Benjamin A. Railton's Blog, page 416
April 5, 2012
April 5, 2012: Nobody's Fool
[This week, in honor of April Fool's Day, I'll be highlighting various American Studies connections to the holiday—not just to foolishness, but to pranks, jokes, and humor. This is the fourth in the series. As always, suggestions and guest posts welcome—no fooling!]
Two important American Studies lessons from one of our quirkier, funnier, and more affecting late 20th century films.
Nobody's Fool (1994) , the Paul Newman starring vehicle based on the 1993 Richard Russo novel of the same name (which I will admit, in a very non-literature professor moment, to not having read), is a very funny movie. It's funny in its script, which includes plenty of laugh-out-loud funny insults, retorts, and quips; Newman's Sully gets the lion's share, but perhaps the single funniest line is given to a judge who critiques a trigger-happy local policemen by noting, "You know my feelings on arming morons: you arm one, you've got to arm them all, otherwise it wouldn't be good sport." And it's just as funny in its world, its creation of a cast of quirky and memorable characters (who, not coincidentally, are played by some of our most talented character actors, including Jessica Tandy in her final role). That those same characters are ultimately the source of a number of hugely moving moments is a testament to the film's (and probably book's) true greatness.
Unlike many of the other films I've discussed in this space— Lone Star and City of Hope , Gangs of New York , Jungle Fever and Mississippi Masala, and more—Nobody's Fool is not explicitly engaged with significant American Studies issues. But that doesn't mean that there aren't American Studies lessons to be learned from its subtle and wise perspectives on identity and community. For one thing, Sully's most central culminating perspective (spoiler alert, here and in the next paragraph!) is a powerful and important vision of our interconnectedness to the many communities of which we're a meaningful part: "I just found out I'm somebody's grandfather. And somebody's father. And maybe I'm somebody's friend in the bargain," Sully notes, rejecting a tempting but escapist future in favor of staying where he is; while he has ostensibly known about all these relationships for years, what he has realized through the film's events is both how significant these roles are for his own identity and life, and how much his presence or absence in relation to them will in turn influence the people and communities around him.
If Sully has learned that specific, significant lesson by the film's end, he has also, more simply yet perhaps even more crucially, done something else: recognized the possibility for change. Sully's not a young man by the time we meet him, and it's fair to say that he's very set in his ways; one of his first lines of the film, in response to his landlady (Tandy) offering him tea, is "No. Not now, not ever," and the exchange becomes a mantra of sorts for the film, shorthand for Sully's routines (with every person in his life) and the fixity of his perspective and voice. So it's particularly salient that the film ends with an extended and different version of this exchange: "No. How many times do I have to tell you?" Newman replies, and Tandy answers, "Other people change their minds occasionally. I keep thinking you might." "You do? Huh," are Newman's final words in the film, and he delivers them with surprise and, it seems to me, a recognition, paired with the earlier epiphany about interconnections, that perhaps Tandy is right, and he has future shifts ahead of him that he can't yet imagine. If the American future is going to be all that it might be, that's going to depend on most—perhaps all—of us being open to change, most especially in our own identities and perspectives; Sully's only begun that trajectory, but exemplifies its possibility, at any point in our lives and arcs, for sure.
Last in the series tomorrow,
Ben
PS. Any foolish but wise films you'd highlight?
4/5 Memory Day nominee: Booker T. Washington, the former slave turned political and social leader who is perhaps best known today for his moderate approach to racial equality (particularly when compared to a contemporary like Du Bois), but whose hugely significant legacies in the fields of education, government and policy, and life writing (among others) should never be forgotten.
Two important American Studies lessons from one of our quirkier, funnier, and more affecting late 20th century films.
Nobody's Fool (1994) , the Paul Newman starring vehicle based on the 1993 Richard Russo novel of the same name (which I will admit, in a very non-literature professor moment, to not having read), is a very funny movie. It's funny in its script, which includes plenty of laugh-out-loud funny insults, retorts, and quips; Newman's Sully gets the lion's share, but perhaps the single funniest line is given to a judge who critiques a trigger-happy local policemen by noting, "You know my feelings on arming morons: you arm one, you've got to arm them all, otherwise it wouldn't be good sport." And it's just as funny in its world, its creation of a cast of quirky and memorable characters (who, not coincidentally, are played by some of our most talented character actors, including Jessica Tandy in her final role). That those same characters are ultimately the source of a number of hugely moving moments is a testament to the film's (and probably book's) true greatness.
Unlike many of the other films I've discussed in this space— Lone Star and City of Hope , Gangs of New York , Jungle Fever and Mississippi Masala, and more—Nobody's Fool is not explicitly engaged with significant American Studies issues. But that doesn't mean that there aren't American Studies lessons to be learned from its subtle and wise perspectives on identity and community. For one thing, Sully's most central culminating perspective (spoiler alert, here and in the next paragraph!) is a powerful and important vision of our interconnectedness to the many communities of which we're a meaningful part: "I just found out I'm somebody's grandfather. And somebody's father. And maybe I'm somebody's friend in the bargain," Sully notes, rejecting a tempting but escapist future in favor of staying where he is; while he has ostensibly known about all these relationships for years, what he has realized through the film's events is both how significant these roles are for his own identity and life, and how much his presence or absence in relation to them will in turn influence the people and communities around him.
If Sully has learned that specific, significant lesson by the film's end, he has also, more simply yet perhaps even more crucially, done something else: recognized the possibility for change. Sully's not a young man by the time we meet him, and it's fair to say that he's very set in his ways; one of his first lines of the film, in response to his landlady (Tandy) offering him tea, is "No. Not now, not ever," and the exchange becomes a mantra of sorts for the film, shorthand for Sully's routines (with every person in his life) and the fixity of his perspective and voice. So it's particularly salient that the film ends with an extended and different version of this exchange: "No. How many times do I have to tell you?" Newman replies, and Tandy answers, "Other people change their minds occasionally. I keep thinking you might." "You do? Huh," are Newman's final words in the film, and he delivers them with surprise and, it seems to me, a recognition, paired with the earlier epiphany about interconnections, that perhaps Tandy is right, and he has future shifts ahead of him that he can't yet imagine. If the American future is going to be all that it might be, that's going to depend on most—perhaps all—of us being open to change, most especially in our own identities and perspectives; Sully's only begun that trajectory, but exemplifies its possibility, at any point in our lives and arcs, for sure.
Last in the series tomorrow,
Ben
PS. Any foolish but wise films you'd highlight?
4/5 Memory Day nominee: Booker T. Washington, the former slave turned political and social leader who is perhaps best known today for his moderate approach to racial equality (particularly when compared to a contemporary like Du Bois), but whose hugely significant legacies in the fields of education, government and policy, and life writing (among others) should never be forgotten.
April 4, 2012
April 4, 2012: Melville's Confidence Man
[This week, in honor of April Fool's Day, I'll be highlighting various American Studies connections to the holiday—not just to foolishness, but to pranks, jokes, and humor. This is the third in the series. As always, suggestions and guest posts welcome—no fooling!]
On one of American literature's most unique and interesting, and, yes, foolish, works.
I don't think too many 21st century Americans read or even know about the mid-19th century movement known as Southwestern Humor, and that's too bad. Besides representing some genuinely American folktales and mythologies—I vaguely remember reading stories about Mike Fink in childhood anthologies featuring Paul Bunyan, John Henry, Pecos Bill and the like, but I wonder if any of those characters remain on our cultural radar in any meaningful way—the Southwestern humor stories are just plain funny, both in their outlandish events and in their ability to capture story-tellers' voices and effects. T.B. Thorpe's "The Big Bear of Arkansas" (1854) is not only a clear predecessor to Mark Twain's "The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County" (1867); it's also nearly as great an act of literary and local color story-telling and humor. You could do a lot worse, in this April Fool's week, than spending some time reading Thorpe and his peers.
