, to honor Black History Month—which was created by my first Memory Day nominee!—, I remembered amazing African American writers: Lucille Clifton, Harlem Renaissance authors, Anna Julia Cooper, Frances Ellen Watkins Harper, and David Walker. This year, I’ll focus on complex and compelling historical conversations. Please share your suggestions for figures, histories, and other African American and American stories and memories for the weekend post!]
On guess who’s coming to dinner, the White House edition.In 1901, Booker T. Washington, one of the nation’s most famous and influential educators, political leaders, authors, and icons was invited to dine at the White House with the newly inaugurated President, Theodore Roosevelt. Sounds logical enough—but Washington was an African American,Washington D.C. was still segregated, and “dining” had the connotation (particularly in the South) of social equality more broadly; for all those reasons, and many other social and cultural factors, the invitation and dinner became hugely controversial. Both Roosevelt and Washington were smart enough to know that this would happen, and both apparently hesitated at their respective moments of decision (Roosevelt in sending the invite, Washington in accepting). But both went through with it, and Washington became the first African American to dine publicly with a sitting president.There would be a couple distinct ways for an AmericanStudier to analyze such an event. One would be to do our own version of what Deborah Davis does in her book Guest of Honor (see also two of the hyperlinks in the prior paragraph): to connect the dinner to many of the possible relevant contexts, from the lives and impacts of the two men to the cultural, social, political, and historical trends that contributed to the dinner’s significance and controversies. Davis focuses on the contexts leading up and during the event’s moment, but it would also be interesting to consider a few from subsequent years: to contrast, for example, Roosevelt’s invitation with one of Woodrow Wilson’s first actions as president, his segregation of the federal government. Roosevelt’s action was informal, intimate, and even, it seems, somewhat impromptu (the two men had a meeting scheduled and he decided to make it a dinner); Wilson’s much more formal and standardized and planned. Does that partly explain why Roosevelt could buck custom and much of popular opinion in the way he did? Does it further indict Wilson, that he thought through his plan to bring Jim Crow to Washington (after promising African American supporters during the campaign that he would fight for equality once elected)? In any case, the comparison would at least provide additional frames through which to analyze each moment and action.But an AmericanStudies perspective on Booker and Teddy’s dinner might also take a step back, and consider why such small events or moments can have such symbolic resonance in our culture. After all, much of what I said in Monday’s post about George Washington’s conversation with Phillis Wheatley would likewise apply here—this dinner didn’t change a thing in terms of Washington’s status (or that of any African American at the turn of the 20th century), didn’t have the slightest impact on Jim Crow laws or any other institutionalized racisms, didn’t, really, mean anything at all. But on the other hand, we AmericanStudiers tend to believe that narratives and images matter, often at least as much as realities. And if the problem of the 20th century was, as Washington’s peer and sometime-adversary W.E.B. Du Bois put it, the problem of the color line, then at least the Roosevelt-Washington dinner, as an image, as a national narrative, illustrated that it was possible for all Americans, even the most public of them, to cross that line and find some common ground—or at least some good food—together.Next conversation tomorrow,
BenPS. What do you think? Responses to these figures and this moment? Other Black History Month connections you’d share?
On guess who’s coming to dinner, the White House edition.In 1901, Booker T. Washington, one of the nation’s most famous and influential educators, political leaders, authors, and icons was invited to dine at the White House with the newly inaugurated President, Theodore Roosevelt. Sounds logical enough—but Washington was an African American,Washington D.C. was still segregated, and “dining” had the connotation (particularly in the South) of social equality more broadly; for all those reasons, and many other social and cultural factors, the invitation and dinner became hugely controversial. Both Roosevelt and Washington were smart enough to know that this would happen, and both apparently hesitated at their respective moments of decision (Roosevelt in sending the invite, Washington in accepting). But both went through with it, and Washington became the first African American to dine publicly with a sitting president.There would be a couple distinct ways for an AmericanStudier to analyze such an event. One would be to do our own version of what Deborah Davis does in her book Guest of Honor (see also two of the hyperlinks in the prior paragraph): to connect the dinner to many of the possible relevant contexts, from the lives and impacts of the two men to the cultural, social, political, and historical trends that contributed to the dinner’s significance and controversies. Davis focuses on the contexts leading up and during the event’s moment, but it would also be interesting to consider a few from subsequent years: to contrast, for example, Roosevelt’s invitation with one of Woodrow Wilson’s first actions as president, his segregation of the federal government. Roosevelt’s action was informal, intimate, and even, it seems, somewhat impromptu (the two men had a meeting scheduled and he decided to make it a dinner); Wilson’s much more formal and standardized and planned. Does that partly explain why Roosevelt could buck custom and much of popular opinion in the way he did? Does it further indict Wilson, that he thought through his plan to bring Jim Crow to Washington (after promising African American supporters during the campaign that he would fight for equality once elected)? In any case, the comparison would at least provide additional frames through which to analyze each moment and action.But an AmericanStudies perspective on Booker and Teddy’s dinner might also take a step back, and consider why such small events or moments can have such symbolic resonance in our culture. After all, much of what I said in Monday’s post about George Washington’s conversation with Phillis Wheatley would likewise apply here—this dinner didn’t change a thing in terms of Washington’s status (or that of any African American at the turn of the 20th century), didn’t have the slightest impact on Jim Crow laws or any other institutionalized racisms, didn’t, really, mean anything at all. But on the other hand, we AmericanStudiers tend to believe that narratives and images matter, often at least as much as realities. And if the problem of the 20th century was, as Washington’s peer and sometime-adversary W.E.B. Du Bois put it, the problem of the color line, then at least the Roosevelt-Washington dinner, as an image, as a national narrative, illustrated that it was possible for all Americans, even the most public of them, to cross that line and find some common ground—or at least some good food—together.Next conversation tomorrow,
BenPS. What do you think? Responses to these figures and this moment? Other Black History Month connections you’d share?
February 6, 2013
February 6, 2013: Remembering Crummell and Douglass
[Last year, to honor Black History Month—which was created by my first Memory Day nominee!—, I remembered amazing African American writers: Lucille Clifton, Harlem Renaissance authors, Anna Julia Cooper, Frances Ellen Watkins Harper, and David Walker. This year, I’ll focus on complex and compelling historical conversations. Please share your suggestions for figures, histories, and other African American and American stories and memories for the weekend post!]
