Module 18: Museums and Ethnic Politics: Discussion

Reading: Handler, "Ethnicity in the Museum"

Colonial Williamsburg is a good case study for how African American history is included or excluded in depictions of America's past. It almost perfectly parallels the trends that we discussed the first week of class: first exclusion, then filling in the gaps of social history, then including African American history as a part of the study of the modern world system. In your responses to "Colonial Williamsburg Restored," you universally recognized that the African American presence was systematically ignored in the 1950s, and universally, you thought that it was wrong. Several of you found an ironic contrast between the research and care that went into house reconstruction and furnishing and the complete inaccuracy in terms of the human population. And most of you thought that exclusion of blacks was wrong, because it was inaccurate, it did not represent historical truth; it presented a biased view. You thought we should be inclusive of all America's history. You thought it was important to acknowledge past wrongs and understand the anger that is sometimes evident in the African American community.

You thought that we should understand the rationales that people have used to legitimate inequality, particularly rationales that have been used in the United States. And as as Blakey points out, it is important to not idealize a white-dominated past, and to not present only the positives of Euro/White culture (production, expansion, material wealth) while ignoring the negatives (oppression, conflict, inequality, poverty, and hunger). This would only confirm the ethnocentric ranking of Western culture as the best.

What caused this situation to change? Political pressure from black activists. I want to emphasize this because politics is often equated with special interests and bias. But who represents special interests and bias in this case? The supposedly scientific, non-political, patriotic, historical workers at Colonial Williamsburg. As Ferguson (1992:xxxix) observes, "Ironically, the subjective interests and activities of black Americans had moved historical archaeologists, infatuated with their newfangled scientific objectivity, to lose some of their subjectivity and see tens of thousands of people they previously had ignored." Therefore, listen to what protesters have to say—maybe they have a point!

So blacks became included. Did that make everything okay, clear up the bias? No, because as the Blakey cahpter (1990) and the Handler article point out, ethnic groups can be portrayed in ways that are not particularly helpful. For example, "The Other Half" tour? What is Handler's critique of it?

Race/ethnicity is reduced to culture: cooking, music, customs, each as an independent entity, in the tradition of primordial/isolationist views of ethnicity. This heritage is seen as attributes of individuals, i.e. "possessive individualism," sort of an Epcot approach to ethnicity. In this approach, the full scope of relationships between groups is not shown. In this consideration/discussion of institutions like slavery and racism, colonial houses are assigned to Euro-American culture and the "dependencies" or outbuildings are assigned to African American culture. What's wrong with that? The colonial buildings at Williamsburg were almost certainly built by African American slaves; therefore, they are examples of creolization, not purely Euro-American culture. African Americans should get part of the credit for colonial architecture. In addition, the conditions that shaped the development of African American culture are not recognized: "a culture honed by struggle." The Wilkie article (1995) is very good at including struggle as an aspect of African American religion.

Other problems with the presentation of race/ethnicity at Colonial Williamsburg include (1) finding enough African Americans who want to dress up and play slave; and (2) avoiding the reproduction of existing stereotypes and hierarchies in American life. For example, when I visited one house in Colonial Williamsburg, there were two women, one white and one black, acting as docents for the exhibit. The white woman was dressed as the mistress of the house, and the black women was dressed more simply, as if she were a servant or slave. Which docent to you think was asked more questions? The white woman, of course, because she looked more in charge, more educated. Now of course, both docents had received the same training and were equally able to answer questions, but it was yet another instance in American life where the white woman came off looking more able than the black woman. So I asked the black woman a question, and she answered ably, of course, and she looked very happy.

What are some better approaches to trying to write African American history at Colonial Williamsburg?

•From the Colonial Williamsburg website, transcripts of advertisements for the capture of runaway slaves, with a lesson plan for teachers instructing them to note to their students:

(1) How physically beat-up the slaves were: despite how Anglo masters portrayed themselves, slavery was not a benevolent institution (although it would be interesting to know how the physical well-being of slaves compared to that of lower-class whites at this time; individuals in both groups might be in pretty poor shape, but at least the whites wouldn't be whipped or branded unless they had been convicted of some criminal activity).

(2) The advertisements themselves are evidence of how slaves chose to resist enslavement: some tried to escape several times, despite horrendous punishments.

(3) Slaves were not all unskilled laborers. Many were craftsmen; some could read and write. As Ferguson points out, slaves contributed more than unskilled labor in building this country.

•Discuss the development of slavery, racism, and segregation as historical peculiarities (for this, see Epperson 1999).

•What was life like for a four-year old enslaved little girl in a photo, or tie an artifact (e.g., shoe, doll) to questions about the meaning of slavery for the enslaved person, for the plantation owner.

In all of these approaches, ethnicity becomes a relationship in a economic and political context, not just the cultural attributes of individuals.