At first glance, Herman Melville's The Confidence Man: His Masquerade (1857) seems likewise inspired by, or at least parallel to, Thorpe's story: both works are set on Mississippi River steamboats, and both feature multiple acts of story-telling, comprising communal conversations that are constituted out of such competing stories. Melville even ups the humor ante on two interconnected levels: he published his novel on April 1, and set it on the same day, which had for at least a few years been known as April Fool's Day. Yet as anyone who has read Melville knows, the author's sense of humor tended more to the dark and cynical than to the light and folktale-like; he expressed this perspective on humor very clearly in an 1851 letter to his friend Samuel Savage, writing that "It is—or seems to be—a wise sort of thing, to realize that all that happens to a man in this life is only by way of joke, especially his misfortunes, if he have them. And it is also worth bearing in mind, that the joke is passed round pretty liberally and impartially, so that not very many are entitled to fancy that they in particular are getting the worst of it." And in The Confidence Man, the joke that gets passed round is both dark and, like much of Melville's work, extremely prescient of ongoing American and philosophical concerns.
It would be very foolish of me to spoil the details of Melville's novel, which is, at least by Melville's standards, brief and very read-able, and well worth your time. So I'll just say that what his titular confidence man does, both by joining the steamboat's community and through his particular voice and identity, is to draw out the complexities of such crucial and complex themes as trust and deception, interpersonal relationships and our own needs and goals, and the role of stories and performance in constructing and negotiating identities. The novel's other characters represent a wide cross-section of American and human existence, and are not reducible simply to what the confidence man reveals about them; yet they can no more escape those revelations than they can determine with certainty who this mysterious figure is—or, for that matter, who any of their compatriots are at their core, what they know and what they can believe about their community and its stories. If that sounds pretty funny to you, in the truest sense of why we laugh and whom we're laughing at, then you and Melville's Man will get along just fine.
Next in the series tomorrow,
Ben
PS. Any funny stories or works you'd recommend?
4/4 Memory Day nominee: Dorothea Dix, for more on whose amazing and inspiring life and work see the post at that link!
On one of American literature's most unique and interesting, and, yes, foolish, works.
I don't think too many 21st century Americans read or even know about the mid-19th century movement known as Southwestern Humor, and that's too bad. Besides representing some genuinely American folktales and mythologies—I vaguely remember reading stories about Mike Fink in childhood anthologies featuring Paul Bunyan, John Henry, Pecos Bill and the like, but I wonder if any of those characters remain on our cultural radar in any meaningful way—the Southwestern humor stories are just plain funny, both in their outlandish events and in their ability to capture story-tellers' voices and effects. T.B. Thorpe's "The Big Bear of Arkansas" (1854) is not only a clear predecessor to Mark Twain's "The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County" (1867); it's also nearly as great an act of literary and local color story-telling and humor. You could do a lot worse, in this April Fool's week, than spending some time reading Thorpe and his peers.
At first glance, Herman Melville's The Confidence Man: His Masquerade (1857) seems likewise inspired by, or at least parallel to, Thorpe's story: both works are set on Mississippi River steamboats, and both feature multiple acts of story-telling, comprising communal conversations that are constituted out of such competing stories. Melville even ups the humor ante on two interconnected levels: he published his novel on April 1, and set it on the same day, which had for at least a few years been known as April Fool's Day. Yet as anyone who has read Melville knows, the author's sense of humor tended more to the dark and cynical than to the light and folktale-like; he expressed this perspective on humor very clearly in an 1851 letter to his friend Samuel Savage, writing that "It is—or seems to be—a wise sort of thing, to realize that all that happens to a man in this life is only by way of joke, especially his misfortunes, if he have them. And it is also worth bearing in mind, that the joke is passed round pretty liberally and impartially, so that not very many are entitled to fancy that they in particular are getting the worst of it." And in The Confidence Man, the joke that gets passed round is both dark and, like much of Melville's work, extremely prescient of ongoing American and philosophical concerns.
It would be very foolish of me to spoil the details of Melville's novel, which is, at least by Melville's standards, brief and very read-able, and well worth your time. So I'll just say that what his titular confidence man does, both by joining the steamboat's community and through his particular voice and identity, is to draw out the complexities of such crucial and complex themes as trust and deception, interpersonal relationships and our own needs and goals, and the role of stories and performance in constructing and negotiating identities. The novel's other characters represent a wide cross-section of American and human existence, and are not reducible simply to what the confidence man reveals about them; yet they can no more escape those revelations than they can determine with certainty who this mysterious figure is—or, for that matter, who any of their compatriots are at their core, what they know and what they can believe about their community and its stories. If that sounds pretty funny to you, in the truest sense of why we laugh and whom we're laughing at, then you and Melville's Man will get along just fine.
Next in the series tomorrow,
Ben
PS. Any funny stories or works you'd recommend?
4/4 Memory Day nominee: Dorothea Dix, for more on whose amazing and inspiring life and work see the post at that link!
April 3, 2012
April 3, 2012: Seward's Folly
[This week, in honor of April Fool's Day, I'll be highlighting various American Studies connections to the holiday—not just to foolishness, but to pranks, jokes, and humor. This is the second in the series. As always, suggestions and guest posts welcome—no fooling!]
A few examples of why it's not at all foolish to consider the specifics of how, when, and why America's territory expanded.
Let me get this out of the way at the start: despite having had the singular dishonor of vaulting Sarah Palin, and her erroneous and destructive visions of American identity and history, onto the national stage, Alaska is a very welcome part of our 21st century American community. Everything I wrote about Sitka in this post on complex and instructive American places is equally true of the state overall; it opens up landscapes, histories, and communities without which we'd be a less rich and diverse nation. Yet we can't fully appreciate much of what Alaska brings and means if we don't better understand the contexts of its addition to our nation: the complex history of Russian imperialism in the region; the pre-Civil War arguments over international expansion that led to the first consideration of buying Alaska, under the Buchanan Administration; and the very divided Reconstruction-era moment and Johnson Administration during which Seward finally gained approval for that purchase in 1867 (and received the funds in 1868), and which produced the very vocal and famous critiques of the acquisition.
At least as complex, and far more explicitly dark and tragic, is the history surrounding the American "acquisition" of Hawai'i a few decades later. My January 25th Memory Day nominee, Charles Reed Bishop, illustrates some of the powerful and inspiring sides to American connections to Hawai'i in the mid-19th century; yet at the same time, Bishop's struggles to hold onto his late wife's ancestral lands (on which they had started their school) in the face of pressures from subsequent settlers and big business to acquire that land exemplify the kinds of forces that led directly to America's annexation of Hawai'i. There are few historical figures whose stories reflect more poorly on the US's actions than Queen Liliuokalani (although she has plenty of competition, of course), and we can't possibly understand the place's history or meaning outside of a much fuller inclusion of her in our national histories and narratives. Such an inclusion wouldn't make it impossible to appreciate the state's natural beauties, nor its most famous contribution to 21st century America—but it would force us to recognize at which price those beauties, and the resources they include, were bought, and what that reveals about late 19th century American imperialisms.
If Hawai'i's history is one of the nation's most dramatic and tragic, the evolving story of Maine would seem to be one of the quietest and most diplomatic. Although the area had been part of the United States (and specifically of Massachusetts) since the Revolution, and had gained its own statehood in 1820, it had throughout those years served as a flashpoint for continuing conflicts between the US and England. Those conflicts turned into the so-called "Aroostook War" of 1839, a bloodless struggle over the state's borders and resources that was resolved through diplomacy three years later with the Webster-Ashburton Treaty. Besides revealing how tense relations between the US and its former mother country remained throughout the first half of the 19th century, that Treaty also illustrates some of the many other issues to which that relationship connected—besides settling the Maine/New Brunswick border, the treaty also stipulated the creation of a joint American and British naval force for the sole purpose of patrolling the African coast and "suppressing the Slave Trade," enforcing laws that had been on the books in both nations for decades but which clearly remained an issue. Engaging with the history of Maine, then, allows us to better understand multiple complex and crucial, Early Republic international influences and relationships.
Next in the series tomorrow,
Ben
PS. What do you think? And any other foolish (in the best sense) topics I should consider, or you'd like to write about?
4/3 Memory Day nominee: Washington Irving, one of America's first professional writers, a hugely talented satirist, travel writer, and biographer, and, in his creation of distinctly American folk tales, one of the most enduring contributors to our national mythology.
A few examples of why it's not at all foolish to consider the specifics of how, when, and why America's territory expanded.
