Pam Brown's Blog l emission - control. net

Thoughts on Representing the West

Recently, I was in Denver, Colorado for a wedding and had the opportunity to visit two museums with radically different ideological projects:  The Black American West Museum and the Denver Art Museum.  It was interesting to have the opportunity to view these museums both on the same day and also with a group of lay people (my family), who had never thought about the role of museums in constructing a particular sense of history.

The Black American West Museum was founded in 1971 by Paul Wilbur Stewart, and developed out of his personal mission to uncover the history of black cowboys.  He began simply by speaking to patrons at his Denver barbershop, who began to bring him memorabilia and family photos, which he kept on display.  Once his collection out grew his barbershop, he established the museum by fusing his project with the project of commemorating the life of the first African-American female physician licensed in Colorado, Dr. Justina Ford. 

Constructing Memory in the Absence of History: Embodying Conflicting Narratives at Historic Brattonsville

The distinction between memory and history is subtle, often ephemeral, and rarely considered except at the moments when their invisible forms collide in material representation.  Conflict over representation is nothing new, but almost always seems to occur when collective memories come into contact, calling a present vision of the past into question in a way that makes obvious that it is the future that is somehow at stake.  No cultural form seems immune to questions about content and ideology, but museums seem particularly ripe for the picking.  Unlike films, novels, and artwork, for example, museums carry with them the expectation of historical accuracy, the belief that truthful representation of “reality” is possible.  As the postmodern realization that it is the present that contains both past and future has sunk in, claims on knowledge associated with museums have been called into question.  As Pierre Nora proposes, with the loss of history, we have only memory left.  This memory, like history, is collective in its nature, yet replaces tradition and ritual with representation in all its varied forms.  In this context, it seems only natural that conflicts over representation frequently have as subtext questions about power, ideology and group identity.  Further, it seems only natural that these conflicts tend to play out as struggles for control of and access to narratives.

Growing Disparity in the New Economy

One of the most under reported stories of the financial crisis is its impact on the disparity between African-Americans and whites.  Last fall, I had the fortune to hear Congresswoman Maxine Waters speak on the issue of how the mortgage foreclosure crisis would likely impact African-American communities by striping them of years of hard earned gains, and making it difficult if not impossible to rebuild.  But recently, Brandeis University published findings depicting an even more disturbing account showing a fourfold increase in the wealth gap between whites and blacks created over the last 23 years.  From 1984 a 20K disparity between blacks and whites ballooned into a 95K gap by 2007.  In real terms, this 75K differential is a child's college tuition or the savings to weather a job loss.  So, African-American communities were clearly in crisis before the crisis.

The disconnect between income and work that has culminated in the recent financial crisis has no doubt influenced this trend, and will no doubt widen the gap.  Since in our neoliberal capitalist society money is no longer primarily generated from labor, but rather money begets money to extreme degrees, the luck of birth will increasingly be the determining factor in an individual's future, unless we turn this tide and collectively figure out ways to stand against this type of social order.

The Racial Wealth Gap Increases Fourfold

White Families Now 95K Richer Than African-American Families on Average, According to New Study

Don't Blame the Dream of Homeownership

Why the Right is Winning Its War Against Obama

"Obama's worst mistake has been to misread the election results. Much is made that he got more white votes than John Kerry or Al Gore, revved up young whites, and totally exorcised race from the campaign. Obama's win supposedly was final proof that America had finally kicked the racial syndrome. This is the stuff of media talk and wishful thinking. Despite a GOP racked by sex and corruption scandals, an anemic presidential opponent, a laughingstock vice presidential candidate, a collapsed economy and an outgoing GOP president with a rating worse than Herbert Hoover's, McCain still crushed Obama by a twelve point spread among white voters."

Why the Right is Winning Its War Against Obama by Earl Ofari Hutchinson

Think Again: The Surprising Success of the Right-Wing Rant

From The Center for American Progress By Eric Alterman & Danielle Ivory:

"For once, Foxnation.com got it right. “Dems Now Get Taste of Being Called 'Racist,'” said a screaming headline, and there’s no denying it was true. How else to characterize a story in which ex-Republican presidential candidate Tom Tancredo and radio host Rush Limbaugh compared Sonia Sotomayor’s opinions on race to those of the Ku Klux Klan.

David Duke found this to be a bit much. After all, he wrote, Judge Sonia Sotomayor, while Hispanic, was actually part and parcel of a Jewish conspiracy. Subsequently, Tancredo was asked if he wished to reconsider his KKK analogy. Alas, he declined. He also mentioned that he wasn’t sure if the Obama administration hated white people."

Think Again: The Surprising Success of the Right-Wing Rant

An Original Sin, A Complicated Dilemma, A Delicate Balance

In Democracy in America, Alexis de Tocqueville offers analysis of racial dynamics present in early 19th century American society, and the potential implications of slavery for the future of American democracy.  His thoughts are complex, nuanced, sometimes prophetic, and yet at other times surprisingly off.  Above all, Tocqueville’s opinions, ideas and conceptions defy categorization in any simple box.  On the one hand, his acceptance of white supremacy is disconcerting in our modern age;  and on the other, he clearly defines what is wrong with slavery.  While he expresses his opposition to slavery without becoming moralistic and judgmental, opening his readership to both northerners and southerners, abolitionists and proponents alike, he draws the pessimistic conclusion that in some way slavery will doom the American experiment in democracy.  Underlying his inability to see the potential for the positive social change that ultimately occurs within American society is the convergence of his acceptance of white superiority and his fearful assessment of the ideal of equality.

Seeing Ourselves in Black & White

Before the Civil War, in the 1840's Alexis de Tocqueville made a vague assessment that it would take a mulatto to unite America. 

"...similarly, the mulatto forms the bridge between white and black:  wherever a very great number of mulattos exists, the fusion of these two races is not impossible." 

Yesterday, we saw his prediction come true.  Instead of the tragic mulatto myth or a person caught between worlds, Obama subverts this conception and asserts his half black/half white status as the advantage, the advantage we need in the global world.  "American exceptionalism" has once again been tested and we have once again proven that American democracy can hold back the tides of totalitarianism and allow for social change without war.  Today, I can quote Michelle Obama and say that "for the first time I am proud to be an American."  There were a lot of voters who had to overcome deeply held beliefs to vote for a black man with the middle name Hussein, and I am proud that they are Americans too. 

Our biracial president

A New Day for Race in America? Reflections on the "Post-Racial"

Last night we found out that Barack Obama will be the first African-American President of the United States.  And though we anxiously awaited this moment, and even though we had hoped and prayed that this day would someday come, today we're not quite sure what it all means.  We face what we think may be a new world, and we ask where are the new lines are drawn?  How exactly has the world changed?  And how have we changed?  We now face the confusion and dislocation of reinterpreting ourselves in world that is somehow strange and different.

Tom Brokaw may understand it best, when he acknowledges that if he had been a "pigment darker" his career wouldn't have developed the way it did.  When he admits that he needed second chances from time to time to become a person who shined, he sheds light on the true problem of race and goals of racism.  The effects of racism are born in subtle choices -- the white candidate just "feels like a fit."  The black applicant seems unknown, unfamiliar.