Online Museum of Historical Kitsch, Chesapeake Region

Zach, this one is for you -- not the subject so much as the fact of a post.

Zach is one of the other participants at the institute. He helped me to get drunk on my birthday, which led me to confess to a secret identity. The next day, he used our late start to obsessively search for that identity online. (Historiann, your friend, the brilliant young scholar from the Omohundro panel, says "hi!" She's fabulous!) He has been kind enough not to out me to everyone else, although his obsessive search was noticed by a few others. Now, one of our organizers is now also searching for me, as is one of the presenters. The opinions of everyone else could be summed up in this exchange between another participant and I.

The other participant asked, "is this blog thing something we should read?"

"No," I said. "Not at all."

"Good," he said.

Meanwhile, Zach has eagerly awaited a new post. I cannot deliver the post that I just know he is dying to read because I don't write fiction on this blog, but I can deliver this post: a continuation of the Online Museum of Historical Kitsch, particularly since he was involved with my purchase of one of the items.

Our institute has taken two field trips. The first brought us to Mount Vernon, home of George Washington's slaves and a lot of interpreters who tried really hard not to make ole George look too bad as a slaveholder. To be fair, they were quite knowledgeable, referred to documents, and were willing to answer questions about Washington's fugitives, including our friend, Oney Judge. They just didn't always offer up those stories unsolicited. Still, you can see that the museum has come some distance in actually acknowledging slavery on the plantation, and that slavery in Washington's time was a more complicated institution than simply "the beatings will continue until morale improves."

As we entered the visitors' center, past the life-size statues of the Washington family (that Martha was a hottie), past the outpost gift shop (they give you a taste as you go in, then save the big one for the exit), you encounter this fine specimen:


That is a Mount Vernon dollhouse, which is awesome! I wanted to populate it with dolls. In particular, I wanted to put a little doll of an enslaved woman in there, and have her subtly conveying her opinion that the Washingtons were #1 in her book.

Sadly, gift shops were not high on the list of stops. You just know Mount Vernon would have a wide array of historical kitsch. I did, however, get a chance to take a peek, and found two fabulous examples.

Here, you see the George Washington bobble-head:


I had anticipated the bobble-head because, several years ago, the Association for Documentary Editing held its yearly meeting in D.C., and the participants took a nighttime tour of Mount Vernon, which culminated in a wine and cheese reception in the area of the Gift Shop. They kindly kept the Gift Shop open for the reception. A friend found the bobble-head and had to have it. He worked at the Papers of the Supreme Court project (or something like that), and desperately wanted to know if they had a set of the early Supreme Court judges in bobble-head form. He expected, at the very least, John Marshall. He was disappointed.

I knew to look for the bobble-head, but wholly did not expect this:

You can't really tell from the picture, so I'll describe it. The display is in the shape of a little tree. Those things that you see sticking out of the stump? Those are little, toy axes. Their handles are hollow and filled with cherry-sour candies. Geddit? George chopping down the cherry tree? So he cannot tell a lie? The classics never die, even when they should. Still, a clever bit of kitsch -- with candy, no less -- you must admit!

Our second field trip took place last weekend. We participants, the organizers, and two poor speakers who had no idea what they were getting into, all hopped on a bus to go down to Richmond and then Williamsburg. The trip alone is a tale to tell, involving a detour, a broken bus, illness, monster traffic, a bad lunch, and two of the hottest days of the summer thus far. As a result, we had to have an intensive seminar on alcohol consumption in Colonial Williamsburg. (Honestly, after this month, I will have to check into rehab. I'm hoping that gives me more time to write.)

In Richmond, we visited -- ah, hell, I forget the name of the museum, but it was one of those Civil War things located in an old armory. They desperately tried to provide a balance interpretation of the war; but, being located in Richmond, you just know that a second or fifth Civil War was fought over the interpretation. The result was three different points of view that never, to me, quite meshed into a thesis that went beyond the sort of Ken Burnsian, "They were all there. They all fought for a Cause. They were all American. Yea!"

In fact, Ken Burns influences ran throughout this exhibit, especially in the films, with their first person narration, folksy music, and slow pans over images. The pans drove one of our participants crazy.

"Why are they panning?" he demanded. "What are they moving toward?"

"You know what they are moving toward?" said another participant, with full gusto and commitment to a cause. "Freedom! That's what!"

I almost said, "Amen."

All of this is not an attack on the museum. Lord knows they must have to keep some really pissed off and myopic constituencies happy just to keep the doors open. But, it is a product of having the public determine historical analysis -- or lack thereof. I'm not sure that I could seriously work in museums, especially ones like this, because I would have a stroke from containing my urge to start smacking people.