On the impromptu debate, between two of the most impressive Americans, that exemplifies one of our most complex and crucial questions.One of my most common topics in this space, including in this late August series, has been the challenges and yet the importance of remembering our darkest American histories. As I wrote in that week’s third post, no national histories are darker nor more important for us to better remember than those of slavery; that’s why, whatever its flaws or limitations, I’m on board with Quentin Tarantino’s project in his latest film, Django Unchained. Yet in arguing for that importance, I can and should recognize the fact that it’s significantly easier for me to say than it is for African Americans, for those who own darkest histories and heritages are directly tied to these national horrors. For that community, it’s fair to ask whether remembering the histories of slavery is as important as trying to move beyond them and into a more positive future; and indeed, in the decades after emancipation and the Civil War many prominent African American voices argued precisely for, if not forgetting slavery, at least not focusing on keeping its memories alive.Perhaps the leader of that movement was Alexander Crummell, the priest, philosopher, professor, and political activist whose impressive 19thcentury life and career spanned abolitionism, black nationalism and the development of the Liberian state, and many other causes. In the years after the Civil War, Crummell came to feel that only by moving beyond the memories of slavery could African Americans achieve success and equality; he developed that theme with particularly clarity in “The Need for New Ideas and New Aims for a New Era,” his 1885 commencement address at Storer College, the newly founded freedmen’s college in Harper’s Ferry, West Virginia. In the audience was none other than Frederick Douglass, a trustee of the college and one of the few men who could equal Crummell’s longstanding prominence in the African American community, and Douglass apparently objected vocally to Crummell’s arguments. Unfortunately no specific transcript of Douglass’s comments exists, but throughout this era Douglass certainly argued the opposite of Crummell’s critique of “fanatical anxieties upon the subject of slavery”; for Douglass, instead, that dark history “could be traced [in American identity] like that of a wounded man through a crowd by the blood,” and so must be followed and engaged with.If we approach this debate from a scholarly perspective, as I did when I used the exchange to open a chapter of my first book, it seems clear enough that Douglass was right, that it’s vital to remember even—perhaps especially—our darkest histories. But for those African American college graduates in the audience, just as for all African Americans in the era—and, in less immediate but still present ways, for all their descendents—the question was and remains far from simply academic. Obviously there is value, practical as well as philosophical, in remembering the worst parts of our pasts, for individuals, for communities, and for the nation. But as Crummell noted, to dwell upon such memories can make it significantly more difficult to live in the present and move into an even stronger future. So the key, perhaps, is to remember without getting lost, to engage without giving in to the most limiting or damaging effects. Easier said than done, of course—but both Crummell and Douglass, and many other inspiring and influential voices, give us models for such work.Next conversation tomorrow,BenPS. What do you think? Responses to these figures and questinos? Other Black History Month connections you’d share?
On the impromptu debate, between two of the most impressive Americans, that exemplifies one of our most complex and crucial questions.One of my most common topics in this space, including in this late August series, has been the challenges and yet the importance of remembering our darkest American histories. As I wrote in that week’s third post, no national histories are darker nor more important for us to better remember than those of slavery; that’s why, whatever its flaws or limitations, I’m on board with Quentin Tarantino’s project in his latest film, Django Unchained. Yet in arguing for that importance, I can and should recognize the fact that it’s significantly easier for me to say than it is for African Americans, for those who own darkest histories and heritages are directly tied to these national horrors. For that community, it’s fair to ask whether remembering the histories of slavery is as important as trying to move beyond them and into a more positive future; and indeed, in the decades after emancipation and the Civil War many prominent African American voices argued precisely for, if not forgetting slavery, at least not focusing on keeping its memories alive.Perhaps the leader of that movement was Alexander Crummell, the priest, philosopher, professor, and political activist whose impressive 19thcentury life and career spanned abolitionism, black nationalism and the development of the Liberian state, and many other causes. In the years after the Civil War, Crummell came to feel that only by moving beyond the memories of slavery could African Americans achieve success and equality; he developed that theme with particularly clarity in “The Need for New Ideas and New Aims for a New Era,” his 1885 commencement address at Storer College, the newly founded freedmen’s college in Harper’s Ferry, West Virginia. In the audience was none other than Frederick Douglass, a trustee of the college and one of the few men who could equal Crummell’s longstanding prominence in the African American community, and Douglass apparently objected vocally to Crummell’s arguments. Unfortunately no specific transcript of Douglass’s comments exists, but throughout this era Douglass certainly argued the opposite of Crummell’s critique of “fanatical anxieties upon the subject of slavery”; for Douglass, instead, that dark history “could be traced [in American identity] like that of a wounded man through a crowd by the blood,” and so must be followed and engaged with.If we approach this debate from a scholarly perspective, as I did when I used the exchange to open a chapter of my first book, it seems clear enough that Douglass was right, that it’s vital to remember even—perhaps especially—our darkest histories. But for those African American college graduates in the audience, just as for all African Americans in the era—and, in less immediate but still present ways, for all their descendents—the question was and remains far from simply academic. Obviously there is value, practical as well as philosophical, in remembering the worst parts of our pasts, for individuals, for communities, and for the nation. But as Crummell noted, to dwell upon such memories can make it significantly more difficult to live in the present and move into an even stronger future. So the key, perhaps, is to remember without getting lost, to engage without giving in to the most limiting or damaging effects. Easier said than done, of course—but both Crummell and Douglass, and many other inspiring and influential voices, give us models for such work.Next conversation tomorrow,BenPS. What do you think? Responses to these figures and questinos? Other Black History Month connections you’d share?
February 5, 2013
February 5, 2013: Remembering Delany and Lincoln
[Last year, to honor Black History Month—which was created by my first Memory Day nominee!—, I remembered amazing African American writers: Lucille Clifton, Harlem Renaissance authors, Anna Julia Cooper, Frances Ellen Watkins Harper, and David Walker. This year, I’ll focus on complex and compelling historical conversations. Please share your suggestions for figures, histories, and other African American and American stories and memories for the weekend post!]
