10.11.12 Links Roundup
- Why America Needs White History Month (Comment Is Free)
Most of the history we learn is built on myths. Even the black history we choose to teach in response to eurocentric learning is centered around myths. But those myths are meant to help a people reclaim a history long denied to them, to instil self-esteem in the face of disempowerment. It may not be exactly ideal, but the rationale is at least noble. The myths of white American history perpetuate oppression and inequality. They instil in white America a false sense of self-imperviousness to facts or logic.
When George Washington can’t tell a lie, Abraham Lincoln singlehandedly freed the enslaved, FDR lifted the nation out of depression and Ronald Reagan tore down the Berlin Wall with his bare hands … it’s no wonder Michele Bachmann believes the founding fathers fought to end slavery, Newt Gingrich thinks poor black children should be janitors to teach them about work ethic, Rick Perry hunts at “Niggerhead” and sees no problem, Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney can tell “jokes” about the president’s birth certificate and his campaign co-chair, John Sununu, can refer to the president as “lazy” and “not that bright”.
- 50 Other Best Films Of The 1990s (Slate)
Letting eight individuals separately make their own independent choices, and then averaging them together, has the ring of aesthetic purity to it. But let’s be real: There’s nothing “pure” about a canon built from the idiosyncratic tastes of eight, mostly male, mostly white people. There’s nothing “pure” about canon-building at all. That doesn’t mean it can’t be fun or worthwhile! But if you’re going to do it, you should consider the implications and the consequences, and proceed accordingly. If your selection committee is mostly male and almost entirely (or entirely?) white, recognize that this may lead to certain blind spots, and weigh whether or not putting forward a canon that averages together such tastes will really reflect the diversity of international cinema in the 1990s.
That a rapper would make an album so overtly about politics shouldn’t really be all that newsworthy, but in today’s America, it is.
“It’s the time more than it’s him,” says Bakari Kitwana, author of the forthcoming book “Hip Hop Activism in The Obama Era.” “In many ways we’re reliving the ’80s in the ways in which poverty has leveled the economy for black folks.”
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