Back to the kitsch: In this museum, they had an artifact that I, being the product of two southeastern Louisiana families, had heard of all of my life, but never seen:

That is a chamber pot with the image of General Benjamin Butler in the bottom. Butler was the Union general who occupied New Orleans in the Civil War. There, when faced with a rebellious city of southern belles, he issued an order saying that all unruly ladies would be "held liable to be treated as a woman of the town plying her avocation." Earlier, he had also classified fugitive slaves as "contraband of war," thus forcing the federal government to actually free some slaves. He was a man who knew how the enemy thought. This chamberpot, then, was a southern artifact.

Of course, in the gift shop, we continued with our bobble-head president theme:

Bobble-head Ulysses S. Grant. In the exhibits, they also had a General Robert E. Lee, as well as a model toy car of the "General Lee" from The Dukes of Hazzard. Would you beleive I forgot to take a picture? I was lax in my duties, finding out that another participant had actually gone to high school in Navasota, Texas, with my old roommate.

The piece de resistance, however, was this:

Yes, a Frederick Douglass action figure! Isn't it wonderful! He even has a small copy of The Narrative, as well as a pissed off expression. Notice, too, that he was on sale.

This picture was not taken in the gift shop, but in my hotel room because, yes, I bought it. (And I just realized how creepy it sounds to say that I bought a Frederick Douglass.) In fact, Zach, one of the presenters (in whom I found a kindred spirit in gift shop obsession), and I caused a run on the Douglass figures. Any disaster that occurred after that on the trip was entirely worth this coup.

Unfortunately, I was unable to fully explore the big gift shop at Williamsburg due to time constraints and the fact that everyone just wanted to get the hell back to Baltimore. I did get a look in their smaller gift shop on the museum grounds and discovered, first, that their slates are still made in Portugal just like the one I got there in 1976; and, second, they are really really proud of their stuff. Desperately as I wanted a tricorn hat in which I could stick a feather and call it macaroni, I wasn't willing to pay $30 for the fun. I'll only go so far for a punch line. Earning the PhD so I could say "yes" when anyone asked if there was a doctor in the house kinda put a damper on that sort of commitment.

We finally got back to Baltimore before dark, but are still feeling the exhaustion today after fourteen days on the clock. NEH institutes are not for the faint at heart!

I Pause a Moment to Bitch about Fancy Hotels

I just spent 2 hours doing something on the hotel's "free wireless internet." This task should have taken me ten minutes, but the connection kept disappearing or slowing down or whatever the hell the little internet mice do to make things not happen. Seriously, I could have driven back to my apartment, done what I needed, and come back in the time that it took to do this task.

On top of that, despite the promise of microfridges, I have to buy every meal out because I have no microwave, and I can't keep leftovers to eat cold or sandwich makings because the refigerator -- which is plugged in -- is warmer than the room.

This is to say, I am not impressed by this high-end, fancy, historic hotel in the high-end, fancy, historic neighborhood.

Usually, I stay in low-end, half-star motels, like that one in New York where they sold birth control in the outdoor vending machines. Sure, you may get bed bugs or e-coli or who knows what from the carpet, and you may be located way out in a business park or next door to a Wal-Mart; but you do get a microwave, a refrigerator that refrigerates, decent cable with HBO or Showtime, and a reliable and secure internet connection -- all for under a $100/night. Who gives a damn that you can see some monument or have rich neighbors when you have to spend five weeks in a hotel that can't provide the types of things that you need in that time -- all for over $200/night?

I'm also not too sure that this place is that much cleaner than a No-tell Motel on the microbe level. I have been scratching little bites all over my skin since I got here (and, sadly, Daniel Craig was not responsible for them -- unless I decide to name the microscopic critters after hot movie stars). This time, my desire for convenience was wholly misplaced.

As Charlie Brown would say: Arghhhhhhh!

At least we are on the university shuttle line. On a sweltering hot day with the university 2 miles away, that shuttle can block out the less than stellar amenities. That was the convenience that made me opt to stay here rather than at home. That, and such things as the cool Artscape Festival last night and the historical society around the corner.

Corrections on Fells Point Geography

As I looked a little more in depth, with more attention to detail, at Douglass's time on Fells Point, I realized that he lived at the Aliceanna St. site for only a few months. He had arrived in Baltimore sometime in March 1826, and the Aulds moved away from that address in sometime in 1827, around the time that Douglass returned to Talbot County to be appraised as part of Aaron Anthony's estate.

I always feel weird referring to Douglass -- or any person -- as property to be owned and appraised. I wonder if there might be some less impersonal, more human way to describe the relationship; but, really, the impersonal and inhuman is quite precise in describing his legal status, and it always underlay the de facto relationship to his masters.