On one of the 19th century’s most impressive Renaissance Men—and his influential conversation with the president.One of my founding and ongoing goals for this blog has been to highlight aspects of American history, including impressive and unique individuals, that we should collectively remember a lot better than we do. And I’m not sure any American fits that description better than Martin Delany. Taken at random, even a few of his individual accomplishments would stand out even if they were singular: one of the first three African Americans admitted to Harvard Medical School (although he was later forced to leave due to racist opposition from his fellow students), and one of the few doctors who remained in Pittsburg to treat patients during both the 1833 and 1854 cholera epidemics; a journalist and editor who published one of the first African American controlled newspapers in America, The Mystery; a political activist and one of the founders of black nationalism, as well as an author whose serial novel Blake; or, the Huts of America (1859, 1862) represented one of the most complex and important literary responses to Uncle Tom’s Cabin; and the first commissioned African American field officer during the Civil War.It’s the latter accomplishment on which I want to focus here, and more exactly both the long-term and proximate causes of Delany’s commission: his multi-year effort to gain an audience with President Lincoln to argue not only for African American troops (prior to the creation of the USCT units) but also and more importantly for African American officers to lead them; and his eventual February 1865 meeting with Lincoln, which resulted both in his successful argument for that plan and also his own commission as a Major, the first commissioned African American field officer in the Union Army. The details of both the effort and the meeting, including Delany’s own extended description of his conversation with Lincoln for his 1883 authorized biography, are captured at this excellent site, part of The Lincoln Institute project within The Lehrman Institute. Much has been made, and for understandable reasons, of Spielberg’s choice to leave Frederick Douglass out of his recent Lincoln—but I gotta say, I especially wish he had included Delany. The film spans January through April of 1865, so the dates would even line up!What makes Delany’s meeting with Lincoln even more complex and compelling is that it represents one side of the double-edged mission of his life’s work. For much of his adult life, including his final public actions a few years before his 1885 death, Delany worked in support of the establishment and strengthening of separate African American nations in Africa, such as Liberia; he had, he often argued, become comvinced that white America would never give equality to African Americans, and that African colonization was thus the only practical option. Yet throughout the many decades of his advocacy for those efforts, Delany also worked tirelessly to improve the lives and communities of his fellow Americans—all of them, from cholera victims to Civil War soldiers to black farmers struggling in the postbellum South, and many many other groups and causes besides. Colonization has become, in many historical accounts, a caricature rather than a concept, just a more subtle form of racism; but while it certainly served that purpose for some supporters, as Delany proves it also could and often did exist alongside the most nuanced and impressive American and African American minds and perspectives. Yet at the same time, I can’t imagine a more American life than Delany’s—nor a more ideal American moment than his meeting with President Lincoln.Next conversation tomorrow,BenPS. What do you think? Responses to these figures and this moment? Other Black History Month connections you’d share?
On one of the 19th century’s most impressive Renaissance Men—and his influential conversation with the president.One of my founding and ongoing goals for this blog has been to highlight aspects of American history, including impressive and unique individuals, that we should collectively remember a lot better than we do. And I’m not sure any American fits that description better than Martin Delany. Taken at random, even a few of his individual accomplishments would stand out even if they were singular: one of the first three African Americans admitted to Harvard Medical School (although he was later forced to leave due to racist opposition from his fellow students), and one of the few doctors who remained in Pittsburg to treat patients during both the 1833 and 1854 cholera epidemics; a journalist and editor who published one of the first African American controlled newspapers in America, The Mystery; a political activist and one of the founders of black nationalism, as well as an author whose serial novel Blake; or, the Huts of America (1859, 1862) represented one of the most complex and important literary responses to Uncle Tom’s Cabin; and the first commissioned African American field officer during the Civil War.It’s the latter accomplishment on which I want to focus here, and more exactly both the long-term and proximate causes of Delany’s commission: his multi-year effort to gain an audience with President Lincoln to argue not only for African American troops (prior to the creation of the USCT units) but also and more importantly for African American officers to lead them; and his eventual February 1865 meeting with Lincoln, which resulted both in his successful argument for that plan and also his own commission as a Major, the first commissioned African American field officer in the Union Army. The details of both the effort and the meeting, including Delany’s own extended description of his conversation with Lincoln for his 1883 authorized biography, are captured at this excellent site, part of The Lincoln Institute project within The Lehrman Institute. Much has been made, and for understandable reasons, of Spielberg’s choice to leave Frederick Douglass out of his recent Lincoln—but I gotta say, I especially wish he had included Delany. The film spans January through April of 1865, so the dates would even line up!What makes Delany’s meeting with Lincoln even more complex and compelling is that it represents one side of the double-edged mission of his life’s work. For much of his adult life, including his final public actions a few years before his 1885 death, Delany worked in support of the establishment and strengthening of separate African American nations in Africa, such as Liberia; he had, he often argued, become comvinced that white America would never give equality to African Americans, and that African colonization was thus the only practical option. Yet throughout the many decades of his advocacy for those efforts, Delany also worked tirelessly to improve the lives and communities of his fellow Americans—all of them, from cholera victims to Civil War soldiers to black farmers struggling in the postbellum South, and many many other groups and causes besides. Colonization has become, in many historical accounts, a caricature rather than a concept, just a more subtle form of racism; but while it certainly served that purpose for some supporters, as Delany proves it also could and often did exist alongside the most nuanced and impressive American and African American minds and perspectives. Yet at the same time, I can’t imagine a more American life than Delany’s—nor a more ideal American moment than his meeting with President Lincoln.Next conversation tomorrow,BenPS. What do you think? Responses to these figures and this moment? Other Black History Month connections you’d share?
February 4, 2013
February 4, 2013: Remembering Wheatley and Washington
[Last year, to honor Black History Month—which was created by my first Memory Day nominee!—, I remembered amazing African American writers: Lucille Clifton, Harlem Renaissance authors, Anna Julia Cooper, Frances Ellen Watkins Harper, and David Walker. This year, I’ll focus on complex and compelling historical conversations. Please share your suggestions for figures, histories, and other African American and American stories and memories for the weekend post!]