Let me get this out of the way at the start: despite having had the singular dishonor of vaulting Sarah Palin, and her erroneous and destructive visions of American identity and history, onto the national stage, Alaska is a very welcome part of our 21st century American community. Everything I wrote about Sitka in this post on complex and instructive American places is equally true of the state overall; it opens up landscapes, histories, and communities without which we'd be a less rich and diverse nation. Yet we can't fully appreciate much of what Alaska brings and means if we don't better understand the contexts of its addition to our nation: the complex history of Russian imperialism in the region; the pre-Civil War arguments over international expansion that led to the first consideration of buying Alaska, under the Buchanan Administration; and the very divided Reconstruction-era moment and Johnson Administration during which Seward finally gained approval for that purchase in 1867 (and received the funds in 1868), and which produced the very vocal and famous critiques of the acquisition.
At least as complex, and far more explicitly dark and tragic, is the history surrounding the American "acquisition" of Hawai'i a few decades later. My January 25th Memory Day nominee, Charles Reed Bishop, illustrates some of the powerful and inspiring sides to American connections to Hawai'i in the mid-19th century; yet at the same time, Bishop's struggles to hold onto his late wife's ancestral lands (on which they had started their school) in the face of pressures from subsequent settlers and big business to acquire that land exemplify the kinds of forces that led directly to America's annexation of Hawai'i. There are few historical figures whose stories reflect more poorly on the US's actions than Queen Liliuokalani (although she has plenty of competition, of course), and we can't possibly understand the place's history or meaning outside of a much fuller inclusion of her in our national histories and narratives. Such an inclusion wouldn't make it impossible to appreciate the state's natural beauties, nor its most famous contribution to 21st century America—but it would force us to recognize at which price those beauties, and the resources they include, were bought, and what that reveals about late 19th century American imperialisms.
If Hawai'i's history is one of the nation's most dramatic and tragic, the evolving story of Maine would seem to be one of the quietest and most diplomatic. Although the area had been part of the United States (and specifically of Massachusetts) since the Revolution, and had gained its own statehood in 1820, it had throughout those years served as a flashpoint for continuing conflicts between the US and England. Those conflicts turned into the so-called "Aroostook War" of 1839, a bloodless struggle over the state's borders and resources that was resolved through diplomacy three years later with the Webster-Ashburton Treaty. Besides revealing how tense relations between the US and its former mother country remained throughout the first half of the 19th century, that Treaty also illustrates some of the many other issues to which that relationship connected—besides settling the Maine/New Brunswick border, the treaty also stipulated the creation of a joint American and British naval force for the sole purpose of patrolling the African coast and "suppressing the Slave Trade," enforcing laws that had been on the books in both nations for decades but which clearly remained an issue. Engaging with the history of Maine, then, allows us to better understand multiple complex and crucial, Early Republic international influences and relationships.
Next in the series tomorrow,
Ben
PS. What do you think? And any other foolish (in the best sense) topics I should consider, or you'd like to write about?
4/3 Memory Day nominee: Washington Irving, one of America's first professional writers, a hugely talented satirist, travel writer, and biographer, and, in his creation of distinctly American folk tales, one of the most enduring contributors to our national mythology.
April 2, 2012
April 2, 2012: Fools Rush In?
[This week, in honor of April Fool's Day, I'll be highlighting various American Studies connections to the holiday—not just to foolishness, but to pranks, jokes, and humor. This repeat of an oldie-but-still-goodie is the first in the series. As always, suggestions and guest posts welcome—no fooling!]
I find myself lately, in thinking about my goals for a wide variety of my pursuits—from this blog to my future book projects, from certain aspects of my classroom work to other public commitments like those with NEASA—somewhat torn between a couple of distinct emphases, both answers to King Theoden's question to Aragorn during the hopeless portion of the battle of Helm's Deep: "What can men do against such reckless hate?" Which is to say, in a moment [I wrote this in April 2011, although precious little has changed and certainly not for the better] when 62% of Republicans in a recent poll preferred a presidential candidate who does not discount the Birther garbage, when a significant number of our national conversations and narratives seem to have entirely unhinged from any discernible or even debatable reality, what is the role of a public scholar?At times I find myself agreeing with the constant refrain of one of my favorite bloggers, Digby, who believes that far too often writers and thinkers on the left attempt to take such a high road that they cede the most traveled paths to those voices on the right who are willing to shout their arguments as loudly and as passionately (and often, yes, as falsely) as possible. In a recent post she linked to an 1820 essay by William Hazlitt, entitled "On the Spirit of Partisanship," which illustrates just how much the two sides have long (and perhaps always) been unfairly matched in this sense: "Their object is to destroy you," Hazlitt writes to his fellow liberals about their conservative opponents, "your object is to spare them." Yet as tempting, and at times certainly as necessary, as it can be to fight fire with fire, at the end of the day I still believe that the most central goal of any liberal writer—and doubly so of any public scholar—should be to push back against oversimplifying narratives, to argue for more complex and dense and genuine understandings of American culture and history and identity and even politics. It's a long arc for sure, but if enough such voices make themselves part of the conversation, it can still bend to justice.
It's important to add, though, that providing such a measured and complex perspective is not mutually exclusive to fighting for an era's most significant causes, a fact that is exemplified by today's nominee for the American Hall of Inspiration, Albion W. Tourgée. Tourgée managed to be, for many decades, both one of America's most thoughtful public scholars and commentators and a passionate advocate for the issue (racial equality) about which he felt most strongly: a Civil War veteran who was struggling with his wounds in the climate of his native Ohio, he moved with his wife to North Carolina and became a Radical Republican supporter of Reconstruction and freedmen's rights there; he wrote a pair of profoundly complex and self-reflective and at times ironic and cynical novels about that experience, A Fool's Errand, by One of the Fools (1879) and Bricks Without Straw (1880) , and continued to publish works of fiction for the rest of his career; but even after moving back north in 1881 he published a syndicated newspaper column ("A Bystander's Notes") in which he argued passionately for racial equality on a variety of fronts (and against racial violence and discrimination on at least as many). His opposition in that space to Louisiana's segregated railways led to his selection to argue Homer Plessy's 1896 case before the Supreme Court; in those arguments Tourgée advanced his belief that justice should be "color-blind," a phrase which Justice John Harlan borrowed for his passionate dissenting opinion from the Court's pro-segregation ("separate but equal") decision.Tourgée was always, I believe, able to view himself and his writing with the kind of distance that keeps one from becoming a caricature, a windbag so fond of one's own voice and arguments that no one not already convinced will even listen. Yet he most certainly did not fear to tread into some of his era's most divisive and difficult questions, and in fact advanced the same kind of measured and reasoned and profoundly impressive ideas there that his Reconstruction novels force an audience to confront. Inspiring, and not at all foolish, for sure. Next post in the series tomorrow,
BenPS. What do you think? And any foolishness-related nominations for future posts in the series?
4/2 Memory Day nominee: Marvin Gaye, the Motown pioneer, producer, and legend who remains one of the few American popular artists able to create, with equal ease and complete success, socially conscious, lastingly catchy, and irresistibly sexy music.
I find myself lately, in thinking about my goals for a wide variety of my pursuits—from this blog to my future book projects, from certain aspects of my classroom work to other public commitments like those with NEASA—somewhat torn between a couple of distinct emphases, both answers to King Theoden's question to Aragorn during the hopeless portion of the battle of Helm's Deep: "What can men do against such reckless hate?" Which is to say, in a moment [I wrote this in April 2011, although precious little has changed and certainly not for the better] when 62% of Republicans in a recent poll preferred a presidential candidate who does not discount the Birther garbage, when a significant number of our national conversations and narratives seem to have entirely unhinged from any discernible or even debatable reality, what is the role of a public scholar?At times I find myself agreeing with the constant refrain of one of my favorite bloggers, Digby, who believes that far too often writers and thinkers on the left attempt to take such a high road that they cede the most traveled paths to those voices on the right who are willing to shout their arguments as loudly and as passionately (and often, yes, as falsely) as possible. In a recent post she linked to an 1820 essay by William Hazlitt, entitled "On the Spirit of Partisanship," which illustrates just how much the two sides have long (and perhaps always) been unfairly matched in this sense: "Their object is to destroy you," Hazlitt writes to his fellow liberals about their conservative opponents, "your object is to spare them." Yet as tempting, and at times certainly as necessary, as it can be to fight fire with fire, at the end of the day I still believe that the most central goal of any liberal writer—and doubly so of any public scholar—should be to push back against oversimplifying narratives, to argue for more complex and dense and genuine understandings of American culture and history and identity and even politics. It's a long arc for sure, but if enough such voices make themselves part of the conversation, it can still bend to justice.