Seeing the individual, the one to whom I have an intellectual relationship, referred to as property places me imaginatively into his reality in which this externally imposed status as property does not align with his own sense of human, conscious, sentient self. This is not adequately explaining what I mean -- but, I'll work on it.

It's something that I'm trying to articulate in these seminars in which I'm seeing that many of these rebelling Africans do not understand themselves as slaves fighting for freedom. They understand themselves as free people already -- that Enlightenment "endowed by the Creator" free -- trying to force the masters to recognize that freedom. This I understand of the Africans; but the African Americans may have a different consciousness, complicated by birth into the system. Douglass, I think, tries to explain this African American consciousness, this self-knowledge of humanity within a system that denies that humanity.

Up until he went to Baltimore, Douglass lived in a system in which all of the slaves understood their position and roles, and all of the masters and overseers understood theirs. He described his own education into his role as a slave, and later in opposition to slavery. In Sophia Auld, he found an example of a white person being educated into her role as a mistress of slaves and in support of slavery.

Sophia was the wife of Hugh, this proxy master in Baltimore. When Douglass first met her, he described her as kind, not requiring the performance of submission expected of a slave. He wrote, "she commenced, when I first went to live with her, to treat me as she supposed on human being ought to treat another. In entering upon the duties of a slaveholder, she did not seem to perceive that I sustained to her the relation of a mere chattel, and that for her to treat me as human being was not only wrong, but dangerously so."

An eight year old child when he went to live in the Auld household, Douglass was beginning to understand his position as a slave. No one since his grandmother, and perhaps also his mother according to My Bondage and My Freedom, had granted him humanity. Now, here was a woman -- a white woman, no less -- willing to look at him and see a human child worthy of affection and, more important in empowering him, education. Yet, she too had her own lessons to learn as a white woman overseeing an enslaved person in a slave society.

Hugh Auld was not a slaveholder, and both he and Sophia were both skilled laborers in the working class. He was a ship carpenter and she was a weaver. Douglass was in their household as a loan or a favor from Hugh's brother. Sophia was raised Methodist, and her family, the Keithlys, supposedly entertained anti-slavery ideas. I have to check the primary sources for the veracity of this claim.

Once Sophia's husband forbid her to educate Douglass, her demeanor toward Douglass changed. He wrote, "It was at least necessary for her to have some training in the exercise of irresponsible power, to make her equal to the task of treating me as though I were a brute." She not only ended their lessons, but became furious with him when she saw him with reading material. "She seemed to think that here lay the danger," he wrote. "I have had her rush at me with a face made all up of fury, and snatch from me a newspaper, in a manner that fully revealed her apprehension."

In my last post, I quoted his passage on being watched. If Hugh Auld were at the shipyard all day, and Douglass was assigned the duty of watching the small child Thomas Auld, then that leaves Sophia as the person keeping watch on Douglass's actions around books.

This particular relationship seems open for much more analysis than I've come across in most of the biographies of Douglass. First, we have the question of Sophia's education as a slaveholder, her transformation from charitable instructor subverting in a small way the slave system by simply assuming that Douglass had the capacity to be educated, and by offering him the weapon of literacy -- although she probably did not understand her actions in such terms, but, rather, the actions of a charitable Christian. I really need to understand more about Methodism and anti-slavery sentiment (although not necessarily abolition) on the Eastern Shore and in Baltimore. In these seminars, Sylvia Frey spoke to us, and she placed extreme importance upon evangelical denominations such as Methodism in slave resistance, so I will have to read deeper into that and look into the Methodist congregations in Talbot and Baltimore.

Second, we have Sophia's position as a wife under the control of her husband in that tiny little space of a house. Third, we have Douglass as the mediator of her experience within a form that served as propaganda for a particular movement. How did his audience of Christian women in the north -- women who might identify with Sophia -- shape his depiction of this proxy mistress?

Fourth -- and this will take much more reading and questioning to understand -- how did his experience with Sophia shape his relationship to white women later in his life? Many of his close female relationships were with white women, and this is a subject around which I skirt but which I have not quite figured out how to approach. I see it, but I'm not yet sure how to get near it.

Meanwhile, back on Fells Point, Douglass lived on Aliceanna Street for less than a year. Sometime between November 1826 and October 1827, he returned to Talbot County to be appraised and to have Thomas Auld assume ownership of him. Then, in 1827, he was sent back to Baltimore. By that time, Hugh and Sophia Auld, along with their children, had moved to Philpot Street. I want to check the directories myself, but my secondary sources say that the address is unknown. Douglass, however, describes the abuse of two female slaves in the household across the street from the Aulds, and that address was 22 Philpot Street.