On the Revolutionary possibilities yet inescapable inequalities captured by a brief Cambridge conversation.In 1775, young Bostonian, slave, and poetic genius Phillis Wheatley wrote a poem celebrating the appointment of George Washington to the role of General of the newly formed Continental Army. Never shy about sharing her unique voice and perspective with the wider world, Wheatley then sent that poem, “To His Excellency George Washington,” to the General, along with a letter extending her best wishes and defending her work as the natural result of the “sensations not easy to suppress” that Washington’s appointment had produced. Washington received the letter while at Valley Forge for the winter, wrote back to compliment her on her work, and extended an invitation for her to visit him at his headquarters in Cambridge. And in March 1776, that unique meeting took place, a half-hour conversation between the talented young slave and the general, future president and father of his country, and Virginia slaveowner.It’s not clear to me that Washington knew Wheatley was a slave when he first read the poem and wrote his letter in response (although most sources that comment on the letter, including the biographical piece at the Mount Vernon website to which the last hyperlink above connects, suggest he did already know). But in any case he of course knew her status by the time she visited his headquarters, making the meeting a brief and purely symbolic but still striking exemplification of the kinds of Revolutionary possibilities expressed in different form by the Massachusetts slaves who used the Declaration of Independence to petition for their freedom. That is, this new Revolutionary America, as Wheatley herself wrote so eloquently in her “Earl of Dartmouth” poem, seemed to embody and envisage something more than just taxation with representation or an escape from King George’s grievances; it seemed to represent the possibility of freedom, of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, of opportuities for identity and community that could go beyond any and all existing realities.And yet. Even if we don’t go to the meta-level of Edmund Morgan’s magisterial American Slavery, American Freedom (1975), which convincingly argues for the thorough interdependence between those two concepts, the Wheatley and Washington meeting highlights the period’s inequalities just as much as its ideals. There are for example the hugely different trajectories of the two figure’s lives after this meeting: Wheatley was one of the few slaves lucky enough to escape that status (when her master died and freed her), but she lived in desperate poverty for her remaining few years before dying at the age of 31 in 1784; Washington became, well, George Washington. But even the meeting itself, this symbolic gesture of American community, can and must be complicated by the contexts around it: by Washington’s slaves back in Virginia; by the slavery (relatively benign though it was) to which Wheatley returned after the meeting; by, for that matter, the slaves who no doubt worked at or around the army’s Cambridge headquarters. Both Wheatley and Washington were very good at embracing and extolling the American ideals—which made them two talented Revoluntionaries, in their very distinct but complementary ways—but remembering them forces us to confront the limits as well as the possibilities of those ideals.Next conversation tomorrow,BenPS. What do you think? Responses to these figures and this moment? Other Black History Month connections you’d share?
On the Revolutionary possibilities yet inescapable inequalities captured by a brief Cambridge conversation.In 1775, young Bostonian, slave, and poetic genius Phillis Wheatley wrote a poem celebrating the appointment of George Washington to the role of General of the newly formed Continental Army. Never shy about sharing her unique voice and perspective with the wider world, Wheatley then sent that poem, “To His Excellency George Washington,” to the General, along with a letter extending her best wishes and defending her work as the natural result of the “sensations not easy to suppress” that Washington’s appointment had produced. Washington received the letter while at Valley Forge for the winter, wrote back to compliment her on her work, and extended an invitation for her to visit him at his headquarters in Cambridge. And in March 1776, that unique meeting took place, a half-hour conversation between the talented young slave and the general, future president and father of his country, and Virginia slaveowner.It’s not clear to me that Washington knew Wheatley was a slave when he first read the poem and wrote his letter in response (although most sources that comment on the letter, including the biographical piece at the Mount Vernon website to which the last hyperlink above connects, suggest he did already know). But in any case he of course knew her status by the time she visited his headquarters, making the meeting a brief and purely symbolic but still striking exemplification of the kinds of Revolutionary possibilities expressed in different form by the Massachusetts slaves who used the Declaration of Independence to petition for their freedom. That is, this new Revolutionary America, as Wheatley herself wrote so eloquently in her “Earl of Dartmouth” poem, seemed to embody and envisage something more than just taxation with representation or an escape from King George’s grievances; it seemed to represent the possibility of freedom, of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, of opportuities for identity and community that could go beyond any and all existing realities.And yet. Even if we don’t go to the meta-level of Edmund Morgan’s magisterial American Slavery, American Freedom (1975), which convincingly argues for the thorough interdependence between those two concepts, the Wheatley and Washington meeting highlights the period’s inequalities just as much as its ideals. There are for example the hugely different trajectories of the two figure’s lives after this meeting: Wheatley was one of the few slaves lucky enough to escape that status (when her master died and freed her), but she lived in desperate poverty for her remaining few years before dying at the age of 31 in 1784; Washington became, well, George Washington. But even the meeting itself, this symbolic gesture of American community, can and must be complicated by the contexts around it: by Washington’s slaves back in Virginia; by the slavery (relatively benign though it was) to which Wheatley returned after the meeting; by, for that matter, the slaves who no doubt worked at or around the army’s Cambridge headquarters. Both Wheatley and Washington were very good at embracing and extolling the American ideals—which made them two talented Revoluntionaries, in their very distinct but complementary ways—but remembering them forces us to confront the limits as well as the possibilities of those ideals.Next conversation tomorrow,BenPS. What do you think? Responses to these figures and this moment? Other Black History Month connections you’d share?
February 2, 2013
February 2-3, 2013: The Crowd-sourced Super Bowl!
[In this week leading up to Super Bowl 47—that’s XLVII if you prefer how long-dead Romans would have referred to it—I’ve highlighted some AmericanStudies issues and questions related to football in our past and present. This Super Bowl of crowd-sourced posts is drawn from the response of the AmericanStudier who was game to share her thoughts—so get off the bench and join us, please!]
Responding to Monday’s RGIII post, Monica Jackson writes, “Not sure how relevant my comment will be because I did not hear about the Parker-Griffin thing until now, and I'm one of the people who watches E! and Style like it's what I do for a living. But, this reminded me of the twins show Tia and Tamera because they had a very in-depth discussion on one show about what it's like being black in America and how people identify you or want to put a label on you. It's especially hard for those of us who are mixed. The twins said they both identify themselves as black, even though they are half white because that's what our society would label them. I used to feel that way, but after being in Hawaii for so long (where everyone is mixed), i'm completely content not even thinking too much about it (unless someone asks me), but then every day my cousins/aunts/mom remind me that I'm legit half Native American and have seen the reservation many times and kind of have an obligation to do my part in preserving the race, hence the Native American literature symposium (which I am actually really excited about). So much pressure! Especially when all of the white people label you as black and all of the black people know you're mixed and don't fully accept you. Can't I just be f***in' American?!”Next series starts Monday,Coach BenPS. You know what to do, playa!
