Marveling at Human Potential, Part 2

Posted on August 13, 2015 by ETW

One of the remarkable things rarely considered among average museum-goers is the somewhat unbelievable fact that nations in the Western world have gone to places like Egypt and taken out of sacred and historical landmarks beautiful cultural treasures. It is true that archaeologists get permits. It is true that the explorer who found Tutankhamun’s tomb spent the better part of a decade looking. It is true that he secured and invested somewhat incredible financial resources to have upwards of 100 people helping him to dig and to search for years. There was enormous work that went into finding Tut’s tomb. Nevertheless, I can’t help but appreciate the point of view which says that relevant artifacts belong to the people and region from which they came.

Reproduction statue from an exhibit on the tomb of Tutankhamun.

Of course, I also appreciate the view which says that the labor one puts into a work makes it partly yours. Tut’s tomb may have remained lost to this day without the investment of time and money that helped find it. The issue would be less troubling for me if Egypt were not a quite poor country, compared with the U.K., and had the U.K. not had troubling colonialist practices of domination and exploitation.

I am not experienced nor a scholar on the subject of works of art or national treasures like the ones I’m referring to. I am studying issues of culture, however, and the ways in which they enable or undermine the pursuit of justice. I have yet to explore the connection between my work and the excavation and relocation of artifacts like those from Tut’s tomb. I will simply have to leave for my own part further work to do in thinking about international relations and the idea of past harms from colonialism.

I do not know what all the permits that the relevant archaeologists obtained legally allowed them to do. My sense is that what they did might have been legal, but if you consider the influence of colonialism on the politics of the day, it is reasonable to wonder whether in fact the relevant laws were reasonable or legitimate. As MLK said, an unjust law is no law.

Thinking through such matters nevertheless is accompanied for me by a fascination about the past and the substance of the find from Ancient Egypt. I suppose that what makes me marvel this time around, beyond the incredible historical artifacts, is the extent to which people felt comfortable, whether it was technically legal or not, excavating precious treasures from a country and culture and then exporting them to places like the U.K., Germany, France, and the United States, among other places.

Again, I’ve not studied these matters, but am thinking aloud, or at least via a quick blogpost. What does it mean to respect a culture? What does justice require in such cases? What resolution can we hope for when it comes to serious conflicts about historical treasures, heritage, and the ownership of cultural artifacts. Laws are sometimes unjust, so even good faith efforts to get permission can be of limited help. At the same time, some people did invest huge sums of money and enormous amounts of time to locate such treasures in Egypt, long before there was air conditioning (which to me sounds simply unbearable).

I don’t know what more to say about it, other than that we need to respect a) Egypt, b) its culture, and c) the people who dedicated their lives to finding amazing historical and artistic treasures. All deserve some degree of consideration. If any friends care to enlighten me about present practices, laws, or conflicts on such subjects, I’d be quite interested. Share this to social media and comment on these ideas, if you like, or reach out to me directly.

Processing Our Dachau Concentration Camp Visit

Posted on August 10, 2015 by ETW

I’ll write more about this soon. I’m still processing what we saw there. It was harshly jarring for my sense of what human beings are capable of doing – not one or a few troubling individuals, but a coordinated secret police force. Truly sobering. The experience was visceral.

The gate door to the camp reads “Arbeit Macht Frei,” which translates as “Works makes one free,” or “work makes you free.” The message was a horrible lie, as were the fake shower heads in the gas chamber there. More on that in a follow-up post.

Learning about the camp is not for a weak stomach. I’m still processing. I think I need to return to my Viktor Frankl and Elie Wiesel books.

With all I’ve known about the camps, I nevertheless experienced a shaking feeling of deep sadness that came from actually being there. At the same time, this is an experience extremely worthwhile, which should never be forgotten or whitewashed. People need to see it and to remember.

Marveling at Human Potential, Part 1

Posted on August 9, 2015 by ETW

It is easy today to find examples of things that are simply marvels of human invention and brilliance. The everyday cellphone today is a pretty amazing instrument, considering all that one can do. This past week, I had a chance to see an exhibit of replicas of the items that were found in the tomb of Tutankhamun.

A replica of the death mask of Tutankhamun.

What I find remarkable are the incredible effort, skill, and resources that were put into respecting Tutankhamun. At so early a period in history, people gathered and used a simply massive quantity of gold, masterfully designed and adorned, to pay homage to a ruler who died quite young, Tutankhamun. Tut’s tomb featured countless treasures (ok, there were a little over 700), besides the multiple nested shrines, each of which protected yet another shrine of gold-leaf covered wood. Ultimately, inside the larger gold-covered shrines there was an incredible whole piece of carved alabaster, which contained several solid gold nested sarcophagi.

