Digging into a painful past

[wildeyed]

A York County, S.C., "living history" museum is re-examining its portrayal of slavery after some black interpreters quit in protest.

Thousands of Carolinas schoolchildren and adults learn about slavery and antebellum life at Historic Brattonsville, a plantation and Revolutionary War battlefield where volunteers and paid staffers re-enact scenes from 18th- and 19th-century life.

But the museum has started to conduct research to find out how slaves were treated on the plantation in response to concerns raised by at least three interpreters who quit last year. The interpreters contended the re-enactments give a sanitized view of slavery that ignores brutality such as rape and whippings.

snip...

Even as they are pressed by some historians and civil rights leaders, some museums continue to tread lightly on the subject and leave out the worst aspects of slavery because "they don't want to scare off their white customers," Brundage said.

snip...

"There are parts of history people want whitewashed."

http://www.charlotte.com/mld/charlotte/news/11664438.htm

Sorry about the registration site. But it was an interesting story, and it ran on A1 of the Charlotte Observer today.

[Swamp Rat]

1. Everything seems to get "sanitized" in this country

Americans MUST see the horror of the American Holocaust(s)... oh, but that might engender empathy and change how we see things. Can't have that. Gotta keep the status quo.

Hail BushJesus!

[Robeson]

3. This whole country is based on mythology and historical revisionism...

...the majority of Americans haven't a clue as to the real history of this country. The real history, is not very pretty, from its founding, to now.

[Swamp Rat]

4. In a wider sense, Trouillot calls it the "North Atlantic fictions."

Here's a summary I wrote of the concept:

North Atlantic Geographies

The concept global geography of imagination Trouillot ascribes to Europeans of the Renaissance and within this geography he adds a group called the “savage slot” or other. These North Atlantic geographies, as opposed to “Western” - what he calls a fiction, are not fixed but move from Rome to Lisbon to London, etc.

By the 19th Century, anthropology had become a discipline that specialized in studying the savage slot while at the same time occupying the same space as this group, within the context of its own imagined geography. He connects this to the development of capitalism and its intrinsic necessity to expand geographically. Management and imagination have been interconnected locally and globally since colonial times, thus re-fueling each other through proceedures and instruments of control, especially since forced labor was implimented.
***

Robeson, check out Trouillot. You won't be disappointed. :)


A Conversation with Michel-Rolph Trouillot:
http://www.jhu.edu/~igscph/f96mrt.htm

Book:
Trouillot , Michel-Rolph
2003 Global Transformations: Anthropology and the Modern World. New York: Palgrave/St. Martin's/ Macmillan
http://www.palgrave-usa.com/Catalog/product.aspx?isbn=0312295219

University of Chicago- Department of Anthropology- Faculty:
Michel-Rolph Trouillot. (PhD, Johns Hopkins 1985) Professor of Anthropology and of Social Sciences.
http://anthropology.uchicago.edu/faculty/faculty_trouillot.shtml

[Robeson]

9. That was an excellent conversation....

...I'm degreed in Cultural Anthropology myself, so what he says is spot on. I especially enjoyed his desire to push and encourage the growth of intellectualism, outside of academia.

I was very fortunate to have a great professor, a Dr. Marilyn Wells, at Middle Tennessee State University, shape my thoughts in Cultural Anthropology and my World View. She sounded much as he does.

I've bookmarked that conversation, and will pass it on. Thanks...:thumbsup:

[Swamp Rat]

10. I'm glad you liked it

How did I know you are an anthro? Maybe we can spot each other. :D

I checked out Prof. Marilyn Wells, but of course she has retired. I would tell you my professor's name, but I was threatened by a DUer the other day who apparently wants to go after my "feminist" professor and I. Maybe after I finish my degrees (I'm working on a second masters and a PhD) and the political climate is better, I will discuss in detail the important work she is doing. I just had a linguistics class on deep structure (Chomsky) which was hard but a lot of fun, and a couple others concerning the various processes of globalism and urbanisation.

Here's the book I am reading now: Robin Tomach Lakoff's book "The Language War." You might already be familiar with her husband's book, "Don’t Think of an Elephant!" The Forward was written by Howard Dean:
http://www.chelseagreen.com/2004/items/elephant

Two George Lakoff links:
http://www.linguistics.berkeley.edu/lingdept/Current/people/facpages/lakoffg.html
http://www.rockridgeinstitute.org/people/lakoff
http://www.motherjones.com/news/qa/2004/10/10_401.html

[Solly Mack]

2. My momma used to say

"They erase your history to erase you"

[Karenina]

7. Like the museums and digs

in Iraq? ;-)

[Solly Mack]

8. exactly like that

fortunately my husband was never involved in those things :*

[Tinoire]

5. Ah yes. Those lovely cotton fields!

What fun we had picking cotton, shooing flies away from the master's food, strumming negro spirituals to little porcelain dolls we nursed for them, being auctioned off like cattle.

Ah yes, those were the days weren't they? I wish I were in Dixie hurrah, hurrah...

:puke:

It's amazing how America can't stare the truth in its eyes.

I might point out here that colonialism or imperialism, as the slave system of the West is called, is not something that is just confined to England or France or the United States. The interests in this country are in cahoots with the interests in France and the in terests in Britain. It's one huge complex or combine, and it creates what's known not as the American power structure or the French power structure, but an international power structure. This international power structure is used to suppress the masses of dark-skinned people all over the world and exploit them of their natural resources.
Malcolm X, February 14, 1965

(taken from the essay 'Malcolm X, our revolutionary son & brother.' by Patricia Robinson)



It is impossible for capitalism to survive, primarily because the system of capitalism needs some blood to suck. Capitalism used to be like an eagle, but now it's more like a vulture. It used to be strong enough to go and suck anybody's blood whether they were strong or not. But now it has become more cowardly, like the vulture, and it can only suck the blood of the helpless. As the nations of the world free themselves, the capitalism has less victims, less to suck, and it becomes weaker and weaker. It's only a matter of time in my opinion before it will collapse completely.

Malcolm X, "Young Socialist Interview", in By any means, pp. 165-66

[SemperEadem]

6. I don't feel that anything should be toned down

whites have benefitted from a 500+ year system of unearned entitlements since they landed in this country and began setting up laws to reflect their overbearing entitlement to oppress. Part of how they got to implement their unearned entitlements was their use of slavery and their legislating 'personhood' away from the African or the Native American so that anything they did to them was no more different than how they treated a stubborn horse or a piece of broken furniture.

"You can't harm someone who's not viewed as a person", is their viewpoint. The mindset still is around today.

If they don't want to consider it, then they don't need to come to the exhibit... but the museum owes history and the esteem of African Americans the truth. Their onus is to truthfully and accurately portray exactly what the history was and how whites enjoyed and exploited the evils of slavery to the fullest extent the law provided. History does not owe whites what they want to dismiss or overlook today.

[bobbieinok]

11. really weird that many whites read the series of books that focus

on the owners sexual use of male and female black slaves....and the 'breeding plantations????

isn't one of the books Mandigo????

whites play with the fantasy but deny the reality?????

[noiretextatique]

12. what i find most appalling about this story

is that museum did this project without before doing adequaate research on what life was like for slaves. does anyone else find that...i'm not sure what to call it...so i'll settle for irresponsible. why is that they have to consult black historians to get an accurate picture of slave life?!?!? shouldn't ANY historian know that? it was the black interpreters or actors, who commented on the finished product..amazing. it's not just history that is still whitewashed.