Talking to History

This morning I noticed a headline in relation to tv news personality, Don Imus. Famous for outrageous commentary on sports that involved slurs of all kinds, Imus was recently the source of controversy surrounding some racist name calling on his part in regard to the rise of Rutger's University's Women's Basketball team and their performance in the NCAA Women's Basketball Final. Imus, months after the turmoil, seems to have found new employment broadcasting on a new station.

Seeing this tidbit of news made me wonder two things: a) how is it that Imus is working again? and b) "shock jocks aside" what does it take for Americans to talk about race seriously?

It seems that the issue will never go away or fade away or be anywhere but bubbling under the surface of a host of American concerns: the War on Terror, Education, Heath Care, Immigration, the Economy, and the current situation in the Gulf Coast. But, how is the issue coded? In all honesty most Americans would probably describe racism and racist thoughts as personal and individual problems. Racism, for many, is seen as a set of personal prejudices. What remains un-confronted are instances of institutional racism. The ideology of race, an essentially made up marker, is alive and well despite public outrage at the mutterings of tv personalities.

In a recent review of the National Museum of African American History and Culture's web launch speaks to the real conversation American's are having with race. The NMAAHC is slated to open its doors in Washington, D.C. in 2015. But, as a recent critic noted, the opening is being foreshadowed by a recent "web opening", an opening that exposes some of the problems the physical museum must face. How can a story so painful and so complex ever be told by public historians? For that matter, how is it that African-Americans ended up with a separate museum to begin with? As the Times' critic notes, African American History is American History. The two are inseparable, slavery made sure of that. Unlike the museum dedicated to American Indians on the National Mall, this museum will be a History and Culture museum.

The answer is of course that the text book histories that most Americans grew up on were populated mostly by white men. When mom & pop arrive in D.C. on a fabulous Americana Deluxe vacation complete with a night time trolley tour of all the famous monuments, they'd like to visit Judy Garland's slippers, the first ladies' dresses, and Abe Lincoln's stove pipe hat. A nice progressive narrative that includes words like freedom, justice, stars and, of course, stripes goes really well with a trip to Mount Vernon in NoVa or, even, Ford's Theatre. Slavery, Reconstruction, Jim Crow and the violence of the Civil Rights Movement...well, its a toss up between that and the Holocaust Museum or maybe that place where you can eat a buffalo burger and look at Indians' stuff. I mean, at least with those two museums the suffering is removed from the American national conscious (ahem, Japanese Internment circa WWII anyone?) or pertains to people that most Americans don't think exist anymore (all the Indians are dead, right?). But Black people do exist. Though about 14% of the population their mere presence has complicated Americaness for along time, just ask Thomas Jefferson. If the museum deals candidly with the history it presents what's next? Reparations?

Americans are given the opportunity to confront their own history every day. They don't have to wait for someone like Imus to slip up or forget that his viewing audience is "mixed company". Recent headlines from New Brunswick, NJ to Jena, LA; from Iraq to Mexico; from the 2004 election to the current dash to the White House have provided ample opportunity. Of course the language used is that of criminality or citizenship or terror. So, you know, even if it walks like a racist and talks like a racist if it uses the words of crime and punishment then, well, kids should be tried as adults...for example.

That, dear reader, is what this blog is about. The past is linked to the present. The issues that make the founding of the NMAAHC sticky translate in to the reality of experience for all of us. I'd just like to point out how close to the past we're inching. Is it 2007 or 1907? Or maybe 1707?