Responding to Monday’s RGIII post, Monica Jackson writes, “Not sure how relevant my comment will be because I did not hear about the Parker-Griffin thing until now, and I'm one of the people who watches E! and Style like it's what I do for a living. But, this reminded me of the twins show Tia and Tamera because they had a very in-depth discussion on one show about what it's like being black in America and how people identify you or want to put a label on you. It's especially hard for those of us who are mixed. The twins said they both identify themselves as black, even though they are half white because that's what our society would label them. I used to feel that way, but after being in Hawaii for so long (where everyone is mixed), i'm completely content not even thinking too much about it (unless someone asks me), but then every day my cousins/aunts/mom remind me that I'm legit half Native American and have seen the reservation many times and kind of have an obligation to do my part in preserving the race, hence the Native American literature symposium (which I am actually really excited about). So much pressure! Especially when all of the white people label you as black and all of the black people know you're mixed and don't fully accept you. Can't I just be f***in' American?!”Next series starts Monday,Coach BenPS. You know what to do, playa!
February 1, 2013
February 1, 2013: Football in America, Part Four
[In this week leading up to Super Bowl 47—that’s XLVII if you prefer how long-dead Romans would have referred to it—I’ll be highlighting some AmericanStudies issues and questions related to football in our past and present. Your Super responses, thoughts, and perspectives very welcome for a weekend post that’s sure to be a touchdown!]
On a few different ways to AmericanStudy football’s place in the Lone Star State.High school football has apparently been huge in Texas for a good long while, but the last couple decades have seen some high-profile cultural representations of Texas high school football and thus brought it to more mainstream attention. The trends goes back at least to the films Varsity Blues (1999) and Friday Night Lights (2004), although it can be taken back nearly a decade earlier to the best-selling 1990 Buzz Bissinger book on which the latter was based. And it certainly achieved another level of popular prominence during the five-season run of the cult favorite and award-winning televison show, also titled Friday Night Lights (2006-2011). In their own ways, each of these cultural texts reveals the appeal of big-time high school football: combining the thrill of sports played at a high level with the universal and complex realities of teenage and family life, the possibility of heroism (there’s a reason why “My Hero” was the theme song of Varsity Blues) with the realities and challenges of everyday existence.So I get why high school football strikes a chord, and thus why stories of the state where it’s particularly huge are compelling for American audiences. But Texas high school football is also emblematic of a significant national problem with priorities: that we’ve come to support educational athletics (at the high school and collegiate levels) more and more at the same time that we’re defunding and cutting and generally failing to support education in every other way. There are plenty of details and stories that symbolize those (at least) mixed-up educational priorities, but I’ve never encountered a more striking one than the $60 million high school football stadium at Allen High in Texas. No, that’s not a typo—this venue for high school athletics—for one high school sport—cost $60 million in public funds, money that, to quote that ESPN.com story, the school district “know[s] full well it will never recoup.” Frankly, the public funding element, aggravating as it is (although the bond measure did receive 60% approval—they do love their high school football in Texas, apparently), isn’t even the issue here—even if the $60 million were all private donations, I would say exactly the same thing: take the money, thank everybody very much, and then build a $5 million dollar stadium and use the remaining $55 million for public high schools throughout the state. Maybe that’s not legal, but it’s sure as hell logical.So I get the allure of Texas high school football, and am at the same time very frustrated by what it means in our contemporary society and moment. There’s at least one more American layer to this onion, though, and it’s probably the most complicated and double-edged of them all. On the one hand, high school football, like all sports but perhaps more than most (and certainly more than professional sports), has the potential to bring a community together, to offer unifying hope and possibility even in particularly dark and difficult times (such as ours). Yet on the other hand, while high school sports can seem to offer such hope and possibility for the individuals who take part in them, I would argue that in many (indeed, most) individual cases those things are alluring, promises of potential futures that will never come true and can instead keep the individual from focus on his or her more definite and significant next steps. (Cf. Hoop Dreams .) So is Texas high school football a source of hope or an illusion of it? Does it serve important communal and national purposes, or does it distract and take away from what we should be doing and focusing on? As is so often the case with the questions I focus on here, the answer, confusingly but critically, is yes on all counts.Crowd-sourced Super Bowl this weekend,BenPS. So help make that Bowl Super! Share your thoughts on any of these posts and any other aspects of football (or sports) in America, please!
On a few different ways to AmericanStudy football’s place in the Lone Star State.High school football has apparently been huge in Texas for a good long while, but the last couple decades have seen some high-profile cultural representations of Texas high school football and thus brought it to more mainstream attention. The trends goes back at least to the films Varsity Blues (1999) and Friday Night Lights (2004), although it can be taken back nearly a decade earlier to the best-selling 1990 Buzz Bissinger book on which the latter was based. And it certainly achieved another level of popular prominence during the five-season run of the cult favorite and award-winning televison show, also titled Friday Night Lights (2006-2011). In their own ways, each of these cultural texts reveals the appeal of big-time high school football: combining the thrill of sports played at a high level with the universal and complex realities of teenage and family life, the possibility of heroism (there’s a reason why “My Hero” was the theme song of Varsity Blues) with the realities and challenges of everyday existence.So I get why high school football strikes a chord, and thus why stories of the state where it’s particularly huge are compelling for American audiences. But Texas high school football is also emblematic of a significant national problem with priorities: that we’ve come to support educational athletics (at the high school and collegiate levels) more and more at the same time that we’re defunding and cutting and generally failing to support education in every other way. There are plenty of details and stories that symbolize those (at least) mixed-up educational priorities, but I’ve never encountered a more striking one than the $60 million high school football stadium at Allen High in Texas. No, that’s not a typo—this venue for high school athletics—for one high school sport—cost $60 million in public funds, money that, to quote that ESPN.com story, the school district “know[s] full well it will never recoup.” Frankly, the public funding element, aggravating as it is (although the bond measure did receive 60% approval—they do love their high school football in Texas, apparently), isn’t even the issue here—even if the $60 million were all private donations, I would say exactly the same thing: take the money, thank everybody very much, and then build a $5 million dollar stadium and use the remaining $55 million for public high schools throughout the state. Maybe that’s not legal, but it’s sure as hell logical.So I get the allure of Texas high school football, and am at the same time very frustrated by what it means in our contemporary society and moment. There’s at least one more American layer to this onion, though, and it’s probably the most complicated and double-edged of them all. On the one hand, high school football, like all sports but perhaps more than most (and certainly more than professional sports), has the potential to bring a community together, to offer unifying hope and possibility even in particularly dark and difficult times (such as ours). Yet on the other hand, while high school sports can seem to offer such hope and possibility for the individuals who take part in them, I would argue that in many (indeed, most) individual cases those things are alluring, promises of potential futures that will never come true and can instead keep the individual from focus on his or her more definite and significant next steps. (Cf. Hoop Dreams .) So is Texas high school football a source of hope or an illusion of it? Does it serve important communal and national purposes, or does it distract and take away from what we should be doing and focusing on? As is so often the case with the questions I focus on here, the answer, confusingly but critically, is yes on all counts.Crowd-sourced Super Bowl this weekend,BenPS. So help make that Bowl Super! Share your thoughts on any of these posts and any other aspects of football (or sports) in America, please!
