WINTER
2019
|
ISSUE
NO.
5
ORIGINS
THE SOCIAL JUSTICE REVIEW FRANCIS BY CHRISTINE SLOAN STODDARD
THE
USC
LEVAN
INSTITUTE
FOR
HUMANITIES
AND
ETHICS
DEDICATION "I can't breathe"
— Eric Garner, July 17, 2014
We dedicate the fifth issue of The Social Justice Review to those who have suffered at the hands of the state, to those who have lost their lives to police brutality, are currently in ICE detainment, are struggling to provide for their families and keep their communities safe, and to those who cannot catch their breath.
STAFF EDITORIAL
LAYOUT
ISABELLA CARR
HADIYA CULBREATH
JOURNAL DIRECTOR/LAYOUT & DESIGN
HAMEEDHA KHAN
NAVEEN DASARI EDITOR-IN-CHIEF
VICTORIA MARTINEZ EMILY PETRUCCI
SAMA SHAH
MILO SMILEY
DEPUTY EDITOR
MANDA BWEREVU EDITOR
Copyright 2019 the Social Justice Review
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form without the express written consent of the Social Justice Review.
Views expressed in this journal are solely those of the authors themselves and do not necessarily represent those of the editorial board, faculty advisors, or the University of Southern California.
Dear Reader,
It is my absolute privilege to present the Winter 2019 issue of the Social Justice Review. The pieces in this issue are timely, eloquent, and moving in their sincerity. Works like “The Bone Clocks” and “Revitalize” highlight the pain and confusion that are so deeply interwoven into the daily experience of the oppressed. They offer small glimpses into the lives of people who live with—but who continue to resist and persist against—injustice.
The last year has seen a number of events that have challenged our assumptions about power and the limits of what some will do to maintain a system grounded in inequality and privilege. From the detention of children in facilities at the southern US border to the gaslighting of women brave enough to recount their trauma of sexual assault in the Kavanaugh hearings to the shooting of young black folks such as Markeis McGlockton, we have witnessed injustice in many of its most harrowing forms.
In the face of such events, however, the courage and hope—of Christine Blasey Ford, of the Parkland students, of the climate activists who participated in the Zero Hour March, of the #MeToo movement, and many others—teach us that there is something powerful and inspiring about the spirit of change, and that change is indeed possible.
The pieces in this journal contend with the nature of history and identity, and with how race has been constructed by the privileged for the purpose of sustaining oppression. Poems such as “Sankofa” and “Dear America,” however, give us strength in difficult times, reminding us of the power of resistance and the attainability of justice, particularly by and for people of color. Beyond examining racial inequality in its economic and social forms, this journal allows us to explore it in the context of its most vulnerable and human struggles.
I have always believed that there is something deeply healing about the process of writing and reading about issues of social justice. My greatest hope is that you, the reader, find yourself among these pages, that you discover stories which both anger and inspire you, that you learn to question your own understanding of the nature of history and of justice, and that you think more often and more deeply about the world and your own place in it.
Fiat justitia ruat caelum. Let there be justice, though the heavens fall.
In solidarity, Naveen Dasari Editor-in-Chief, The Social Justice Review
SAO CLI AEL TJ UTSET IRC E FRRE VOI EM W THE EDITOR
CONTENTS 1 7 13
THE BONE CLOCKS henry 7. reneau jr.
REVITALIZE: GENTRIFICATION IN GREENVILLE EPIPHANY KNEDLER
NO PARTICULAR SPECIES: A CRITICAL EXPLORATION OF THE AMERICAN MUSEUM OF NATURAL HISTORY ZEV ALEXANDER
36 43
SOME PIECES ABOUT PROTEST JAHMAN HILL
ORANGE JUICE WITH A SIDE OF POLICE BRUTALITY MAI MIZUNO
54 57 64
MORNING LESSON LYNN TAMAYO
DEAR AMERICA POETRY COLLECTION ESTHER RA
RECIPE OF NACATAMALES: A TRADITIONAL HONDURAN DISH BESSIE F. ZALDÍVAR SHANTIH original publication rights
69
SUMMER IN THE CITY: INNOCENCE LOST AND FOUND JULIE LEOPO
74 76
DREAM LYNN TAMAYO
FRANCIS CHRISTINE SLOAN STODDARD
THE BONE CLOCKS henry
7.
reneau
jr.
Image: Replica of the NAACP's "A Man Was Lynched Yesterday" flag. The original flag was planted outside the window of the headquarters of the NAACP on 69 Fifth Avenue in New York in 1936.