Do you want to know what Philpot street looks like now? Well, I can't really show you since it no longer exists. See the big, new construction toward the back, right of this image?:

Well, the part closest to me, the photographer, sits right on top of Philpot street. There are no signs, no buildings, no nothing but an open concrete expanse beyond it. Even this image from Mapquest doesn't quite show you exactly how it looks (and Google Maps is even more outdated):

Douglass also wrote of seeing slaves sold there at the foot of Philpot Street. In the first picture above, that would be about where the building on the left side of the image stands. I find myself getting quite sentimental when I visit these sites sometimes. When I first found that place, and thought of the ships on the docks, of a little boy alone in the city, and of all of the people lined up, sold away from their families, I felt moved almost to tears. The place should be more haunted, more remembered, the grief honored in some way, not paved over with concrete and achievement stories.

In March 1833, Douglass was sent back to Talbot County. Between 1833 and April 1837, he lived in St. Michaels, suffered at the hands of Edward Covey the slave breaker (incidentally, I heard today that Donald Rumsfeld recently bought the property owned by Covey -- boy, do I want to check that out because, damn!, the soil of that piece of land must ooze evil), tried to escape by water up the Chesapeake, and was dragged from St. Michaels to the Easton jail. In April 1837, he got very lucky when Thomas Auld sent him back to Hugh in Baltimore rather than to a slave trader who would sell him south. Sometime around then, the Baltimore Aulds had moved to the east end of the Point to Fells Street.

Today, we had a speaker, Marcus Rediker, who discussed port cities as the nexus of several different worlds, a place of not only commercial exchange, but also intellectual exchange. He said that this process would have concentrated in the first three streets from the waterfront. Aliceanna is about four streets from the waterfront, and Philpot and Fells are right there on the waterfront. Douglass also describes being in the streets, playing with poor white boys, tricking them into teaching him more letters and words, running to bring messages from Sophia to Hugh at the shipyards, working in the shipyards himself. He ran among whites and free blacks. He "acquired" his first book only a block or two from Philpot, right on the waterfront.

Rediker and I discussed what this context might be for the 8-15, then 17-20 year old Douglass. What was in the air there on the streets of the waterfront? What news circulated? What gossip? What stories of insurrections from the Caribbean and further south? What ideas? After all, Daniel Walker's Appeal was circulating, William Lloyd Garrison was publishing the Genius of Universal Emancipation and getting arrested for libel right there in the city, all during these years. What impact did all of this have on his intellectual development? He didn't spring fully-formed, nor tabula rasa, just for the Garrisonians in Nantucket in 1842.

The bigger project here is about the women. I've discussed Sophia Auld, but a more important woman walked these streets, a woman who was intensely private and who probably knew Douglass better than anyone else in his life. The more difficult task here will be to find Anna Murray in Fells Point. What was life like for a single, free black woman in this entrepot? What was she doing, and how much might she have been a part and parcel of subversive activity in the black community there?

But, again, I do go on. Anna will have to wait for another time.

Out of Town in Bawlmer

The post, "Abolition as a Self-Help Movement," has received a number of links. Hello everyone visiting via those links! Who knew all of my bitching and moaning had some wider interest?

Meanwhile, I haven't been writing because, first, I had to close out the first summer semester, and then I started this seminar series here in Baltimore. Both of these events really messed with my writing schedule, but at least the second has given me some material.

These seminars are fabulous, all about slave resistance. I am reminded of one of the reasons that this white, southern, suburban girl became interested in African American history. I had always felt that this was something secret, something I wasn't supposed to know or ask about in any great detail. Heck, I wasn't even allowed to watch Roots, when it first came on when I was in 4th grade, and was treated like a freak when I did watch it in reruns when I was in 8th grade. Naturally, prohibition made the subject more enticing. Every story, every statistic, every new approach that historians come up with still makes me feel like I'm learning something secret, exciting, important, and true.

I have to get back to reading, but I wanted to briefly share some images. I have gone over my Flickr limit for the month -- dammit! Before the photo gatekeepers shut me out, I was able to upload images of two of my favorite subjects in Baltimore.

First, Homicide: Life on the Streets:*

This is Broadway Pier, which served as the station house. The door there on the left side of the image still has the "Police" sign. One of my compatriots said that he imagined some poor schmuck getting mugged there on Thames St., seeing the "Police" sign, crawling over the stone street for help, only to find that the station is a relict of a t.v. stage set.