It's important to add, though, that providing such a measured and complex perspective is not mutually exclusive to fighting for an era's most significant causes, a fact that is exemplified by today's nominee for the American Hall of Inspiration, Albion W. Tourgée. Tourgée managed to be, for many decades, both one of America's most thoughtful public scholars and commentators and a passionate advocate for the issue (racial equality) about which he felt most strongly: a Civil War veteran who was struggling with his wounds in the climate of his native Ohio, he moved with his wife to North Carolina and became a Radical Republican supporter of Reconstruction and freedmen's rights there; he wrote a pair of profoundly complex and self-reflective and at times ironic and cynical novels about that experience, A Fool's Errand, by One of the Fools (1879) and Bricks Without Straw (1880) , and continued to publish works of fiction for the rest of his career; but even after moving back north in 1881 he published a syndicated newspaper column ("A Bystander's Notes") in which he argued passionately for racial equality on a variety of fronts (and against racial violence and discrimination on at least as many). His opposition in that space to Louisiana's segregated railways led to his selection to argue Homer Plessy's 1896 case before the Supreme Court; in those arguments Tourgée advanced his belief that justice should be "color-blind," a phrase which Justice John Harlan borrowed for his passionate dissenting opinion from the Court's pro-segregation ("separate but equal") decision.Tourgée was always, I believe, able to view himself and his writing with the kind of distance that keeps one from becoming a caricature, a windbag so fond of one's own voice and arguments that no one not already convinced will even listen. Yet he most certainly did not fear to tread into some of his era's most divisive and difficult questions, and in fact advanced the same kind of measured and reasoned and profoundly impressive ideas there that his Reconstruction novels force an audience to confront. Inspiring, and not at all foolish, for sure. Next post in the series tomorrow,
BenPS. What do you think? And any foolishness-related nominations for future posts in the series?
4/2 Memory Day nominee: Marvin Gaye, the Motown pioneer, producer, and legend who remains one of the few American popular artists able to create, with equal ease and complete success, socially conscious, lastingly catchy, and irresistibly sexy music.
March 31, 2012
March 31-April 1, 2012: Race, President Obama, and Us
[The sixth post in my series on race in contemporary America. The final post in the series for now, and one that asks for, nay demands, your input as well! I'd also love to return to this series down the road, so please still feel free to share other ideas or guest posts on these topics.]
American Studies and the elephant in the room when it comes to race in contemporary America.
The early 2008 Reverend Wright controversy and Obama's "A More Perfect Union" speech in response, as well as the responses on the right that Obama had "thrown his grandmother under the bus" in part of that speech. The competing visions of the election itself: as a triumph of a "post-racial America," as the culmination of the Civil Rights movement, or as an election stolen by ACORN. The literally untold numbers of racist images, jokes, slurs, and narratives created by Obama's opponents. The books, whether attacking Obama's identity (such as one on his "Kenyan anti-colonial worldview"), highlighting its symbolic power, or simply analyzing its racial and ethnic contexts. It's no stretch to say that race has been the single most consistently defining aspect of Obama's national presence over the last four years, and no long-shot to say that it will be just as defining in the upcoming election as well.
Yet aside from the more complex, scholarly engagements provided by books like the last two linked in that sentence above—and possibly by other books by up-and-coming young American Studiers—it's also fair to say that we haven't, in our collective conversations about the issue, analyzed race and Obama so much as deployed narratives in that general direction. Perhaps that's a given—certainly much (all?) of our politics these days consists of deploying narratives rather than analyzing—but us American Studiers can and should work to push those conversations in more analytical and meaningful directions. Take, for example, the 2010 moment when Obama self-identified on the census as "black/African Am": it might be impossible for our current racial narratives to deal with that moment with any real complexity; whereas an American Studies perspective could connect that complex choice to the long histories of mixed race Americans' self-images and identities, to literary and cultural representations of those identities, to questions of passing and racial definitions and community in America, to David Hollinger's emphases on "voluntary affiliations" as a new defining 21st century category of identity, to the evolution of the census itself (which had in 2000 for the first time included a separate category for "mixed race," one checked by 6.8 million Americans; yet which had cut that category for the 2010 census), and more.
That's one example; it will come as a significant shock to you all, I'm sure, that I could go into another half-dozen or –million more. But as I have tried to do in the past, and will of course keep trying to do, I'd rather turn the American Studying over to you guys instead. So tell me: to what American histories, questions, issues, images, ideas, debates, figures, or stories would you turn to develop American Studies analyses of President Obama? Obviously that can and should go well beyond race, and wherever your American Studies perspectives take you and us will be very welcome; although I'd certainly be interested to hear your connections through this specific lens of race as well. In any case, I'd much, much rather end this week's series by adding some more voices and perspectives into the mix than by continuing to simply feature my own. So have at it! If you don't want to log in to post a comment, email 'em to me (brailton@fitchburgstate.edu)! Or Tweet 'em (@AmericanStudier)!
More next week,
Ben
PS. You know what to do!
3/31 Memory Day nominee: César Chávez, the Mexican American activist and labor leader whose efforts on behalf of farm workers and migrant laborers changed the face of American politics, society, and community in the 20th century and beyond.
4/1 Memory Day nominee: Scott Joplin, the son of a slave and sharecropper who helped create a new genre of distinctly American music and profoundly influenced both his own era and the next century of national and world culture.
American Studies and the elephant in the room when it comes to race in contemporary America.
The early 2008 Reverend Wright controversy and Obama's "A More Perfect Union" speech in response, as well as the responses on the right that Obama had "thrown his grandmother under the bus" in part of that speech. The competing visions of the election itself: as a triumph of a "post-racial America," as the culmination of the Civil Rights movement, or as an election stolen by ACORN. The literally untold numbers of racist images, jokes, slurs, and narratives created by Obama's opponents. The books, whether attacking Obama's identity (such as one on his "Kenyan anti-colonial worldview"), highlighting its symbolic power, or simply analyzing its racial and ethnic contexts. It's no stretch to say that race has been the single most consistently defining aspect of Obama's national presence over the last four years, and no long-shot to say that it will be just as defining in the upcoming election as well.
Yet aside from the more complex, scholarly engagements provided by books like the last two linked in that sentence above—and possibly by other books by up-and-coming young American Studiers—it's also fair to say that we haven't, in our collective conversations about the issue, analyzed race and Obama so much as deployed narratives in that general direction. Perhaps that's a given—certainly much (all?) of our politics these days consists of deploying narratives rather than analyzing—but us American Studiers can and should work to push those conversations in more analytical and meaningful directions. Take, for example, the 2010 moment when Obama self-identified on the census as "black/African Am": it might be impossible for our current racial narratives to deal with that moment with any real complexity; whereas an American Studies perspective could connect that complex choice to the long histories of mixed race Americans' self-images and identities, to literary and cultural representations of those identities, to questions of passing and racial definitions and community in America, to David Hollinger's emphases on "voluntary affiliations" as a new defining 21st century category of identity, to the evolution of the census itself (which had in 2000 for the first time included a separate category for "mixed race," one checked by 6.8 million Americans; yet which had cut that category for the 2010 census), and more.
That's one example; it will come as a significant shock to you all, I'm sure, that I could go into another half-dozen or –million more. But as I have tried to do in the past, and will of course keep trying to do, I'd rather turn the American Studying over to you guys instead. So tell me: to what American histories, questions, issues, images, ideas, debates, figures, or stories would you turn to develop American Studies analyses of President Obama? Obviously that can and should go well beyond race, and wherever your American Studies perspectives take you and us will be very welcome; although I'd certainly be interested to hear your connections through this specific lens of race as well. In any case, I'd much, much rather end this week's series by adding some more voices and perspectives into the mix than by continuing to simply feature my own. So have at it! If you don't want to log in to post a comment, email 'em to me (brailton@fitchburgstate.edu)! Or Tweet 'em (@AmericanStudier)!