White people are terrorists. Period.
—A black woman, heard off camera during a live CNN news report on the Charleston, S.C. church massacre.
1.
their animated clay heaves up a virus
the alabaster heart
that festers a tradition of hate a means to mask motive & perpetuate destruction that invigorates the hysterical strength that black people have had to harness like suicide Jesus wing-spanned wide as turn the other cheek to exist in a country that has for centuries tried (and failed) to kill them
our dextrous hand a balled fist of genetic memory & our sinister hand of RPG 2.
our content of character in solidarity with every person whose mere existence terrifies the powerful
invisible
between episodes of almost & spontaneous combustion the water stain bleeding through drywall like fractal patterns of scarring qualifieds a hidden genetic defect binding the helix of bondage with our upbringing our beliefs with our grasp fell short too soon sorrow lynched while seeking freedom so very many bombed in Bombingham so many one step forward but two steps disinherited behind a speeding truck in Texas chained & dragged to the feet of Confederate Jesus preyed upon &
gunned down while prostrate in prayer circle despite the Spirit moves amongst us we are only heroes of our own lives
so many
2
Top Image: Najee Washington holds a photo of her grandmother, Ethel Lance, one of the nine people killed in a shooting at Emanuel AME Church, as she poses for a portrait outside her home, June 19, 2015, in Charleston, S.C. Bottom Image: Allen Sanders, right, kneels next to his wife Georgette, both of McClellanville, S.C., as they pray at a sidewalk memorial in memory of the shooting victims in front of Emanuel AME Church Saturday, June 20, 2015, in Charleston, S.C. Credit: David Goldman/AP Photo. https://abcnews.go.com/US/photos/sadness-shock-charleston-church-shooting-31848275/image-31896213
searching for wherever
whenever
that somewhere could be ours
the rust of American dreams that slowly erodes
the burning crosses & Baptist churches the choke-hold semantics of snapped necks & fire-hosed justice marchers in retreat
the official rhetoric
in sound-bite increments of Whites Only their pliant justification cloaked in protocol & tradition
the wing-spanned badge of Law that demeans blackness to prey only praying to never be hunted as prey
despite hate has a history of plot & plan & perpetrate
wielding a grain of fabricated truth
like tear gas or rubber bullets to validate the stereotype the same static we’ve been hearing as long as we’ve been listening the convenient lie passing through the dense dolorous smoke of repetition what we’ve done to one another & what we think we deserve what we’ve gained & usually lost & where it touches down it turns to violence until one day we wake up & it just becomes part of our life the pendulum of thuds echoed in our bones our pain magnified & projected onto our face the enraged vexations of how? & why? feigning our tiny lives into order 3.
what beast must i adore when nothing shows me the image of myself?
4.
our invisibility is made manifest only in the discussion of our absence
where two black stand & act like we don’t see the blind stand together can damn sure be said about post-racial our insecurity minute
the minute to
meta-phor the gap in our lives
4
Top Image: Black Panthers line up at a Free Huey rally in DeFremery Park, Oakland, July 28, 1968. Credit: Stephen James, Courtesy of Steven Kasher Gallery. http://www.anothermag.com/fashion-beauty/9194/retracing-the-creative-legacy-of-the-blackpanthers Bottom Image: I Am A Man, Sanitation workers assemble outside Clayborn Temple, Memphis, TN, 1968. Credit: Ernest C. Withers. Courtesy Panopticon Gallery https://www.smithsonianmag.com/arts-culture/the-power-of-imagery-in-advancing-civil-rights72983041/#MlBZbX1O1U4DTbGH.99
& for a couple of hundred years we have been our own worst enemies: we die too easily
we forgive & forget
too easily makes further on a bastard life of disparity we seemingly trudge between this here & are we there yet? seemingly forever we sit spectator-ly on the edges of their US of Amerikkka a sleepwalker’s stupor synonymous with leaving it all behind & moving on letting go
to prove we are not who we would hate we to become
5.