One of my favorite episodes featured this:
That is Edgar Poe's grave. That is, that is his second grave. The first was located in the same burial ground, behind the church that is to the left of the image. In the Homicide episode, Pembleton and Bayliss investigate a case in which human bones were found sealed inside of a wall in a brick row house. Pembleton -- ah! Andre Braugher! -- made the connection between the method of murder and Poe's grave across the street. There, they find a mysterious Poe aficionado; and you will have to rent the DVD of Season 4, Episode "Heartbeat," to find out the rest.

Of course, if you know anything about Frederick Douglass, you know that I went searching for places that he mentions in the Narrative:

This is the corner where Hugh Auld lived when Douglass first arrived in Baltimore in 1826. Hugh Auld was Thomas Auld's brother. Thomas Auld was Aaron Anthony's son-in-law. Aaron Anthony was Douglass's master. When Anthony died later that year, Thomas Auld, by virtue of his marriage to Lucretia Auld, inherited Douglass. Lucretia, by the way, died within a year of that transaction. Years later, after Douglass had named names in his published Narrative and then traveled to England to raise funds for the abolitionist movement, to seek a British (ultimately an Irish) publisher for the Narrative, and to escape enforcement of the fugitive slave clause, Thomas Auld sold Douglass to Hugh. Hugh then publicized his intent to re-enslave Douglass and sell him south.

The Garrisonian abolitionists based in Boston thought, "yea! What great publicity for our cause to have such an articulate and famous black man dragged back into slavery! What a wonderful way to expose the hypocrisy of slavery and the government that protects it!" Douglass began investigating the viability of a permanent relocation to England. Elizabeth Nichols, an English Quaker, gathered the funds and purchased Douglass's freedom from Hugh Auld.

The Garrisonians freaked, "this is granting legitimacy to the institution!" Douglass said, "thank you." You can see the Garrisonians' point. After all, buying a slave's freedom implicitly acknowledges the master's ownership of that freedom. They refused to in any way acknowledge that ownership. That was all fine and good for them to say so, but they weren't the person facing a return to a explicitly vindictive master in order to stand on their principles. This was one of the many things that drove Douglass away from the Boston camp (see also my responses to Digger in "Frederick Douglass on the 4th of July").

I got carried away there, didn't I? I do tend to go on. Getting back to the location of Hugh Auld's home, the picture above marks the location at the corner of Aliceanna St. and Happy Alley, now called Durham. All of the houses on that block seem (I'm not an architectural historian in any way whatsoever, so this is my wild-ass-guesstimate) to date to the period when Douglass lived there. That is, all of the houses except the Auld's:This lovely example of 20th century ugly seems to occupy the space of about two of the row houses that are typical of this Fells Point neighborhood. Here is an example of the neighbors:The homes are two rooms deep and two stories high, with an attic and a basement. I've lived in studio apartments with more square-footage. Douglass may have slept in the attic, or he may have slept with the little Auld boy for whom he was supposed to be a "companion." (I think "companion" actually means "babysitter.") That Auld boy may have slept in the same room as his parents, and maybe Douglass did, too.

In any case, these were close quarters (not that close quarters were unusual for anyone), and the neighborhood is very small and compact. I imagine that everyone knew everyone else's business, like in most small towns. This makes me wonder about the way enslaved and free black people had to behave, and the ways that they engaged in subterfuge, like helping one another disappear on a train headed to New York.

This also adds another dimension to the cooling of his relationship with the Aulds. In this spot, Douglass first learned to read from Sophia Auld, Hugh's wife. When Hugh found this out, he vociferously forbid the lessons. Douglass wrote that, after Hugh Auld forbid the reading lessons, "I was most narrowly watched. If I was in a separate room for any considerable length of time, I was sure to be suspected of having a book, and was at once called to give an account of myself." In such a tiny space, Douglass must have felt completely suffocated.

Douglass was sent back to Talbot County in 1833, then returned to Fells Point in 1836. By that time, the caste line that he had seen forming between himself and the Aulds had become quite definite. Part of the early sections of his autobiographies deal with his own growing awareness of his own status as "slave" and what being a "slave" meant. By 1836, he knew what being a slave meant, and Sophia and her children knew what being of the master class meant.

Between 1836 and 1838, he lived here, a teenager, pissed off about slavery with a fury to be free, in something approximating 800 square feet of space with people whom he hated. At the very least, he saw them as his natural adversaries. Sure, he spent most of the day away from them, and probably found other ways to legitimately stay away from them at night. Still, someone probably always knew where he was and what he was up to. This makes me wonder if the collective life of the enslaved and free black people in Fells Point had, in some ways, more methods of hiding itself than that of the slaves back at Wye House. Perhaps not more, but different.

Again, I go on. All I wanted to do was to share some tourist pictures.

