Hegel’s view of African people and history made me think, as
Mallory brought up in her post, of what I learned in high school about Africans
(and for that matter, Native Americans), slavery, and the history of
African-American people in the United States.
While there was a discussion about the struggles of African-American
people, usually in the unit on Martin Luther King, Jr. that we covered once a
year, there was never a discussion of the contributions of African-Americans
outside of the context of the Civil Rights Movement. It was sort of as if, between slavery and
1954 when Brown v. Board occurred, there was nothing really going on with
African-Americans themselves. Any
progress was largely the result of benevolent white men, most notably Abraham Lincoln,
intervening on behalf of black people.
Hegel writes of Africans in slavery, “They are sold, and let
themselves be sold, without any reflection on the rights or wrongs of the
matter.” Certainly, this is an
oversimplification, just as the Master Narrative related to the Civil Rights
Movement is an oversimplification, which serves a social and political
purpose. Hegel sets up a paternalistic
situation, and it seems familiar to the story that we tell about social and
legal progress in the United States.
Lincoln, Steven Spielberg’s recent movie, tells the story of
the passage of the 13th Amendment.
I really enjoyed it. Daniel Day-Lewis
is awesome. Despite this, when my
friends and I left the theatre, we all felt a little strange about it. Something was off. Yesterday, my roommate and I were discussing
it again. She had seen it again and
said, “I just kept thinking, ‘Where is Frederick Douglass?’” Good question.
There are very few black people in the movie. Obviously, there were no African-Americans in
Lincoln’s cabinet, but the only black people we see are soldiers, in a sort of
hero-worship moment with Lincoln, and servants.
It’s all Lincoln (as the title would suggest), and that’s fine to an
extent, but it also seems to erase the actions of African-Americans at the time. Lincoln is the hero, tirelessly defending
justice by himself. There’s one point
where they literally put the flame of a lantern over Lincoln speaking, making
him the light of the nation. He was a
great man and leader, but it has to be a bigger story than that.
My question is: If we continue to present history this way,
how far are we from erasing the contributions of African-Americans? How do we get away from a paternalistic
attitude and move toward a recognition of the agency and contributions of black
people, whether in Hegel’s Africa or the more recent history of the United
States?
I have not seen Lincoln yet but it is very interesting that this is the way the movie is presented. Although one can attempt to justify it by saying the movie is all about Lincoln, the history surrounding Lincoln very much includes African-Americans. The questions you propose unfortunately seem to be valid. If history is continued to be presented this way, eventually erasing the contributions of African-Americans seems inevitable. Perhaps this would take a long time but even the possibility of this happening is a red flag that a change needs to be made. Using the movie as an example, I'm wondering why the decision was made to include very few black people. One could wonder if this was a way to try to avoid talking about situations that can at times be awkward or difficult to discuss. The tendency people have to ignore what's hard manifests in a misrepresentation of events. Growing up today, we have the advantage that our country's history is still relatively new so erasing the contributions of anyone is more difficult, but this just means that it is that much more important to make the conscious effort to present an accurate picture in the years to come. The only chance of moving away from a paternalistic attitude is to continue to recognize the stories of everyone.
ReplyDeleteShout out! What's up! :)
ReplyDeleteI will quickly comment, though, because I thought the *exact* same thing. Again I will harp on McKinney's African American Activism class (I recommend it to everyone if you're into 400-level History classes): I read a well-written historical narrative paralleling the political lives of Frederick Douglass and Abraham Lincoln (The Radical and the Republican by James Oakes). Although they weren't BFFL on day one, there is *no* way to deny the close ties, nay, the friendship and respect these two men had for each other. In the end of all things, Lincoln valued Douglass's oppinion over many others.
That being said, to completely write Douglass out of the movie is a shame. And it makes me wonder what else we're either ignoring or the State is generationally allowing/forcing us to forget. I've gotta whole bunch of governmental conspiracies. This happens to be one of the leading topics...
I have another question to further this, and I hope it promps discussion: How much of the remembering is our duty?
Though it is disturbing to realize that such a critical character as Fredrick Douglas was essentially erased from this movie about Lincoln, I do not think that it means we are in danger of erasing the contributions of African Americans from history. Rather, I think this is just a continuation of the telling of history as it has always been told –through the eyes of the most powerful. Obviously, this is not a good thing, but nor is it a regression. Rather, it serves to reify “history” as we know it. The fact that you and your friends found the movie’s failure to include Douglas as problematic, however, is a sign of positive change. Creating a dialogue about these types of problems signals that we are aware that they exist and can work to change them. The fact that a class such as this one exists is a positive change; as Professor J mentioned this class was not always offered at Rhodes. In terms of moving towards a greater recognition of agency of blacks, I think that it is important that we learn to understand race as not the end goal but rather as a doorway into a multitude of complex interlocking systems of meaning, power, and oppression (gender, age, class, religion, etc.). The fight for racial equality can only be situated within and realized in terms of the larger fight for equality for all people marginalized under the patriarchal system in which we live.
ReplyDeleteI think this is one of the biggest concerns about history: everything you read was written by someone who has some sort of agenda for writing it. It's not new to have history censored (most minority writers have been lost over the years because people didn't care about what they had to say). Looking at Lincoln, I'm reminded of the question that always seems to get raised, "Why don't we have a white history month?" The answer is of course: We do. It's called history. I think Dr. J brought up a good point that this paternalistic attitude prevails with class, sex, and race struggles. I think that unless we start attempting to recover more stories of African American history, we will lose our chance because more things will be lost completely (people will die who remember it and items will be lost).
ReplyDelete