When I try to imagine the skill of the craftsmen of Tut’s day, I marvel already at what people were able to do so many thousands of years ago. There are periods in human history when people were capable of simply amazing feats. The entombment of Tutankhamun is a great example of what people were capable of doing back when tools were at their most limited in recorded history.

On the one hand, the objects and artworks surrounding Tut are enormously enjoyable to look at and think about, given their beauty and the craftsmanship that had to go into them. For instance, it was amazing to see in the furniture included in Tut’s tomb some dovetail joints, that are still woodworking methods that we use today.

On the other hand, when you think about historical artworks, it is important to remember how many people died in their creation. Or, how people were taxed enormously without any kind of representative government, so that the people in power could fund wars, monuments, and solid-gold sarcophagi. It is hard to imagine such times — even if England does still have a queen.

Thousands of years ago, people were capable of creating outstandingly beautiful golden artworks, paying respect to a deceased ruler. It is hard not to marvel at what human beings were capable of accomplishing, even so long ago and with such modest, early tools.

Power Creates Power

Posted on July 9, 2015 by Sarah Shugars

I recently finished John Gaventa’s Power and Powerlessness: Quiescence and Rebellion in an Appalachian Valley.

The book is an in depth case study of one coal mining community. Gaventa documents how people had their land taken out from under them over 100 years ago by a huge, multinational company. He details the development of power structures separating the working poor, the local elite, and the absentee Company.

He illustrates how the very institutions intended to protect and support “the people” were turned against them: how Company power over workers’ jobs, home, and welfare led to power over their private ballots. How the union became so corrupted its leaders turned to murder rather than suffer a challenger who was slightly more populist. How those in power took both significant and subtle actions to maintain power, while those without power learned better than to even think of questioning authority.

Gaventa, who for years led the Highlander Center, sums up his study eloquently in his conclusion:

Continual defeat gives rise not only to the conscious deferral of action but also to a sense of defeat, or a sense of powerlessness, that may affect the consciousness of potential challengers about grievances, strategies or possibilities for change. Participation denied over time may lead to acceptance of the role of non-participation, as well as to a failure to develop the political resources – skills, organization, consciousness – of political action. Power relationships may develop routines of non-challenge which require no particular action on the part of powerholders to be maintained…

From this perspective, the total impact of a power relationship is more than the sum of its parts. Power serves to create power. Powerlessness serves to re-enforce powerlessness. Power relationships, once established, are self-sustaining. Quiescence [inaction] in the face of inequalities may be understood only in terms of the inertia of the situation. For this reason, power in a given community can never be understood simply by observation at a given point in time. Historical investigation must occur to discover whether routines of non-conflict have been shaped, and, if so, how they are maintained.

This last point is particularly critical – too often we forget that the “impact of a power relationship is more than the sum of its parts.” We forget that these relationships are self-sustaining, with power creating power and powerlessness creating powerlessness.

The result is that we all find ourselves caught in a power structure not of our own making. We may consciously or unconsciously act in ways which reinforce or resist that structure. We may or may not even recognize a power structure is there.

Paulo Freire recognized this, too, arguing in Pedagogy of the Oppressed:

As the oppressed, fighting to be human, take away the oppressors’ power to dominate and suppress, they restore to the oppressors the humanity they had lost in the exercise of oppression.

It is only the oppressed who, by freeing themselves, can free their oppressors. The latter, as an oppressive class, can free neither others nor themselves.

That is to say, we are all caught in this power structure, but it is only the oppressed who can save us.

La Japonaise

Posted on July 8, 2015 by Sarah Shugars

Boston’s Museum of Fine Arts has recently come under fire for inviting patrons to “Channel your inner Camille Monet and try on a replica of the kimono she’s wearing in La Japonaise.”

It’s worth taking a moment to look at the image they used to promote the opportunity: A white American woman pretending to be a white French woman pretending to be Japanese. There’s a lot going on there.

After several complaints from Boston’s Asian American community, the MFA has decided to remove the dress up portion of the activity, instead inviting guests to “touch and engage with” the kimonos, but “not to try on.”

I’ve seen this story pop up on my newsfeed the last few days, but it really caught my attention with the morning news announced the change from the MFA.

The (white) news anchors said that the MFA received “a small number of complaints” from a “handful of activists.” They added that the MFA initially responded that it would continue with the demonstrations, but eventually shifted their position after the complaints “went viral.”