More next week,
Ben
PS. You know what to do!
3/31 Memory Day nominee: César Chávez, the Mexican American activist and labor leader whose efforts on behalf of farm workers and migrant laborers changed the face of American politics, society, and community in the 20th century and beyond.
4/1 Memory Day nominee: Scott Joplin, the son of a slave and sharecropper who helped create a new genre of distinctly American music and profoundly influenced both his own era and the next century of national and world culture.
March 30, 2012
March 30, 2012: Race and Technology
[The fifth post in my series on race in contemporary America. Remember that your suggestions, and guest posts, are still very welcome!]
Three angles on a particularly tough and important contemporary question.
My first angle on the question of how and where race plays into our 21st century world of technology is also a guest post of sorts, and the reason for this piece: my fellow American Studier Jen Rhee read some of my other blog posts related to race and contacted me to share a graphic that focuses on the question of race and technology. The graphic is here: http://www.onlineitdegree.net/is-tech-racist/ and largely speaks for itself: it introduces in relatively quick and broad strokes many complex questions, each of which could be investigated and analyzed further (which is, I believe, precisely the graphic's fundamental point and goal); but even in its brief space it makes a compelling case that technology is not nearly as color-blind as we might like to believe.
My second angle connects to one of the graphic's first main focal points, the question of how much support and opportunity black entrepreneurs in the tech industry receive (particularly as compared to white entrepreneurs). This past fall, as part of
If those questions of entrepreneurship address the upper levels of a world like tech, my third angle connects instead to questions about the tech world's base. In one of my Steve Jobs-inspired posts, I wrote about what I called there the messy, troubling, democratizing machine; my interest was in how technological advances have long offered Americans greater access to the world around them while at the same time threatening that world in various ways. As the graphic argues, and as various other analyses and studies have illustrated, our most recent technological advances definitely have the potential to reinforce or even exacerbate racial divisions or hierarchies, and certainly can't be viewed simply as the marvelous panaceas that they sometimes appear to be. Yet on the other hand, analyses such as this one have found Twitter (for example) to be strikingly open to African American and other minority voices, an open-ness that could parallel the liberating role that Twitter played in Iran's Green Revolution of 2009. Messy, troubling, and democratizing indeed.
Next in the series this weekend,
Ben
PS. What do you think?
3/30 Memory Day nominees: A tie between Mary Whiton Calkins, the pioneering psychologist and women's rights activist whose concept of "self-psychology" fundamentally altered the study of human identities; and Countee Cullen, the hugely talented and unique Harlem Renaissance poet (and W.E.B. Du Bois's son-in-law!).
Three angles on a particularly tough and important contemporary question.
My first angle on the question of how and where race plays into our 21st century world of technology is also a guest post of sorts, and the reason for this piece: my fellow American Studier Jen Rhee read some of my other blog posts related to race and contacted me to share a graphic that focuses on the question of race and technology. The graphic is here: http://www.onlineitdegree.net/is-tech-racist/ and largely speaks for itself: it introduces in relatively quick and broad strokes many complex questions, each of which could be investigated and analyzed further (which is, I believe, precisely the graphic's fundamental point and goal); but even in its brief space it makes a compelling case that technology is not nearly as color-blind as we might like to believe.
My second angle connects to one of the graphic's first main focal points, the question of how much support and opportunity black entrepreneurs in the tech industry receive (particularly as compared to white entrepreneurs). This past fall, as part of
If those questions of entrepreneurship address the upper levels of a world like tech, my third angle connects instead to questions about the tech world's base. In one of my Steve Jobs-inspired posts, I wrote about what I called there the messy, troubling, democratizing machine; my interest was in how technological advances have long offered Americans greater access to the world around them while at the same time threatening that world in various ways. As the graphic argues, and as various other analyses and studies have illustrated, our most recent technological advances definitely have the potential to reinforce or even exacerbate racial divisions or hierarchies, and certainly can't be viewed simply as the marvelous panaceas that they sometimes appear to be. Yet on the other hand, analyses such as this one have found Twitter (for example) to be strikingly open to African American and other minority voices, an open-ness that could parallel the liberating role that Twitter played in Iran's Green Revolution of 2009. Messy, troubling, and democratizing indeed.
Next in the series this weekend,
Ben
PS. What do you think?
3/30 Memory Day nominees: A tie between Mary Whiton Calkins, the pioneering psychologist and women's rights activist whose concept of "self-psychology" fundamentally altered the study of human identities; and Countee Cullen, the hugely talented and unique Harlem Renaissance poet (and W.E.B. Du Bois's son-in-law!).
March 29, 2012
March 29, 2012: Racism in Contemporary America
[The fourth post in my series on race in contemporary America. Remember that your suggestions, and guest posts, are very welcome!]
The difficult but important task of separating the wheat from the chaff when it comes to charges of racism.
Most of the time I give virtually no credence to the idea that "political correctness" has been a force for ill in our contemporary society—perhaps because I almost always hear that idea advanced by bigots who miss the ability to express their bigotry without fear of the consequences—but a couple recent cases have illustrated that worries about perceived racism can indeed reach a silly and yet destructive level. In addressing the New York Knicks' first real losing streak of the Jeremy Lin era, three different sports journalists used the clichéd phrase "a chink in the armor"; it seems as clear as it can be, to me, that in all three cases the journalists did not think for a moment about the racist version of that first word, and in fact no public outrage or even offense was expressed in any of the cases. Yet the journalists' organizations took extreme steps in response, not only apologizing for the potential offenses but punishing the journalists—ESPN fired the young website producer who had written its headline and suspended the host who had used the phrase, while MSG "disciplined" the broadcaster who used it.
The real problem with these incidents isn't just that the figures in them were harshly punished (at least in the case of the fired ESPN producer) for, at best, questionable mistakes; it's also and especially that such over-reactions on behalf of perceived (or even hypothetical) offenses can make it seem as if the concept of racism has indeed become simply a matter of over-sensitivity and "political correctness" run amuck. And that perspective, in turn, can make it easier for actual expressions of racist beliefs to return to our public discourse, framed for example as the harmless views of "non-racist racists." That phrase is precisely how a Rutgers University graduate student described herself, in a December 2011 letter inviting fellow students to a viewing party for the Walt Disney film Song of the South (as subsequently reported by some of those students to the University newspaper); the student went on to express a desire for her attendees to bring their own "Darkeyisms," and warned potential guests that she "might yell racist things at the TV." After the newspaper article appeared, the party itself apparently never happened, Rutgers apologized for the letter, and the whole incident could be seen as another case of making a mountain out of a relatively non-existent molehill; yet I believe that phrase "non-racist racist" is instead a very telling one in our contemporary culture.
After all, the two most prominent late 20th and early 21st century histories related to race in America suggest that we have made great strides in achieving racial equality: the Civil Rights Movement can be rightly seen as the beginning of those strides; and the election of Barack Obama to the Presidency, particularly when coupled with other noteworthy individual achievements such as Sonia Sotomayor's nomination to the Supreme Court, can and has been read as a culmination of those strides, as what Civil Rights leader John Lewis famously called "what comes at the end of that bridge in Selma." It was in part in response to this link that former Reagan Secretary of Education William Bennett said after Obama's election that "you don't take excuses any more from anybody who says, 'The deck is stacked.'" Yet Bennett's assertion can be framed instead as precisely an example of this non-racist racism, as a statement ostensibly in support of an equal, post-racial society that in fact directly attacks all those African Americans (and other minorities) in whose lives institutional racism and other discriminations continue to play significant roles. It would be the deepest of ironies if some of the most ideal and hopeful progressive America moments contributed to a backlash of bigotry and hatred, to a return of the kinds of divisive perspectives that were the national norm before those advances; but America is no stranger to ironic turns of history, and the worst thing we American Studiers could do is to pretend that such racisms have not returned, and are not worth combating.
Next in the series tomorrow,
Ben
PS. What do you think?
3/29 Memory Day nominee: Enea Bossi, Sr., the Italian American immigrant and aviation engineer who co-founded the American Aeronautical Corporation (AAC), built the first stainless steel airplane (the BB-1) in 1931, and invented the pedal glider, among other significant achievements.