i have a dream littered with bent & rusted nails poverty
with racist police &
an epidemic of subordinate bodies
a now traditionally cheap fuel for power
hyper-visible
only when thrown against a sharp white background we shrunk so much we disappeared
between erasure & empowerment
the anxious space of affirmative action subtracted by the shadow magic of hate radiating outward like perfect ignorance emanating the loudest caw in a language of crows that renders us second caste
the record skipping
on the same dust speck of history blackness seen as a citizen in name only but reaching beyond stereotypical to the strange forces inside our genes that space within ourselves
the hopeful once called souls our blackness becomes a sixth sense like lacerations on the bodies of the blind our identity
underestimated by those who dehumanize us but we be the grind & gnash of patient umbrage
the fire next time as we gather around ourselves & pray
Note: Incorporates an italicized fragment from a letter by George Jackson to Angela Davis—6/4/70, and an italicized quote by Charlotte Pence, from “among the yellows, the faces slack”
6
REVITALIZE: GENTRIFICATION IN GREENVILLE PHOTO
SERIES
EPIPHANY
BY
KNEDLER
Top Image: "Opacity" Bottom Image: "In God We Trust"
8
Top Image: "Construction" Bottom Image: "Paige's Barbershop"
Top Image: "Neglect" Bottom Image: "Facade"
10
Top Image: "Repossession" Bottom Image: "Church"
Top Image: "Lincoln" Bottom Image: "Pam + June"
12
NO PARTI
SPEC
CULAR
IES
NO PARTICULAR SPECIES: A CRITICAL EXPLORATION OF THE AMERICAN MUSEUM OF NATURAL HISTORY ZEV
NEW DEPARTMENT UNDERGRADUATE
OF
ALEXANDER
YORK
SOCIAL
SENIOR
ADVISED
UNIVERSITY AND
CULTURAL
RESEARCH
BY
DEAN
THESIS
ANALYSIS SEMINAR,
SARANILLIO
Title Image: Hiroshi Sugimoto's Gemsbok, 1994 from the series "Dioramas" Credit: Hiroshi Sugimoto/The Pace Gallery. https://www.pacegallery.com/exhibitions/12709/still-life
2015
Abstract The American Museum of Natural History
is the product of a team of researchers, curators, historians, replicators, engineers, designers, and
(AMNH) is an iconic museum which contains
collectors. The intentions of these individuals
exhibits on biology, zoology, evolution, geology,
interact with existing discourses and public
biodiversity, and anthropology. In a close critical
understandings of the world as well as with the
reading of the anthropology exhibits within the
overall discursive meanings of the museum. For
context of the museum of a whole, questions
the purposes of this analysis, I will often refer to
regarding racist tropes, the visual languages of
‘the museum’; what I refer to is the hegemonic
colonialism, and the haunted space of the museum
power of displays of knowledge within this
are interrogated. A language for critically
culturally sanctioned physical space.
examining anthropology exhibits and natural
This analysis will also focus only on the
history as a field is developed through the use of
American Museum of Natural History (AMNH)
historical accounts of the roots of the
as a case study of questions of racial
ethnographic display as well as constructivist
representation in the anthropological exhibit. As
visual analysis. Later interrogation leads to
we untangle the narratives being reproduced in
questions regarding a historical narrative of
the space, we will wrestle with the past and the
nature and how to re-articulate objective
future. How did this museum come to be? How
educational spaces such as AMNH.
will we understand its narratives of race in the
Keywords: critical race theory, anthropology,
future? How are human beings and animals
ethnography, museum studies, American Museum
displayed differently and what connects them
of Natural History, natural history
into a single history? We will take a tour of the Museum, carried through the halls by its floor
No Particular Species: A Critical Exploration
plans and crowds. Beginning in the front of the
of the American Museum of Natural History
museum, we’ll enter through the Theodore
Every museum exhibit tells two stories. It
Roosevelt Rotunda. Next, we will explore the
tells one story out loud with written signs and
museum’s biggest attractions, the enormous
displayed artifacts and a floor plan that carries its
fossils on the fourth floor. This floor grounds the
viewers in and out of the exhibit hall. The second
rest of the museum in an evolutionary logic
story is a silent one. It is the story of the artifacts
which will color the experience of
locked away in collections for scientific study
anthropological halls later on. Next, we will
and how they got there. It's the story of the
examine the African Peoples and the Hall of
writing of the signs and the arranging of the
Asian Peoples, both of which are connected to
objects. These two stories push against each other
large halls displaying mammals of the same
in a way that reveals just how carefully
regions. In these halls, we will see the ways that
constructed the ‘truth’ being told in the museum
uses of the gaze and of written language assign
is.
