The Future Of Race In America: TED Talk By Michelle Alexander, Author Of "The New Jim Crow"
On Monday, documentarian Ken Burns delivered a remarkable speech on race in America. The occasion was the Jefferson Lecture in the Humanities, the highest honor the US grants for intellectual achievement in the Humanities and it was delivered to the National Endowment for the Humanities at the Kennedy Center.
Burns began the lecture by discussing the nature of the Humanities and its regard within our country:
It is in fact the glue, like civics--that hugely misunderstood sub-set of the humanities--that allows us to understand precisely how things work, how to get things done. All things: even science, technology, engineering and math, as well as our shared history, culture, politics, and, as always, the spirit–expanding arts. At a time when our ancient tribal instincts sometimes overrun our civilized impulses, the humanities have become an ethical watchdog, guarding our legitimate progress from retreat, repelling regressive trespassers. They are an indelible reminder of our common bonds.But somehow, in recent times, the humanities have been needlessly scapegoated in our country by those who continually benefit from division and obfuscation. Let me make it perfectly clear: the United States of America is an enduring humanistic experiment. That fact does not preclude or exclude--indeed it is the exact opposite of those limiting words--the full expression of religious freedom. In fact, it strengthens an understanding, promoted by our founders, of tolerance and inclusion. What could be more faith-based than that? Where we get into trouble is when our arrogant certainty suggests that only one point of view, perhaps only one religion, is “right.” “Liberty,” Judge Learned Hand once said--and can there be a better name for a jurist than Learned Hand--“Liberty,” he said, “is never being too sure you’re right.” Doubt—healthy, questioning, experimenting, perfecting doubt—is critical to the humanities and the health of our still fragile Republic.…I am convinced the humanities offer us a way through, one way to help us avoid that ever-looming national suicide. The humanities is a patient and sure-handed tutor, ready to rescue the most depressed and deflated of its sincere students.
Burns, then, brings up his first understanding of race in America, in the form of an African-American cleaning lady who had kept the family home while his mother was fighting cancer. Moving from Newark, DE, to Ann Arbor, MI, they drove by the house of this woman, Mrs. Jennings, to bid her farewell.
Just as we were about to head off for the more than twelve-hour drive to our new home, Mrs. Jennings leaned into the back of the car to give me a hug and kiss goodbye. Something came over me. I suddenly recoiled, pressed myself into the farthest corner of the back seat, and wouldn’t let her.Now this, ladies and gentlemen, was the early Sixties. I had heard the “N” word used frequently in my neighborhood growing up, but had known in my bones and from my parents’ stern lectures that it was wrong. Yet I had somehow also allowed myself to be infected with the prejudice that had metastasized throughout my country. Mrs. Jennings understood completely and made no fuss about it. She knew.My father, on the other hand, waited only a few seconds after we had pulled away before he stopped the car and turned around and said to me, “Young man, I am so disappointed in you.” I was disappointed in myself, and I have felt the sharp sting of disappointment now for fifty-three years. Longer than this Endowment has been in existence, I have carried the guilt of that inexcusable snub. Later, I convinced myself that my lifelong interest in the subject of race in America was born in the anguished transference that took place there at Mrs. Jennings’ curb on Cleveland Avenue in Newark, Delaware, in 1963, and in the coming years, as death grew closer to our door, when I would lie awake at night replaying that horrible moment, paralyzed, too, by irrational fears of fire hoses and dogs in Selma, confusing and conflating the cancer that was killing my country with the cancer that was killing and would kill my family.
Burns then goes through the sad history of race in America, relating it to his many documentaries, whether The Civil War, Jazz, Baseball, Jackie Robinson, or The Rise and Fall of Jack Johnson. He then makes this plea:
Like the amputated limb felt long after it has been cut off, I miss Trayvon Martin; I was once a seventeen-year-old who wore a hooded sweatshirt walking through unfamiliar neighborhoods, but I was never gunned down. I miss Tamir Rice, too; I was eleven once and played with a plastic gun, but no cop ever shot me. We are missing many hundreds, if not thousands, of African Americans, lost only because of the color of their skin…in just the last decade. Henry Louis Gates told me recently me of a Jim Crow museum at Ferris State University in Michigan, where too many ugly, vile, demeaning, beyond-the-pale items characterizing President Obama and his innocent family are on display, piling up along with more than a century of other immortalized hatred. ...I do not believe, ladies and gentlemen, there is a hell, as most of our religions reliably report, just the one we humans make for ourselves and each other right here.
I would like to provide further excerpts from the lecture, but I am mindful that I have already strained the definition of “fair use”. I urge anyone interested in the issue of race in America to read the transcript and/or view the video of the lecture.
And, video of the full lecture can be found here. Skip to about the 16:30 mark to find where the lecture begins.
No comments:
Post a Comment