The difficult but important task of separating the wheat from the chaff when it comes to charges of racism.
Most of the time I give virtually no credence to the idea that "political correctness" has been a force for ill in our contemporary society—perhaps because I almost always hear that idea advanced by bigots who miss the ability to express their bigotry without fear of the consequences—but a couple recent cases have illustrated that worries about perceived racism can indeed reach a silly and yet destructive level. In addressing the New York Knicks' first real losing streak of the Jeremy Lin era, three different sports journalists used the clichéd phrase "a chink in the armor"; it seems as clear as it can be, to me, that in all three cases the journalists did not think for a moment about the racist version of that first word, and in fact no public outrage or even offense was expressed in any of the cases. Yet the journalists' organizations took extreme steps in response, not only apologizing for the potential offenses but punishing the journalists—ESPN fired the young website producer who had written its headline and suspended the host who had used the phrase, while MSG "disciplined" the broadcaster who used it.
The real problem with these incidents isn't just that the figures in them were harshly punished (at least in the case of the fired ESPN producer) for, at best, questionable mistakes; it's also and especially that such over-reactions on behalf of perceived (or even hypothetical) offenses can make it seem as if the concept of racism has indeed become simply a matter of over-sensitivity and "political correctness" run amuck. And that perspective, in turn, can make it easier for actual expressions of racist beliefs to return to our public discourse, framed for example as the harmless views of "non-racist racists." That phrase is precisely how a Rutgers University graduate student described herself, in a December 2011 letter inviting fellow students to a viewing party for the Walt Disney film Song of the South (as subsequently reported by some of those students to the University newspaper); the student went on to express a desire for her attendees to bring their own "Darkeyisms," and warned potential guests that she "might yell racist things at the TV." After the newspaper article appeared, the party itself apparently never happened, Rutgers apologized for the letter, and the whole incident could be seen as another case of making a mountain out of a relatively non-existent molehill; yet I believe that phrase "non-racist racist" is instead a very telling one in our contemporary culture.
After all, the two most prominent late 20th and early 21st century histories related to race in America suggest that we have made great strides in achieving racial equality: the Civil Rights Movement can be rightly seen as the beginning of those strides; and the election of Barack Obama to the Presidency, particularly when coupled with other noteworthy individual achievements such as Sonia Sotomayor's nomination to the Supreme Court, can and has been read as a culmination of those strides, as what Civil Rights leader John Lewis famously called "what comes at the end of that bridge in Selma." It was in part in response to this link that former Reagan Secretary of Education William Bennett said after Obama's election that "you don't take excuses any more from anybody who says, 'The deck is stacked.'" Yet Bennett's assertion can be framed instead as precisely an example of this non-racist racism, as a statement ostensibly in support of an equal, post-racial society that in fact directly attacks all those African Americans (and other minorities) in whose lives institutional racism and other discriminations continue to play significant roles. It would be the deepest of ironies if some of the most ideal and hopeful progressive America moments contributed to a backlash of bigotry and hatred, to a return of the kinds of divisive perspectives that were the national norm before those advances; but America is no stranger to ironic turns of history, and the worst thing we American Studiers could do is to pretend that such racisms have not returned, and are not worth combating.
Next in the series tomorrow,
Ben
PS. What do you think?
3/29 Memory Day nominee: Enea Bossi, Sr., the Italian American immigrant and aviation engineer who co-founded the American Aeronautical Corporation (AAC), built the first stainless steel airplane (the BB-1) in 1931, and invented the pedal glider, among other significant achievements.
March 28, 2012
March 28, 2012: Race and The Hunger Games
[The third post in my series on race in contemporary America. Remember that your suggestions, and guest posts, are very welcome!]
Trying to make sense of the latest version of the racist ugliness that seems to bubble up so frequently in our collective online consciousness.
It's one of our most common and accurate truisms that there are few places more discouraging and unsettling than the comment threads on virtually any web article or piece. In point of fact, those rare blogs or sites where the comment discussions operate at a typically high quality, both in tone and in substance—such as at Ta-Nehisi Coates' and Joe Posnanski's blogs, to cite two writers I've referenced before in this space—are unique enough to merit notice; at the rest, vitriol and garbage reign supreme. And while there are various factors to which we could attribute that trend—especially the anonymity and freedom that online commenting allow—such arguments would explain only why the vitriol is being shared, not its source; that is, the kinds of racist garbage that constitutes (for example) a significant percentage of comments on many of the articles on the Trayvon Martin case, including
It's tough to say whether another contemporary, indeed very recent, explosion of such racist hatred—the racist responses offered by many fans of The Hunger Games to the casting of a young black actress to play one of the film's characters—is more or less surprising than that inspired by the Martin story. On the one hand, rabid fans of a work tend to react with vitriol to any perceived changes when that work is adapted or represented; those of us who witnessed the collective fan-boy horror at the concept of "flames on Optimus" in the first Transformers film can attest to this phenomenon. Yet on the other hand, this particular outburst is still surprising for at least two distinct reasons: the character in question, Rue, is explicitly describe in Suzanne Collins' book as having "dark brown skin" (as is another kid from the same region/community later in the novel); and even if Collins' dedicated readers had missed those details, the film apparently portrays the character's actions and plotline identically to the novel, making the perceived "change" in race seemingly a superficial shift. Yet instead (as the linked article above details), many fans have responded to it as a change that "ruins the film," and some, as represented by the fan who Tweeted that when he "found out Rue was black her death wasn't as sad," have gone much further still.
There would be many ways to analyze those responses, but for me they're particularly interesting, and saddening, as examples of why empathy, particularly across racial and other communal lines, can be such a tough connection for us Americans to make. Identifying with, and often even (as in the case of a seemingly beloved character like Rue) loving, a fictional character is a definite act of imaginative connection; and the responses to Rue's cinematic race illustrate just how much such imaginative connections require, for many of us at least, that the character in question feel identical to us in key, defining attributes such as race. While I'm sure that some of the angry Hunger Games fans are explicitly racist in other ways as well, my guess is that many—perhaps even the aforementioned Tweeter, who appended the phrase "I hate myself" to his response—surprised themselves with the recognition that the race of their beloved character mattered as much to them as it did. And while seeing their racism in that light might seem to be letting them off the hook for its ugliness, I would argue instead that it simply repositions that racism as something more shared and communal, in our (and especially white Americans') tendency to identify with, and thus care about, those who look like us. Until us white Americans can all see Rue, and Trayvon Martin, as both black and just like us, we'll all share in this collective vitriol far more than we might like to admit.
Next in the series tomorrow,
Ben
PS. Once again, after completing a post I come upon a very relevant, even parallel, piece. Guess that's what happens when you American Study very zeitgeist-y topics!
PPS. What do you think?
3/28 Memory Day nominee: Nelson Algren, the Jewish American novelist and essayist whose representations of his beloved and troubled Chicago and nation are as radical as they are realistic, as cynical as they are clear-eyed about America's ideals and realities.
Trying to make sense of the latest version of the racist ugliness that seems to bubble up so frequently in our collective online consciousness.
It's one of our most common and accurate truisms that there are few places more discouraging and unsettling than the comment threads on virtually any web article or piece. In point of fact, those rare blogs or sites where the comment discussions operate at a typically high quality, both in tone and in substance—such as at Ta-Nehisi Coates' and Joe Posnanski's blogs, to cite two writers I've referenced before in this space—are unique enough to merit notice; at the rest, vitriol and garbage reign supreme. And while there are various factors to which we could attribute that trend—especially the anonymity and freedom that online commenting allow—such arguments would explain only why the vitriol is being shared, not its source; that is, the kinds of racist garbage that constitutes (for example) a significant percentage of comments on many of the articles on the Trayvon Martin case, including
It's tough to say whether another contemporary, indeed very recent, explosion of such racist hatred—the racist responses offered by many fans of The Hunger Games to the casting of a young black actress to play one of the film's characters—is more or less surprising than that inspired by the Martin story. On the one hand, rabid fans of a work tend to react with vitriol to any perceived changes when that work is adapted or represented; those of us who witnessed the collective fan-boy horror at the concept of "flames on Optimus" in the first Transformers film can attest to this phenomenon. Yet on the other hand, this particular outburst is still surprising for at least two distinct reasons: the character in question, Rue, is explicitly describe in Suzanne Collins' book as having "dark brown skin" (as is another kid from the same region/community later in the novel); and even if Collins' dedicated readers had missed those details, the film apparently portrays the character's actions and plotline identically to the novel, making the perceived "change" in race seemingly a superficial shift. Yet instead (as the linked article above details), many fans have responded to it as a change that "ruins the film," and some, as represented by the fan who Tweeted that when he "found out Rue was black her death wasn't as sad," have gone much further still.