displays to specific places in real or imagined This is not to say that the museum is a
historical time. My third section will take us
singular agent of knowledge production, or that
through Mexico and Central America and South
all museums engage in double narratives to equal
American Peoples, where questions of artifact,
or comparable extents. A museum is a building
photography, and reproduction will unsettle the
filled with objects. The process by which the
reality of representation. Fourth, we will follow
building comes to signify Knowledge or Culture
a hall from Primates to Eastern Woodlands
or History or whatever value a specific institution
Indians to Plains Indians to The Margaret Mead
lays its claim to is a complicated one, built over
Hall of Pacific Peoples. Here we will find
decades of financial planning, advertising, and
historical and analytical connections to the
self-representation. Each exhibit
United States’s history of World’s Fairs in the
16
late 19th century. Finally, we will head to the
colonialism and genocide. This is doubly ironic
first floor of the museum to its broad spectrum of
because of my position as a white American man,
subjects (from the Big Bang to gemstones) to re-
interrogating displays of traumas that are not my
examine the stated purpose of natural history
own. I will do my best, then, to let the museum
against the implications of the anthropological
speak for itself, while continuing to utilize the
halls. The organization of this exploration is
framework of exploration to ground my goals in
structured by the floor plan itself, [1] which helps
their bloodied past.
me to produce a new way of reading the contrived
The museum is a space that asks to be
objectivity that is the museum exhibit—the
observed only in particular ways. While AMNH is
history and power relations that it carries, the
a visual medium where we consume images,
double narrative of what is told and what is
words, and even film, the museum also resists certain forms of observation. I will read against
silenced. Each section of this paper will focus on groups of ethnographic exhibits tied together by their proximity and the analytical text that I will use to examine them. The titles of the sections are the Latin names of nearby iconic animals in the museum. This is a way of recognizing how this paper mimics structures of classification and generalization that I attempt to deconstruct. It is also to tie together the many objects of the scientific gaze and question the separation within Western ideology between humans and nonhumans. From the dinosaurs to the various anthropological exhibits to the first floor exit to the subway, each location functions as a case study of colonial knowledge on its own as well as a small part of a constellation of multiple forms of colonial knowledge. The museum’s floor plan as a whole is a complex array of racist epistemologies, and I will use each small space to develop a more thorough vocabulary for reading the AMNH as a whole. With this vocabulary, it will be easier to search for patterns within the large, chaotic floor plan. These patterns will then provide a broader understanding of the systems of power behind the museum's organization. Throughout this essay, I refer to what we are doing as an exploration. I understand my use of this word to be necessarily ironic. First of all, much of the museum’s collections, including human remains and religious object were acquired
the grain of this space using a series of lenses provided by historians, theorists of visual media, postcolonial theorists, and critical race theorists. These scholars create lenses for me to look through, one at a time and in combination, into the relationship between representations and realities. In each hall of the museum, I will rely on one analytical text most heavily. Alongside these theoretical arguments, I will also use simple observation to note patterns and racial tropes which go unnoticed by the casual viewer. Observation and narrative require a certain trust in instincts, emotions, and the untrained eye. I draw a great deal of this trust from the thinkers of Critical Race Theory, who argue that narrative and storytelling are essential to crafting new and less oppressive ways of understanding the world (Delgado and Stefancic, 2001). This and the use of Stuart Hall's work in Representation (1997), which lays out many of the definitions I will rely on when describing the visual spaces of the museum, ground the vocabulary and framing questions of this text. What happens when an object is put behind plexiglass to be visually consumed by the museum-goer? What is a photograph, a story, or an artifact in relation to its origin? How does the racist history of natural history affect this relationship? How do we understand a continuous history from the Big Bang to neocolonialism, or at least one that allows these concepts to coexist in a
through theft under the guise of ‘exploration.'
single museum? How does the physical space of
Exploration and discovery have historically been
the museum itself inform what it means to be a
euphemisms for settler
viewer, moving through the physical space of an exhibit to look in at a culture?
1. Downloadable versions of the AMNH map are available at https://www.amnh.org/plan-your-visit/museum-map
The museum does indeed create its own
Mary Louise Pratt's Imperial Eyes (1992)
lenses. While the intentions of individual exhibit
is about the creation of meaning in colonial
designers and of other gatekeepers of knowledge
settings, focusing on travel writing produced in
inform the narrative of the museum, the double
contact zones from the end of the 18th century
narrative of intention and effect create a haunted
until the end of the 20th. I use the development of
space. There is a rift between the traumas of
this genre as a backdrop for my exploration of the
colonial history and the benignly produced public
museum in the same way that Theodore and
education. Narratives are laid into the floor plans
barosaur create a framework for the throngs of
and maps of the museum, created and re-created
daily museum attendants. The two primary
every time a visitor follows the prescribed path.