January 31, 2013
January 31, 2013: January 2013 Recap
[The football-inspired series concludes tomorrow, but today, here’s a recap of the month that was in AmericanStudying.]
January 1: AmericanStudying Our Biggest Issues: Climate Change: A series for the new year starts with how AmericanStudies can help us respond to our most serious ongoing issue.January 2: AmericanStudying Our Biggest Issues: The Debt: The series continues with a post on the histories and narratives of debt in America.January 3: AmericanStudying Our Biggest Issues: Education Reform: A post on how inspiring American figures and stories can help us emphasize what’s most important in education reform.January 4: AmericanStudying Our Biggest Issues: Poverty and Inequality: The series concludes with a post on issues we AmericanStudiers (and Americans) don’t like to talk about—but need to.January 5-6: Crowd-sourcing Our Biggest Issues: A space where you can share your own thoughts on AmericanStudying our biggest issues.January 7: American Homes, Part One: A series on American homes kicks off with Cooper and promise and perils of returning home after years away.January 8: American Homes, Part Two: On Stephen Foster’s fake and troubling yet nostalgic and compelling musical images of home.January 9: American Homes, Part Three: The series continues with a post on the dark, cynical, and human portrayals of home in two Robert Frost poems.January 10: American Homes, Part Four: The layers of American meaning to Home Alone, as the series rolls on.January 11: American Homes, Part Five: The series concludes with a Guest Post from a colleague and one of the best scholars of American homes, Elif Armbruster.January 12: Crowd-sourcing American Homes: A couple responses to the week’s series and posts—add yours, please!January 13: Lincoln Redux: Having finally seen Spielberg’s historical film, I share a few AmericanStudier responses to its limitations and achievements.January 14: Back to School Hopes, Part One: Three ways I hope digital resources can contribute to my American Lit surveys, as a series on spring hopes kicks off.January 15: Back to School Hopes, Part Two: The series continues with a post on the inspirations I’ve received, and hope to receive again, from my Ethnic American Literature student projects.January 16: Back to School Hopes, Part Three: On my expectations for my own work with graduating English Majors in our senior Capstone course.January 17: Back to School Hopes, Part Four: Recent and ongoing changes to our profession and how our department continues to evolve as well, as the series rolls on.January 18: Back to School Hopes, Part Five: The series concludes with my longer-term hopes and ideals for adjunct faculty members, in our department and around the world of academia.January 19-20: Crowd-sourcing Back to School Hopes: A couple responses and Retweets of the week’s posts and themes—add your spring hopes please!January 21: The Real King: My annual Martin Luther King, Jr., Day post!January 22: Second Terms: George Washington: An Inauguration week series on second terms begins with the precedents set by our first president and first second term.January 23: Second Terms: Abraham Lincoln: Some of the best and worst elements of our most tragically abbreviated second term.January 24: Second Terms: Woodrow Wilson: The series continues with a post on some of the worst sides (in my opinion!) to Wilson’s controversial second term.January 25: Second Terms: The Runner Ups: A handful of briefer takes on other interesting American second terms.January 26-27: Crowd-sourcing Second Terms: An important response to my Wilson post. Add your takes on presidential second terms, present and past, won’t you?January 28: Football in America, Part One: A Super Bowl-inspired series begins with a post on Rob Parker, RGIII, and race in America!January 29: Football in America, Part Two: The series continues with a post on PEDs, cheating to win, and the American way.January 30: Football in America, Part Three: The American resonances of Jim Brown and Barry Sanders, as the series rolls on.Football series concludes tomorrow,BenPS. Thoughts on American stories, histories, or connections related to football (or other sports)? You can still share ‘em for the weekend post!