There would be many ways to analyze those responses, but for me they're particularly interesting, and saddening, as examples of why empathy, particularly across racial and other communal lines, can be such a tough connection for us Americans to make. Identifying with, and often even (as in the case of a seemingly beloved character like Rue) loving, a fictional character is a definite act of imaginative connection; and the responses to Rue's cinematic race illustrate just how much such imaginative connections require, for many of us at least, that the character in question feel identical to us in key, defining attributes such as race. While I'm sure that some of the angry Hunger Games fans are explicitly racist in other ways as well, my guess is that many—perhaps even the aforementioned Tweeter, who appended the phrase "I hate myself" to his response—surprised themselves with the recognition that the race of their beloved character mattered as much to them as it did. And while seeing their racism in that light might seem to be letting them off the hook for its ugliness, I would argue instead that it simply repositions that racism as something more shared and communal, in our (and especially white Americans') tendency to identify with, and thus care about, those who look like us. Until us white Americans can all see Rue, and Trayvon Martin, as both black and just like us, we'll all share in this collective vitriol far more than we might like to admit.
Next in the series tomorrow,
Ben
PS. Once again, after completing a post I come upon a very relevant, even parallel, piece. Guess that's what happens when you American Study very zeitgeist-y topics!
PPS. What do you think?
3/28 Memory Day nominee: Nelson Algren, the Jewish American novelist and essayist whose representations of his beloved and troubled Chicago and nation are as radical as they are realistic, as cynical as they are clear-eyed about America's ideals and realities.
March 27, 2012
March 27, 2012: Race and Danny Chen
[The second post in my series on race in contemporary America. Remember that your suggestions, and guest posts, are very welcome!]
How another tragic case can reveal some of the worst and the best of Asian American identities and experiences in the early 21st century.
As I've highlighted before in this space, Asian Americans have had a meaningful and complex presence in our national community for at least 150 years; but nonetheless, this American community has significantly grown, statistically and in prominence, in recent decades. As recent analyses of the 2010 census reflect, the Asian American community is the fastest-growing American population thus far in the 21st century. Such statistical growths can be connected to two recent examples of prominent, successful Asian Americans: Jeremy Lin, the Taiwanese American basketball player whose New York Knicks' star turns dominated weeks of news cycles earlier this year (and appeared on two consecutive Sports Illustrated covers); and Dr. Jim Yong Kim, the Korean American physician, global health expert, and Dartmouth College president whom President Obama recently nominated to lead the World Bank when its current president's term is over.
Yet the story of the last year's other most prominent Asian American, Private Danny Chen, complicates that picture quite thoroughly. That linked New York magazine article does a great job highlighting the key stages of that story, from Chen's parents' immigrations from China to his childhood in New York's Chinatown, his decision to enlist in the army to his deployment to Afghanistan, and, most significantly, the torments and tortures he apparently received on a daily basis from his superiors and fellow soldiers once there; tortures that were consistently and brutally tied to Chen's racial identity (or rather to ridiculous stereotypes related to it) and that, once again apparently (since information has been at times painfully difficult for Chen's family and advocates to learn), culminated in the particularly brutal hazing that led to his suicide on October 3rd of last year. Chen's story certainly has to be contextualized on multiple levels, including in relationship to the war in Afghanistan, the presence of white supremacists and other divisive figures in the military, and national debates over bullying; yet there's also no question, given what we know about the treatment of Chen, that he was hazed and, effectively, killed, due to his Chinese American heritage, and more exactly to how much that heritage seemed to separate him from his peers, to render him (despite his having volunteered for the US Army) somehow outside of this shared American community.
On the other hand, the fact that we know any of that, and moreover that a number of Chen's superiors and peers are now in the process of being charged and brought to trial, is due quite directly to Asian American voices and communities. Chen's family and friends had virtually no luck getting information about his experiences and death out of the military until the Organization of Chinese Americans—NY Chapter (OCA-NY) got involved; his story has since gained in national attention and awareness thanks in large part to numerous other Asian American organizations and communities; and some of our most eloquent and talented Asian American writers, scholars and social activists, and political leaders have dedicated significant efforts to engaging with and extending the story's questions and meanings. What this tragedy has also made clear, that is, is that the Asian American community in the early 21st century is as multi-layered, multi-vocal, and nationally engaged as any; moreover, these voices and efforts, individually but even more so collectively, have constituted a deeply inspiring representation of American ideals (free speech, assembly and protest, democratic resistance to powerful narratives, and more) at their best.
Next in the series tomorrow,
Ben
PS. What do you think? And any suggestions for the series?
3/27 Memory Day nominee: Patty Smith Hill, who built on her striking Reconstruction-era Kentucky childhood and became one of America's and the world's foremost educational reformers, and advocates for early childhood education and kindergarten (and who wrote the lyrics to "Happy Birthday"!).
How another tragic case can reveal some of the worst and the best of Asian American identities and experiences in the early 21st century.
As I've highlighted before in this space, Asian Americans have had a meaningful and complex presence in our national community for at least 150 years; but nonetheless, this American community has significantly grown, statistically and in prominence, in recent decades. As recent analyses of the 2010 census reflect, the Asian American community is the fastest-growing American population thus far in the 21st century. Such statistical growths can be connected to two recent examples of prominent, successful Asian Americans: Jeremy Lin, the Taiwanese American basketball player whose New York Knicks' star turns dominated weeks of news cycles earlier this year (and appeared on two consecutive Sports Illustrated covers); and Dr. Jim Yong Kim, the Korean American physician, global health expert, and Dartmouth College president whom President Obama recently nominated to lead the World Bank when its current president's term is over.
Yet the story of the last year's other most prominent Asian American, Private Danny Chen, complicates that picture quite thoroughly. That linked New York magazine article does a great job highlighting the key stages of that story, from Chen's parents' immigrations from China to his childhood in New York's Chinatown, his decision to enlist in the army to his deployment to Afghanistan, and, most significantly, the torments and tortures he apparently received on a daily basis from his superiors and fellow soldiers once there; tortures that were consistently and brutally tied to Chen's racial identity (or rather to ridiculous stereotypes related to it) and that, once again apparently (since information has been at times painfully difficult for Chen's family and advocates to learn), culminated in the particularly brutal hazing that led to his suicide on October 3rd of last year. Chen's story certainly has to be contextualized on multiple levels, including in relationship to the war in Afghanistan, the presence of white supremacists and other divisive figures in the military, and national debates over bullying; yet there's also no question, given what we know about the treatment of Chen, that he was hazed and, effectively, killed, due to his Chinese American heritage, and more exactly to how much that heritage seemed to separate him from his peers, to render him (despite his having volunteered for the US Army) somehow outside of this shared American community.
On the other hand, the fact that we know any of that, and moreover that a number of Chen's superiors and peers are now in the process of being charged and brought to trial, is due quite directly to Asian American voices and communities. Chen's family and friends had virtually no luck getting information about his experiences and death out of the military until the Organization of Chinese Americans—NY Chapter (OCA-NY) got involved; his story has since gained in national attention and awareness thanks in large part to numerous other Asian American organizations and communities; and some of our most eloquent and talented Asian American writers, scholars and social activists, and political leaders have dedicated significant efforts to engaging with and extending the story's questions and meanings. What this tragedy has also made clear, that is, is that the Asian American community in the early 21st century is as multi-layered, multi-vocal, and nationally engaged as any; moreover, these voices and efforts, individually but even more so collectively, have constituted a deeply inspiring representation of American ideals (free speech, assembly and protest, democratic resistance to powerful narratives, and more) at their best.
Next in the series tomorrow,
Ben
PS. What do you think? And any suggestions for the series?