The news anchors expressed general confusion as to why anyone was offended by the exhibit, and appeared disheartened that the MFA had changed it’s policy in response what they saw as a small number of protestors. They called it a case of “political correctness going to far.”

That got my attention.

Now. I do appreciate a general concern about the dangers of political correctness. The last thing that serves a productive conversation about race is an atmosphere in which people feel shut down from expressing themselves – where they’d rather say nothing than run the risk of saying the wrong thing. This is the approach that led to the fallacy of a “color blind” society – as if denying our problems would make them go away.

But “political correctness gone to far” is also a conveniently safe out for people who don’t see – or don’t want to see – a problem.

Frankly, when you have a group of Asian Americans saying they find an exhibit of Kimono dress-up offensive, I think you have to stop and try to understand why they feel that way. It doesn’t matter whether you don’t find it offensive – it’s about not thoughtlessly discrediting someone with a different view from you.

Blogger Evan Smith has a great post explaining why the “be Camille Monet” activity is problematic:

The painting in question, a work from 1876, is a singular example of Orientalism, a tradition in Western art that broadly caricatures regions as disparate as North Africa and East Asia with the aim of cultivating a Romantic visual language around Western cultural imperialism. Japonisme, the particular subset of Orientalism that Monet’s canvas depicts, is a loose interpretation of Japanese culture by French aesthetes marked by ornamentation, hyper-femininity and a sense of escapism bordering on pure fantasy. In La Japonaise the artificiality of the genre is underscored by the blonde wig Camille donned when posing for the painting in order to emphasize her whiteness, contrasting her body to the Otherness of her garments and surroundings.

That’s not to say we need to dismiss the artwork all together, but neither should we celebrate the Orientalism it embodies.

The painting took place less than 30 years after Commodore Perry’s “opening of Japan.” It was a time when Europeans were fascinated by the “topsy turvey” world of Japanese culture – seen as both civilized and barbaric.

In fairness, the Japanese were equally intrigued by European culture – seen as both civilized and barbaric. And there is some great Japanese art that depicts the ape-ishness of Europeans, just as European art captured the beauty and brutality they saw in Japan.

Orientalism was an important movement in European culture, and it seems reasonable that Western society should study it, seek to understand it, and possibly even celebrate the art that came out of it.

But we shouldn’t seek to recreate it.

We should seek to appreciate and understand other cultures, not seek to appropriate them. We shouldn’t celebrate their seeming exoticism, but seek to truly understand them.

Stuyvesant Town

Posted on July 7, 2015 by Sarah Shugars

I am just returning from a weekend in New York, where I spent part of my time at Stuyvesant Town, or Stuy Town as it is more colloquially known.

Stuy Town and the adjoining Peter Cooper Village are a large post-World War II development originally conceived as housing for returning veterans and their families.

Covering 80 acres, 110 buildings, and 11,250 apartments, the development is the largest apartment complex in Manhattan and feels somewhat out of place in the dense urban center. There are trees and fireflies. Water features and basketball courts.

Previously, the area had been the Gashouse District – full of large, leaking gas tanks and people whose poverty kept them from living anywhere else.

In the early 1940s, the land was taken by eminent domain – a controversial move since the land was then owned and developed by Metropolitan Life Insurance Company. Supporters argued that the government needed to “induce insurance companies and savings banks to enter the field of large-scale slum clearance.”

To make room for the new development, 600 buildings, containing 3,100 families, 500 stores and small factories, three churches, three schools, and two theaters were razed. The New York Times called it “the greatest and most significant mass movement of families in New York’s history.”

And the controversy didn’t end there. After law makers declined to add a nondiscrimination clause to MetLife’s contract, the company barred blacks, with the company’s president Frederick H. Ecker arguing that “negroes and whites do not mix.”

The property has changed hands since then – and updated their applicant requirements – but it remains a private property with privately controlled rules. This felt particularly weird for a development that feels very much like a small town.

The development does have a very active tenants association, but I somehow expected more than that. I wanted there to be an egalitarian governing council that would oversee decisions about improvements and moderate tenant conflicts.

Stuyvesant Town is now Manhattan’s largest, and possibly last, “bastion of affordable housing,” having itself expelled poor people for a more refined, middle class community.

And there it stands, a monument to good intentions and the deep challenges of urban planning.

Searching for Inspiration on Dark Days

Posted on June 19, 2015 by Sarah Shugars

I’ve been thinking a lot about actionable steps, recently. Amid the murders in Charleston. Following the deaths of Walter Scott, Kalief Browder, Michael Brown, and far, far too many others.