January 1: AmericanStudying Our Biggest Issues: Climate Change: A series for the new year starts with how AmericanStudies can help us respond to our most serious ongoing issue.January 2: AmericanStudying Our Biggest Issues: The Debt: The series continues with a post on the histories and narratives of debt in America.January 3: AmericanStudying Our Biggest Issues: Education Reform: A post on how inspiring American figures and stories can help us emphasize what’s most important in education reform.January 4: AmericanStudying Our Biggest Issues: Poverty and Inequality: The series concludes with a post on issues we AmericanStudiers (and Americans) don’t like to talk about—but need to.January 5-6: Crowd-sourcing Our Biggest Issues: A space where you can share your own thoughts on AmericanStudying our biggest issues.January 7: American Homes, Part One: A series on American homes kicks off with Cooper and promise and perils of returning home after years away.January 8: American Homes, Part Two: On Stephen Foster’s fake and troubling yet nostalgic and compelling musical images of home.January 9: American Homes, Part Three: The series continues with a post on the dark, cynical, and human portrayals of home in two Robert Frost poems.January 10: American Homes, Part Four: The layers of American meaning to Home Alone, as the series rolls on.January 11: American Homes, Part Five: The series concludes with a Guest Post from a colleague and one of the best scholars of American homes, Elif Armbruster.January 12: Crowd-sourcing American Homes: A couple responses to the week’s series and posts—add yours, please!January 13: Lincoln Redux: Having finally seen Spielberg’s historical film, I share a few AmericanStudier responses to its limitations and achievements.January 14: Back to School Hopes, Part One: Three ways I hope digital resources can contribute to my American Lit surveys, as a series on spring hopes kicks off.January 15: Back to School Hopes, Part Two: The series continues with a post on the inspirations I’ve received, and hope to receive again, from my Ethnic American Literature student projects.January 16: Back to School Hopes, Part Three: On my expectations for my own work with graduating English Majors in our senior Capstone course.January 17: Back to School Hopes, Part Four: Recent and ongoing changes to our profession and how our department continues to evolve as well, as the series rolls on.January 18: Back to School Hopes, Part Five: The series concludes with my longer-term hopes and ideals for adjunct faculty members, in our department and around the world of academia.January 19-20: Crowd-sourcing Back to School Hopes: A couple responses and Retweets of the week’s posts and themes—add your spring hopes please!January 21: The Real King: My annual Martin Luther King, Jr., Day post!January 22: Second Terms: George Washington: An Inauguration week series on second terms begins with the precedents set by our first president and first second term.January 23: Second Terms: Abraham Lincoln: Some of the best and worst elements of our most tragically abbreviated second term.January 24: Second Terms: Woodrow Wilson: The series continues with a post on some of the worst sides (in my opinion!) to Wilson’s controversial second term.January 25: Second Terms: The Runner Ups: A handful of briefer takes on other interesting American second terms.January 26-27: Crowd-sourcing Second Terms: An important response to my Wilson post. Add your takes on presidential second terms, present and past, won’t you?January 28: Football in America, Part One: A Super Bowl-inspired series begins with a post on Rob Parker, RGIII, and race in America!January 29: Football in America, Part Two: The series continues with a post on PEDs, cheating to win, and the American way.January 30: Football in America, Part Three: The American resonances of Jim Brown and Barry Sanders, as the series rolls on.Football series concludes tomorrow,BenPS. Thoughts on American stories, histories, or connections related to football (or other sports)? You can still share ‘em for the weekend post!
January 30, 2013
January 30, 2013: Football in America, Part Three
[In this week leading up to Super Bowl 47—that’s XLVII if you prefer how long-dead Romans would have referred to it—I’ll be highlighting some AmericanStudies issues and questions related to football in our past and present. Your Super responses, thoughts, and perspectives very welcome for a weekend post that’s sure to be a touchdown!]
On the parallel yet very distinct ways in which two of all-time greats left the game—and the American resonances of each.When Jim Brown unexpectedly retired in the summer of 1966, after nine seasons with the Cleveland Browns, he left football as the undisputed greatest running back in the league’s history, with numerous league records (including the career yardage mark) under his belt. Thirty-three years later, in the summer of 1999, Barry Sanders announcement his just as unexpected retirement; in his ten seasons with the Detroit Lions, Sanders had threatened numerous records of his own (he retired less than 1500 yards behind the all-time mark), and had struck many observers as the greatest running back since Brown. Yet despite these similarities, the circumstances of the players’ retirements were also hugely different: Brown retired due to conflicts with his burgeoning acting career, which he would pursue for the next few decades, remaining in the public eye throughout; Sanders refused to discuss the reasons for his retirement, and largely disappeared from the spotlight thereafter.It’s impossible, and probably irresponsible, to speculate at length about the reasons why anyone makes the choices in his or her life, and I don’t pretend to have any special knowledge about either of these particular men or cases. But given the particular circumstances and details that we do know of each, I would say that Brown came to feel that he was bigger or more multi-faceted than the sport, and no longer wanted to be contained by its limits (such as the training camp restrictions from Browns owner Art Modell that specifically precipitated his retirement); and that Sanders, on the other hand, seems to have felt that the sport and its various attendant effects and issues were bigger or more drainingthan he was willing to deal with. I’m sure that there were multiple factors in each case, and I don’t mean to critique either man in any way; instead, I highlight these particular frames as they have interesting resonances with other talented American figures.When it comes to Sanders, I can think of various famous Americans who seem to have suddenly decided (while still at their prime) that the demands of their respective worlds were intolerable and to have withdrawn from those worlds; perhaps the most extreme example would have to be J.D. Salinger. After the mega-success of The Catcher in the Rye (1951), Salinger withdrew entirely from public life and mostly from publishing; his last published story appeared in 1965, 45 years before his 2010 death. Brown, on the other hand, reminds me of those talented but fickle Americans who abandon established success in one field to pursue an entirely different one, perhaps to prove to the world or themselves that they can do so; the most common contemporary moves seem to be between the worlds of acting and music, but perhaps even more complicatedly and compellingly American are those celebrities who decide to pursue a career in politics and public service, particularly those who do so at the height of success. If Ben Affleck had chosen to run for John Kerry’s Massachusetts Senate seat, he’d have been simply the latest in that long and interesting American line.Next gridiron-inspired topic tomorrow,BenPS. What do you think? Thoughts on Brown, Sanders, or these broader themes? Other football and America stories or themes you’d highlight?
On the parallel yet very distinct ways in which two of all-time greats left the game—and the American resonances of each.When Jim Brown unexpectedly retired in the summer of 1966, after nine seasons with the Cleveland Browns, he left football as the undisputed greatest running back in the league’s history, with numerous league records (including the career yardage mark) under his belt. Thirty-three years later, in the summer of 1999, Barry Sanders announcement his just as unexpected retirement; in his ten seasons with the Detroit Lions, Sanders had threatened numerous records of his own (he retired less than 1500 yards behind the all-time mark), and had struck many observers as the greatest running back since Brown. Yet despite these similarities, the circumstances of the players’ retirements were also hugely different: Brown retired due to conflicts with his burgeoning acting career, which he would pursue for the next few decades, remaining in the public eye throughout; Sanders refused to discuss the reasons for his retirement, and largely disappeared from the spotlight thereafter.It’s impossible, and probably irresponsible, to speculate at length about the reasons why anyone makes the choices in his or her life, and I don’t pretend to have any special knowledge about either of these particular men or cases. But given the particular circumstances and details that we do know of each, I would say that Brown came to feel that he was bigger or more multi-faceted than the sport, and no longer wanted to be contained by its limits (such as the training camp restrictions from Browns owner Art Modell that specifically precipitated his retirement); and that Sanders, on the other hand, seems to have felt that the sport and its various attendant effects and issues were bigger or more drainingthan he was willing to deal with. I’m sure that there were multiple factors in each case, and I don’t mean to critique either man in any way; instead, I highlight these particular frames as they have interesting resonances with other talented American figures.When it comes to Sanders, I can think of various famous Americans who seem to have suddenly decided (while still at their prime) that the demands of their respective worlds were intolerable and to have withdrawn from those worlds; perhaps the most extreme example would have to be J.D. Salinger. After the mega-success of The Catcher in the Rye (1951), Salinger withdrew entirely from public life and mostly from publishing; his last published story appeared in 1965, 45 years before his 2010 death. Brown, on the other hand, reminds me of those talented but fickle Americans who abandon established success in one field to pursue an entirely different one, perhaps to prove to the world or themselves that they can do so; the most common contemporary moves seem to be between the worlds of acting and music, but perhaps even more complicatedly and compellingly American are those celebrities who decide to pursue a career in politics and public service, particularly those who do so at the height of success. If Ben Affleck had chosen to run for John Kerry’s Massachusetts Senate seat, he’d have been simply the latest in that long and interesting American line.Next gridiron-inspired topic tomorrow,BenPS. What do you think? Thoughts on Brown, Sanders, or these broader themes? Other football and America stories or themes you’d highlight?