3/27 Memory Day nominee: Patty Smith Hill, who built on her striking Reconstruction-era Kentucky childhood and became one of America's and the world's foremost educational reformers, and advocates for early childhood education and kindergarten (and who wrote the lyrics to "Happy Birthday"!).
March 26, 2012
March 26, 2012: Race and Trayvon Martin
[The first post in my series on race in contemporary America. Remember that your suggestions, and guests posts, are very welcome!]
Two American Studies connections, one obvious but central and one more subtle and hopeful, between race and the Martin case.
Since the shocking, unsettling, and disturbing tragedy that is the Trayvon Martin killing exploded onto the national scene last week, it's fair to say that many of our most talented and significant journalists and social and political commentators (along with many of our least talented ones, of course) have added their perspectives to the conversation. And while those commentators have engaged with a number of important issues, from Florida's NRA-sponsored "Stand Your Ground" law to the history and role of neighborhood watch organizations, the most eloquent and powerful takes—such as those provided by Ta-Nehisi Coates, Jelani Cobb, Dave Zirin, and the Open Salon blogger Keka—have been intimately connected to questions of race; Zirin's and Keka's links of Martin to Jackie Robinson and Emmett Till (respectively) are in particular pitch-perfect examples of American Studies analyses of this tragic current event.
I can't claim to have strikingly new perspectives to add to the mix, but I have been thinking quite a bit about two particular American Studies takes on race and Martin. The first is similar to the "walking while black" narratives on which Keka's post focuses, but as seen through the lens of empathy, a vital ingredient of the ideal American community for which I have argued many times in this space. One of the most impressive aspects of Bruce Springsteen's "American Skin (41 Shots)"—a song that Bruce and his band played, with no commentary needed, in concert in Tampa this past Friday—is the way in which Springsteen effortlessly imagines himself into the perspective of Lena, the African American mother who in the second verse tries to make her young son Charles "understand the rules" of being black on America's streets. In my suburban neighborhood, kids wander the streets by themselves for much of the spring, summer, and early fall; it's almost impossible for me to imagine what it would be like if every time my sons ventured outside, I had to face the possibility that they could be (at best) accosted by the police or reported by a suspicious neighbor, and at worst (which is where any parent's fears would of course go) killed for no reason other than what they look like. Yet millions of American parents still, in 2012, have no choice but to face that possibility, and to, as Lena does, try to instill it in their kids, even—especially—at an age when their kids should worry about nothing more than skinned knees. Empathizing with that family perspective, and the worldview that it necessarily brings with it, would be a prerequisite to any communal, national connections. (ADDENDUM: This poem, which I discovered after writing this paragraph, is an absolutely amazing expression of this parental perspective.)
As the conclusion to one of America's most under-rated and important novels reflects, however, such cross-cultural empathy for the worst kind of familial loss can have even more dramatic effects (spoilers in this paragraph!). Of the many tragic events with which Charles Chesnutt concludes The Marrow of Tradition (1901), none is more horrific than the accidental murder of the Millers' young son; the six year-old is hit by a stray bullet during the novel's climactic (historically grounded) race massacre, an innocent victim of the brutality directed at his race by the town's white supremacists. While this tragedy might be seen as the novel's most pessimistic (or darkly realistic) moment, Chesnutt uses it to frame directly two of his most optimistic, even utopian, developments: his most representative white supremacists, the Carterets, each in their own way empathize with the Millers' situation as grieving parents and experience profound shifts in their racial and communal perspectives; and the Millers, while not letting the Carterets off the hook for their racist pasts and actions, embody the best of human capability and make a final decision which suggests a potentially better future for these families, the city, and America. Similarly, many historians have argued that the Emmett Till lynching helped pave the way for the Civil Rights Movement, both by inspiring activists and by changing national perspectives on race and community. So too, in this very dark contemporary moment, in the tragic death of this innocent young black man, I believe we just might be able to do the two things suggested by this post, and by President Obama's pitch-perfect first response: recognize the specific identity and community to which Trayvon must be linked; and respond to his tragedy by moving toward a more genuinely connected national community.
Next post in the series tomorrow,
Ben
PS. What are your thoughts on the Martin case? And any suggestions for future posts in the series?
3/26 Memory Day nominees: A tie between three hugely talented, unique, and significant 20th century American writers: Robert Frost; Tennessee Williams; and Vine Deloria, Jr.
Two American Studies connections, one obvious but central and one more subtle and hopeful, between race and the Martin case.
Since the shocking, unsettling, and disturbing tragedy that is the Trayvon Martin killing exploded onto the national scene last week, it's fair to say that many of our most talented and significant journalists and social and political commentators (along with many of our least talented ones, of course) have added their perspectives to the conversation. And while those commentators have engaged with a number of important issues, from Florida's NRA-sponsored "Stand Your Ground" law to the history and role of neighborhood watch organizations, the most eloquent and powerful takes—such as those provided by Ta-Nehisi Coates, Jelani Cobb, Dave Zirin, and the Open Salon blogger Keka—have been intimately connected to questions of race; Zirin's and Keka's links of Martin to Jackie Robinson and Emmett Till (respectively) are in particular pitch-perfect examples of American Studies analyses of this tragic current event.
I can't claim to have strikingly new perspectives to add to the mix, but I have been thinking quite a bit about two particular American Studies takes on race and Martin. The first is similar to the "walking while black" narratives on which Keka's post focuses, but as seen through the lens of empathy, a vital ingredient of the ideal American community for which I have argued many times in this space. One of the most impressive aspects of Bruce Springsteen's "American Skin (41 Shots)"—a song that Bruce and his band played, with no commentary needed, in concert in Tampa this past Friday—is the way in which Springsteen effortlessly imagines himself into the perspective of Lena, the African American mother who in the second verse tries to make her young son Charles "understand the rules" of being black on America's streets. In my suburban neighborhood, kids wander the streets by themselves for much of the spring, summer, and early fall; it's almost impossible for me to imagine what it would be like if every time my sons ventured outside, I had to face the possibility that they could be (at best) accosted by the police or reported by a suspicious neighbor, and at worst (which is where any parent's fears would of course go) killed for no reason other than what they look like. Yet millions of American parents still, in 2012, have no choice but to face that possibility, and to, as Lena does, try to instill it in their kids, even—especially—at an age when their kids should worry about nothing more than skinned knees. Empathizing with that family perspective, and the worldview that it necessarily brings with it, would be a prerequisite to any communal, national connections. (ADDENDUM: This poem, which I discovered after writing this paragraph, is an absolutely amazing expression of this parental perspective.)
As the conclusion to one of America's most under-rated and important novels reflects, however, such cross-cultural empathy for the worst kind of familial loss can have even more dramatic effects (spoilers in this paragraph!). Of the many tragic events with which Charles Chesnutt concludes The Marrow of Tradition (1901), none is more horrific than the accidental murder of the Millers' young son; the six year-old is hit by a stray bullet during the novel's climactic (historically grounded) race massacre, an innocent victim of the brutality directed at his race by the town's white supremacists. While this tragedy might be seen as the novel's most pessimistic (or darkly realistic) moment, Chesnutt uses it to frame directly two of his most optimistic, even utopian, developments: his most representative white supremacists, the Carterets, each in their own way empathize with the Millers' situation as grieving parents and experience profound shifts in their racial and communal perspectives; and the Millers, while not letting the Carterets off the hook for their racist pasts and actions, embody the best of human capability and make a final decision which suggests a potentially better future for these families, the city, and America. Similarly, many historians have argued that the Emmett Till lynching helped pave the way for the Civil Rights Movement, both by inspiring activists and by changing national perspectives on race and community. So too, in this very dark contemporary moment, in the tragic death of this innocent young black man, I believe we just might be able to do the two things suggested by this post, and by President Obama's pitch-perfect first response: recognize the specific identity and community to which Trayvon must be linked; and respond to his tragedy by moving toward a more genuinely connected national community.
Next post in the series tomorrow,
Ben
PS. What are your thoughts on the Martin case? And any suggestions for future posts in the series?
3/26 Memory Day nominees: A tie between three hugely talented, unique, and significant 20th century American writers: Robert Frost; Tennessee Williams; and Vine Deloria, Jr.
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