*I would also visit scenes from The Wire, my other Baltimore obsession, but most of those places are a bit less tourist-friendly.

Bad Ideas

In the past few months, I've been in a disturbed state. My life itself has been pretty stable. For the first time in my life I'm not trying to get somewhere else physically or professionally. I've lived in one place for two years and it looks like that will continue. I have a job that I like (even as I question my fitness for it) and that pays a living wage, colleagues who don't harass (except for that one woman, and she was more of a temporary nuisance), and some semblance of future security. These are not things that I've had in my entire adult life. At the lower level of the hierarchy of needs, I'm as secure as anyone can hope for. In some sense, some of the goals that I set and re-set for myself ages ago have been attained.

Yet, I am disturbed.

The security that I've found has allowed me now to look at some of the ideas by which I live my life. That may explain my intense reaction to those self-help responses of my students. I'm partly projecting my own psychological and intellectual work onto them.

I have lived according to some very bad ideas. They aren't original bad ideas. In fact, most of them are pretty cliched. You can get a notion of those ideas in the content of my "Daddy Issues" post. You can see them in my comments on other blogs when the discussion turns to abuse. You can also see them in my own comments on this blog in the way that I vacillate. I'm fighting between what I'm supposed to believe and what I do believe. What I do believe, and what I must say to prevent people from disliking me. I'm trying to sort out the differences among these voices. The "supposed to believe" voices, the ones that say "you have to believe this or people will hate you," have always been the loudest and have had the most power. The "do believe" voices are quite often frightening. The end result feels like intellectual weakness and neurosis.

In the sorting, I've had a few epiphanies that have revealed the rotten ideas. One of those rotten ideas is, "make everyone around you happy, even at the expense of your own integrity." This is a difficult idea to recognize as bad because it guides etiquette and feminine behavior. This is the rule of being a "good girl" and therefore worthy of love, or at least toleration. I don't think I'm naturally disposed to being that "good girl." Yet, I have constantly followed the "good girl" script because it seemed to be the only way that people would like (or at least tolerate) me, even as I secretly believed myself to be completely unlikeable. It seemed to be the only way to survive.

So, here we have two bad ideas: "keep people happy at the expense of your own integrity" and "you are completely unlikeable." The second actually leads to the first.

For instance, I found myself sitting between two people. One person made one assertion, the other made the opposite. I suddenly became confused about my role in this conversation. I agreed with one and I just as readily agreed with the other. I was trying to make nice. I was trying to ingratiate myself to both. In the end, I felt like a fraud because, really, I completely agreed with one; but, to say so, meant I might hurt the other's feelings. Worse, agreeing with one over the other would lessen the chances of one of them liking me. The horror!

That situation involved two equal people. Two people who did not have any power over my life and neither of whom was more powerful than the other in relation to me. In situations in which I perceive one person to be more powerful than the other, I have gravitated toward the more powerful person in order to hide myself behind that person. In other words, if I can't please everyone in the room, then pleasing the most powerful person would be the wisest course of action. I was -- am -- like the weak new inmate in a stereotypical prison show. I'm the one who finds the baddest inmate and throws myself at her mercy in exchange for protection because I know I can't protect myself.

Ah, there is a third bad idea: "you can never protect yourself."

Tangential but related to this set of ideas is the concept that any given situation has an appropriate response, like a script. I've recently discovered that, for much of my life, I've been able to discern that script better than I have been able to discern my own, natural response. In recent years, however, I'm less likely to figure out or perform the appropriate responses. I realize the futility of pleasing everyone and lose my self-respect when I try. I haven't yet learned how to not follow the script while also interacting with other people. As a result, I have withdrawn, living more or less like a hermit and have become shockingly, socially awkward.

Pathetic, I know, and completely unoriginal. Yet, these are some of the core beliefs of my existence. I let atrophy anything that prevents the pursuit of these beliefs. If I must make everyone like me, and if one way to make everyone like me is to agree uncritically with everyone or the most powerful person in the room, then I must not work on developing my own ideas or I must blunt or recant my own ideas in the face of disagreement. This is quite a handicap for someone in a profession that requires the development of ideas in the face of disagreements or challenges.

That handicap has had real results. People will say that I can tell a good story; but no one ever would say that I had good or original ideas -- or any ideas at all. Throughout graduate school, I avoided any theory because theory meant ideas that had to be evaluated, and evaluation might offend someone. I took my cues from what other people said rather than from the work under evaluation. I didn't speak up much in class because to do so would mean offending someone. Offending someone meant that everyone in the room might not like me, or, worse, the professor might not like me.* Better to sit back and be silent, absorbing what everyone says and write papers that were long on narrative and short on theory (unless, of course, I had figured out the professor's theories, then I could support those). I even began by hiding myself behind an advisor who was abusive but powerful, until I could no longer take the abuse. That had profound effects on me, as well.