January 29, 2013
January 29, 2013: Football in America, Part Two
[In this week leading up to Super Bowl 47—that’s XLVII if you prefer how long-dead Romans would have referred to it—I’ll be highlighting some AmericanStudies issues and questions related to football in our past and present. Your Super responses, thoughts, and perspectives very welcome for a weekend post that’s sure to be a touchdown!]
On cheating, winning and losing, and the American way.If one narrative has dominated the last decade in American (and international) sports, it’s been our righteous indignation about performance-enhancing drugs. From the outrage over McGwire, Sosa, Bonds, Clemens, and the Mitchell Report in baseball to the numerous suspensions in football (for everything from steroids and HGH to the current spate of Adderall suspensions), from the many stages of the Lance Armstrong saga to the seemingly constant announcements of Olympians suspended for PEDs, very few of our signature sporting events or prominent figures have been exempted from our suspicions. Given the apparently rampant PED use among college and high school athletes, I certainly understand why we’re so collectively worried about the problem, and concerned with catching and punishing professional athletes who contribute to it.As is so often the case, however, when you start to historicize the problem things get a good bit more complicated. The most common such comparison is to baseball in the 1970s, when it seems a sizeable percentage of players were on “greenies” (amphetamines) and neither the sport nor the fanbase apparently cared for many years. But beyond such specific and certainly complicating comparisons, I would also argue that the culture of American sports has long (if not always) been defined by the mentality of doing whatever it takes to win. Outraged 21st century fans like to nostalgically contrast the PED era with a golden age of sportsmanship and fair play and the like, but I’m not sure there’s ever been a moment when winning wasn’t everything, just the only thing. Pitchers, including some of the most prominent and successful in every era, have been doctoring the baseball for as long as there’s been baseball. College football’s history of cheating—from recruiting to eligibility, and of course on the field as well—has long been a part of the sport’s dominant narratives. As this article notes, the concept of basketball plays evolved directly alongside ways to get away with cheating. And the list goes on and on.Even more broadly and historically, I think it’s far from a coincidence that American professional and organized sports mostly began during and just after the late 19th century era known as the Gilded Age. After all, the self-made men and/or robber barons (depending on your perspective) who came to define that era’s successes and/or excesses (ditto) did so by taking advantage of every opportunity and/or cheating the system (likewise). As reflected in the recent debate over whether multi-millionaires like Mitt Romney who maximize their income tax deductions and loopholes embody or undermine the American Way, we haven’t moved too far away from those Gilded Age models. So is cheating to win a defining American choice, in and outside of our sports worlds? It would seem to be—but debates over and outraged responses to such choices also go way back. The more things change…Next gridiron-inspired topic tomorrow,BenPS. What do you think? Thoughts on PEDs or these other issues? Other football and America stories or themes you’d highlight?
On cheating, winning and losing, and the American way.If one narrative has dominated the last decade in American (and international) sports, it’s been our righteous indignation about performance-enhancing drugs. From the outrage over McGwire, Sosa, Bonds, Clemens, and the Mitchell Report in baseball to the numerous suspensions in football (for everything from steroids and HGH to the current spate of Adderall suspensions), from the many stages of the Lance Armstrong saga to the seemingly constant announcements of Olympians suspended for PEDs, very few of our signature sporting events or prominent figures have been exempted from our suspicions. Given the apparently rampant PED use among college and high school athletes, I certainly understand why we’re so collectively worried about the problem, and concerned with catching and punishing professional athletes who contribute to it.As is so often the case, however, when you start to historicize the problem things get a good bit more complicated. The most common such comparison is to baseball in the 1970s, when it seems a sizeable percentage of players were on “greenies” (amphetamines) and neither the sport nor the fanbase apparently cared for many years. But beyond such specific and certainly complicating comparisons, I would also argue that the culture of American sports has long (if not always) been defined by the mentality of doing whatever it takes to win. Outraged 21st century fans like to nostalgically contrast the PED era with a golden age of sportsmanship and fair play and the like, but I’m not sure there’s ever been a moment when winning wasn’t everything, just the only thing. Pitchers, including some of the most prominent and successful in every era, have been doctoring the baseball for as long as there’s been baseball. College football’s history of cheating—from recruiting to eligibility, and of course on the field as well—has long been a part of the sport’s dominant narratives. As this article notes, the concept of basketball plays evolved directly alongside ways to get away with cheating. And the list goes on and on.Even more broadly and historically, I think it’s far from a coincidence that American professional and organized sports mostly began during and just after the late 19th century era known as the Gilded Age. After all, the self-made men and/or robber barons (depending on your perspective) who came to define that era’s successes and/or excesses (ditto) did so by taking advantage of every opportunity and/or cheating the system (likewise). As reflected in the recent debate over whether multi-millionaires like Mitt Romney who maximize their income tax deductions and loopholes embody or undermine the American Way, we haven’t moved too far away from those Gilded Age models. So is cheating to win a defining American choice, in and outside of our sports worlds? It would seem to be—but debates over and outraged responses to such choices also go way back. The more things change…Next gridiron-inspired topic tomorrow,BenPS. What do you think? Thoughts on PEDs or these other issues? Other football and America stories or themes you’d highlight?
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