I’ve read articles on how to be an ally, read commentary and analysis on the perpetual racism pervading our society. I’ve added my voice to those calling for change. I’ve joined mailing lists calling for action, attended protests and demonstrations. I’ve given financially where I can.

And none of it feels like enough. Nothing feels like it’s changing.

I woke this morning with the words of Oscar Wilde ringing in my head:

We did not dare to breathe a prayer,
Or give our anguish scope:
Something was dead in each of us,
And what was dead was Hope.

I rather wanted to spend the day hiding in my closet sobbing silently at all the ills in the world, but that didn’t seem like it would do anybody much of any good.

Besides, who am I to take the bench when people of color are dying? Not everyone has the privileged to just look away.

As I am wont to do at such times of despair, I re-read Albert Camus’ The Myth of Sisyphus.

They had thought with some reason that there is no more dreadful punishment than futile and hopeless labor.

I generally suspect that I’m the only one who finds the words of Camus a comfort. Who, after all, likes to imagine that “the workman of today works everyday in his life at the same tasks, and his fate is no less absurd” than the fate of Sisyphus. The man who defied the gods and was pushed to ceaselessly rolling a rock to the top of a mountain.

Sisyphus, “powerless and rebellious.” (impuissant et révolté)

What an interesting juxtaposition of words!

Sisyphus knew he was powerless and yet he rebelled. The Gods couldn’t punish him, for still, he rebelled.

In Power and Powerlessness, John Gaventa examined the role of social power in maintaining the oppression of the poor in the Appalachian Valley.

Gaventa identified what he calls the three dimensions of power.

In the first dimension, A has power over B insofar as A is has more resources or can use more force to coerce B. The first dimension is a fair fight, where one side is stronger than the other.

In the second dimension, A constructs barriers to diminish B’s participation. Voter ID laws, monolingual meetings. In the second dimension, A rigs the game.

The third dimension is the most insidious. Not only does A control and shape the agenda, but A’s power is so absolute that A influences the way B sees the conflict. In the third dimension, B is not even sure she’s oppressed. It’s a woman who just naturally does all the house work.

I sometimes think that the pervasiveness of racism in America stems from Whites’ inability to reach this total level of dominance.

We brought people over as chattel and expected them to obey. We beat them and tortured them and did unspeakable things to break them, but they continued to resist.

We fancied ourselves as gods, and yet among those who were most powerless we found ourselves impotent. Unable to exert total power. Still they rebelled.

There is no fate that can not be surmounted by scorn.

Sisyphus is stronger than his rock.

But I imagine that it’s of little comfort to one who looks back on generations of oppression, who looks around to see their brothers and sisters dying. It’s of little comfort that some dead, French philosopher thinks you’ve won.

Yet there is something in this, I think –

For the battle goes on.

The battle goes on, and slowly bending the arc of the moral universe can feel very much like futile labor, it can feel like an effort in which the whole being is exerted toward accomplishing nothing.

But still the work goes on.

For we know that all is not, has not been, exhausted, and we know that fate is a human matter, which must be settled among men.

And there is so much work for us to do.

With Thoughts of Charleston

Posted on June 18, 2015 by Sarah Shugars

I often wonder what moments will be remembered in history. Which moments, in retrospect, will seem to mark a turning point, a watershed change.

Will history remember a church founded by Reverend Morris Brown? A church burnt to the ground in 1822 for its involvement with a planned slave revolt. A church rebuilt, only to be forced underground for 30 years after Charleston outlawed all black churches in 1834.

Will history remember the day in 2015 when nine black men and women were murdered at Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church?

To be surprised is to be naive.

All this has happened before, and we’ve done far too little to keep it from happening again.

“I have to do it,” the gunman was quoted as saying. “You rape our women and you’re taking over our country. And you have to go.”

Then he murdered people at church.

It may be the act of one deranged man, but its the rhetoric of too much of our nation. For too long we have allowed such hateful speech to flourish, giving a pass to hateful ideas – too afraid or unsure of how to intervene.

Where did the gunman learn to hate like that?

He learned it from us. From white America. From people who nurtured his hate or who simply left it there, unconfronted.

They say the gunman sat with parishioners for an hour before opening fire. He sat with them as they discussed biblical verse and prayed.

But in that garden of Gethsemane, it was Rev. Clementa Pinckney’s and Cynthia Hurd’s cup that would not pass. It was Myra Thompson, Sharonda Singleton and Tywanza Sanders who had to die to remind us that there is still hate and evil in this world.

That there is still hate and evil in our communities.

You wouldn’t think we’d need reminding, but clearly we do – since black churches are burned and black bodies are scattered in our streets. And yet we, white America, continue to sit by and sigh.