I discovered another bad idea in my writing class while free-writing. We were supposed to be writing in the voice of one of our characters. The prompt was "what does that character want?" That is the driving force behind a story. The character I chose is the autobiographical character from the section of my story that is the weakest. Because the character is autobiographical (more on that at another time), what she wanted was really what I wanted. Because of the character and because of the story, as I wrote, I became more and more and more disturbed. I had realized, for most of my life, I have wanted not to want. I have wanted numbness. I have wanted to set my life in motion then mentally check out.

That is a really bad idea, wanting to be a zombie, and fits with another bad idea: "if you want something, you will never get it. The more that you want something, the less likely you will be to get it." This bad idea has put me at odds with my own ambitions. This bad idea has made me Eeyore, saying, "why bother?" Perhaps it is the flip side of "work hard and you will succeed." Whereas the "work hard" ethic places control for all outcomes in the hands of only the individual, the "why bother" ethic strips the individual of any agency. In the first, the individual is all powerful. In the second, the individual has no power.

All of these bad ideas, taken together, make me think that I've sold myself very short for my whole life. I've undercut my own abilities, my own desires, my own intellectual development, and the possibility to find honest joy and satisfaction. I have served these bad ideas at the expense of myself.

Yet, I have not eradicated myself, despite all efforts external and internal. Something of myself rebels against these ideas. In fact, sometimes the rebellion is the only way I know that there is anything left of myself. I end up perpetually at extremes. Compliant good girl trying to please everyone at one moment, and furious rebel and contrarian at the next. Neither are accurate or honest. At best, I can hold off both in a stasis of profound ambivalence. I hate that because my energy feels caged.

These bad ideas aren't disturbing me. I realize that they were beliefs created in the sick environment of my childhood, and I know that I am now an adult and don't have to be afraid of the monsters in the closet (or the smoke monsters in the jungle) that would eat me if I didn't obey them, even if I really am still afraid of them.

The process of excavating these ideas disturbs me. Having to walk around in the rest of the world among other human beings while excavating these ideas disturbs me. Figuring out how those bad ideas have shaped my life in specific ways disturbs me. Not knowing yet how to act without those ideas disturbs me.

Being disturbed feels good -- or, rather, not bad. It doesn't feel like something I should reduce or escape. "Disturbed" feels like something I should embrace. I return to that concept of holding opposing thoughts, the Asher Lev image of crucifixion as being pulled between two opposing ideas. This disturbed state is that mid-point from which creativity emerges.

*Interestingly, I no longer have the problem with speaking up in class-like situations, but I still have that nagging voice telling me that I am dominating the discussion and now everyone hates me for it. So, I end up apologizing for speaking up.

Frederick Douglass on the 4th of July

James Earl Jones reads Frederick Douglass' speech, "What to the American Slave is the Fourth of July," as part of the Voices from a People's History series.

Douglass actually gave the speech on the fifth of July at the Rochester Ladies' Anti-Slavery Society. His friend, Julia Griffiths,* told him that the speech was "wonderful!"**



The basic critic, and most of the language, rings true today.

Who could restate this passage with full honesty at this very moment?: "I am not included within the pale of this glorious anniversary! Your high independence only reveals the immeasurable distance between us. The blessings in which you this day rejoice are not enjoyed in common. The rich inheritance of justice, liberty, prosperity, and independence bequeathed by your fathers is shared by you, not by me. "

Of what sins might we refer today with this?: "To him your celebration is a sham; your boasted liberty an unholy license; your national greatness, swelling vanity; your sounds of rejoicing are empty and heartless; your shouts of liberty and equality, hollow mock; your prayers and hymns, your sermons and thanksgivings, with all your religious parade and solemnity, are to him mere bombast, fraud, deception, impiety, and hypocrisy - a thin veil to cover up crimes which would disgrace a nation of savages."

Or this?: "There is not a nation of the earth guilty of practices more shocking and bloody than are the people of these United States at this very hour."

This nation has a black man in the White House (for all that he is proving to be less than we need from a just president -- if a president can even be just). Douglass himself might have been amazed by that along. Still, just as he said when slavery ended, this is merely a beginning. America had not been absolved of injustices, past, present, or future.

*You will want to know about her! Later post for certain.
**I may be off on the word. She might have said "great."