And nothing changes.

I want to make sense of this senseless horror. I want an action I can check to solve this problem once and for all.

But there are no easy answers, and it will take hard, long work for solutions.

All I know is that we can do better, and amidst this heartache, this pain, and sorrow we must do better.

How many more have to die?

Happy Bunker Hill Day

Posted on June 17, 2015 by Sarah Shugars

Today, June 17, is Bunker Hill Day, a little known holiday celebrated, I believe, only in parts of Massachusetts’ Suffolk and Middlesex Counties.

While the Boston Globe reports that it used to be a day “on which city government offices would close,” the day is still celebrated within my city of Somerville, MA. Perhaps that’s just some of the civic-mindedness that got us recognized as an All America City.

And just what is Bunker Hill Day?

Why, it commemorates, of course, the June 17, 1775 Battle of Bunker Hill, which took place largely on Breed’s Hill in Charleston.

It’s not all madness, though. In fact, Bunker Hill was intended site of the battle.

But let’s back up: The battle took place during the siege of Boston – April 19, 1775 to March 17, 1776 – when American militiamen effectively contained British troops within Boston.

After taking Boston, the British sought to fortify their position by seizing the nearby Charlestown peninsula.

Before the British could act on this plan, though, Colonels Putnam and Prescott set out with orders to establish American defenses on Charlestown’s Bunker Hill. However, “for reasons that are unclear, they constructed a redoubt on nearby Breed’s Hill.”

The British, “astonished to see the rebel fortifications upon the hill” led two costly and unsuccessful charges against the Americans.

After receiving reinforcements, the British led a third and ultimately successful attack against the fortification, taking 1054 casualties – nearly 40 percent of the British ranks – in the process.

At the time, Somerville was part of Charlestown – “Charlestown beyond the neck.” Though Somerville was established as its own town in 1842, we still proudly remember the game-changing battle.

“While for the Army of New England the battle was technically a tactical defeat, it was also a symbolic victory of strategic proportions. A small colonial force of men from all races, classes, and occupations made a defiant stand against some of the best trained and equipped soldiers in the world.”

Voting Rights

Posted on May 29, 2015 by Sarah Shugars

In any democracy, the question of who gets to vote has important implications for a group’s power and voice within a society.

Voting has taken place within modern America since at least 1607 when the English established their first permanent settlement at Jamestown. At that time, six men from among the colony’s 105 settlers participated in electing Edward Wingfield as president.

While a 5.7% voting rate among colonists may sound like a dismal start to what would become our nation, those six men represented 100% of eligible voters.

In the United States’ first presidential election, held in 1788–89, there were 43,782 popular votes cast from a population of 3 million. Incidentally, “only 6 of the 10 states casting electoral votes chose electors by any form of popular vote.”

At that time, of course, the constitution didn’t provide any guidelines on who could vote. By convention, only white male property owners over the age of 21 had the right to vote. That was the popular understanding of “the people” at the time.

Since then, our definition has expanded.

In 1870, the 15th amendment gave black men the right to vote, and in 1920, the 19th amendment allowed women to vote as well. Then, in 1971, amongst the protests of the Vietnam War, the 26th amendment lowered the voting age to 18.

So throughout our history, our understanding of who are “the people” and who should be allowed to vote has shifted.

And each expansion of voting rights has been met by skepticism by those in power.

In Some of the Reasons Against Woman Suffrage, Francis Parkman argued “Whatever liberty the best civilization may accord to women, they must always be subject to restrictions unknown to the other sex, and they can never dispense with the protecting influences which society throws about them.”

You can perhaps imagine some of Parkman’s supporting points: “everybody knows that the physical and mental constitution of woman is more delicate than in the other sex.”

In his five page pamphlet, Parkman argues over and over again that women are not fit to vote, that most do not want the vote, that giving them the vote would destroy the moral fabric of our society, that the right to vote is a “supreme device for developing the defects of women” which “demolish[s] their real power to build an ugly mockery instead.”

This history is particularly compelling, because as the definition of “the people” continues to expand, we continue to see similar arguments.

People under 18 shouldn’t vote because they aren’t capable of being informed voters. They shouldn’t have the right to vote because most young people don’t care about voting. They shouldn’t have the right to vote because it is our job to protect them and nurture them – giving them the right to vote would be like letting them vote on whether to have cake for dinner.

But such arguments have proven to be flawed.

Those are the rationalizations of a society that has gotten used to putting a segment of the population in it’s “proper” place. Changing that place may disrupt social norms, but history has shown that change to always be for the better.

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