Abolition as a Self-Help Movement

I've been grading for the past two days. As Babu used to say, "I wept for the future of America, then I made pie." The grades didn't make me weep. Some did well, others did not. The usual. Their answers about ending slavery -- which are typical of answers that I have graded over the past several years -- made me weep.

For example, in the past few years, I have read essays that refer to the conditions of slavery as a "lifestyle." I have read essays framing the strengths and weaknesses of the different methods of anti-slavery societies as the successes or failures of the members' determination, perseverance, and work ethic. I have read essays that say the failure of the abolitionists -- and they do seem to think that the abolitionist movement failed -- was the result of a failure to "work with" the white people, presumably the slaveholders. I've read essays that described pro-slavery arguments as "politically incorrect." I've read essays that say the mission of the abolition movement was to inspire the slaves to have better lives. I have read reports on emancipation as the slaves' reward for hard work.

In my more fatigued moments, I have to restrain myself from outright snark. In my more inquisitive moments, I wonder how they could have come up with these ideas. Why are they describing slavery and abolition this way? The book doesn't describe either in these terms, so where are they getting this language? Then, I became painfully aware that my students, as part of the public at large, have been indoctrinated into a culture of "achievement" and "self-help" to the point that that they do not have the language to describe relationships of power or the fight for justice. I'm seeing the students attempt to evaluate abolitionist tactics -- the ways that a handful of people attempted to eradicate a system of human property -- using a wholly inadequate narrative.

In this narrative, if you work hard enough, if you believe enough in yourself, if you persevere, then you will succeed and have a better life. From students' introductory assignments -- the ones that I have them complete at the beginning of online classes to get an idea of who these faceless names are -- this is the narrative that gets them through their lives. Many use the very same terms about their desire to make good grades in school in order to have a better life as they do to describe the slaves' desire to be free or the abolitionists' desire to end the institution of slavery. They attempt to describe the failures of the abolitionist movement as the personal failures of individuals and using the same buzzwords that we hear in the sound-bite attacks of politicians who aren't getting their way.

I don't mind them finding inspiration in the lives of historical figures like Frederick Douglass or Harriet Tubman because that is their own business; but I doubt that either Douglass or Tubman would see the problems facing slaves or abolitionists as personal weaknesses or a poor work ethic. They both spoke of systems of power. They spoke of injustice that prevented hard-working, determined, persevering people from being anything more than chattel. They intended to end that injustice by attacking the system, slavery. Examining the hows and whys of that is part of the purpose of studying history.


The students are not stupid or blind for using this narrative. How could they not fit new information into this narrative given that it is the plot of every movie, every "X History" month story, every behind-the-music biography? It is the plot of heroism and the plot of achievement. It is the story to get children to do their homework and practice the piano. It is the story that gets students through a 25-hour day, 8-day week filled with family, work, and classes.


Yet, while adherence to this narrative may get the students through their education, it inhibits the very purpose of their education because it prevents them from critically examining relationships between groups of people. It keeps them from looking too closely at injustice, and from learning about the strategies and tactics used by people who have attacked injustice in the past.

More specifically, I find that the students who cling to this achievement narrative are unable to fully comprehend the material of the class. In understanding success and failure as a simple narrative based upon the character of an individual, they fail to understand the connection between the anti-slavery movement and the end of slavery. Like I wrote above, they think that the anti-slavery movement failed, despite the obvious fact that slavery is over and despite their arguments that everyone in the northern states supported abolition. They don't connect the dots because the dots don't align the way that they expect.

As a result, they end up writing incomprehensible essays in answer to such questions as "who freed the slaves?" or "what ended slavery?" or "why did slavery last so long?" There was slavery, which was bad; an antislavery movement, which failed despite being a popular movement involving a majority of people in the northern states; a Civil War, which the north won; and emancipation, which Lincoln made happen. They have a difficult time connecting these events or the events of previous chapters and units; and therefore, they have a difficult time thinking critically, writing a persuasive argument, or simply understanding the material beyond flashcard memorization.

When encountering new material, my students fall back upon the stories or outlines that they have learned since first grade rather than reach forward to incorporate that information into an argument that demonstrates understanding. I have to constantly work to turn that around, to combat the 5th grade Black History Month homework assignments and History Channel "documentaries" to get the students to think about the information as something more complicated, not empirically heroic nor ending neatly and happily. That, I suppose, is what makes me a college educator and makes what I do for a living important.

I fear I'm framing this as "them against me," "their failings against my superiority." That's not what I mean, and if my words come across that way, then that is a result of a guilty conscience from my own sins in relying upon popular narratives rather than critical thought. I'm trying to describe what is going on here in order to figure out how to undo it, how to push them out of the rut of the heroic stories because all of this distresses me.

Now, I must go make a lot of pie.