histories from Pratt that I will introduce are
We will read these narratives as their own
viewership and classification.
haunted visual language, built out of the paths
The viewer in the museum parallels Pratt's
along which ghosts wait, against which they
reader of travel narratives: a (white) European
struggle, through which they pass.
citizen engaged perhaps unknowingly in "creating the 'domestic subject' of Euroimperialism," that
Part One: Barosaurus To enter the American Museum of Natural
is, the person who is able to read and learn about a strange and unknown world outside of his
History, visitors ascend its large stone steps past
experience, one that was constructed rather than
the Equestrian Statue of Theodore Roosevelt,
described (Pratt, 1992). The process of othering,
built in 1939. Sitting astride his horse, Roosevelt
where a faraway exotic world is created to define
looks straight ahead at Central Park, ignoring the
the metropole as the default and the norm, is
headdressed Native American man on his right
obviously at work in the museum's
and the barely-clad Black man on his left. These
anthropological exhibits. These exhibits include
two figures barely reach the horse's shoulders and
Asian, African, Pacific, Plains and Northwest
the many visitors streaming are dwarfed below
Coast and Woodlands Indians, Central and South
the figures' knees. Few take a second glance,
American peoples. The question of why there
some pose for pictures. Already, a dynamic is
isn’t a Hall of European Peoples is not meant to
established where the white patriarch of the
be asked. The elsewhere produced by travel
nation takes a position of power over the racial
writing is taken for granted and reinforced by the
others. We are students of Teddy outside the
very existence (or lack) of exhibits in the
museum. When we enter, we will gain access to
museum.
his elevated viewpoint. The next big sight (after museum security
The subject-object relationship is complex, never as simple as a single culture looking in
bag inspection, before paying admission) is
upon another. Pratt focuses on transculturation,
barosaurus, a huge plaster skeleton protecting its
"how subordinated or marginal groups select and
plaster skeleton baby from an approaching plaster
invent from materials transmitted to them by a
skeleton predator. What does barosaurus have to
dominant or metropolitan culture," as an aspect of
do with Theodore Roosevelt? How could there
the viewing relationship. While the relationship
possibly be a single natural history to encompass
was intended to be one of resource extraction
the halls at the museum? These questions belong
from colony to metropole, the colonized create
in a conversation about history rather than one
and reinvent the world through the lens of
about the sciences.
colonization.
18
Top Image: New interpretation on the glass of the 1936 Old New York diorama, which depicts a 1660 scene between the colonial Dutch and the Lenape, includes context and highlights clichĂŠs and inaccuracies. Credit: M. Shanley/ AMNH. https://www.amnh.org/exhibitions/permanent-exhibitions/theodore-roosevelt-memorial-hall/old-new-york-diorama#fullscreen Bottom Image: Diorama depicts the Serengeti Plains of Tanzania in the Akeley Hall of African Mammals Credit: Wally Gobetz. https://www.flickr.com/photos/wallyg/32617771720/in/photostream/
Pratt pushes this definition by inverting it:
and phylogenetic classification, and this layout
'with respect to representation, how does one
seems intuitive. How else could these millions of
speak to transculturation from the colonies to the
years be legible? More importantly, this
metropolis?' I also ask how interacting with
organization reads as a natural, unavoidable and
information, knowledge, and culture from a
fundamental scientific truth. After all, isn't that
colonized site affects the self-understanding of
what museums are supposed to do? Tell us the
the idealized viewer in the specific forms of
truth?
representation present in the anthropological
Truth is a complicated idea: non-fiction
exhibits. I ask, as Pratt does, 'how subjects are
and narrative have a long and tangled history.
constituted in and by their relations to each
Pratt opens her first chapter with an introduction
other.'
to Europe's development of scientific In each exhibit, forms of representation
classification, showing how it was more than a
vary, altering how the colonial subject is
descriptive endeavor: ‘Natural History conceived
constructed. We can ask if transculturation is
of the world as a chaos out of which the scientist
acknowledged in a hall. What subjects are
produced order. It was not, then, simply a matter
permitted by this narrative? Which exhibits
of depicting the world as it was’ (Pratt, 1992).
demonstrate the copresence of the contact zone, a
From Linnaeus's seminal texts classifying plant
space where two subjects exist in the same
life to scientific racism, ‘the observing and
colonial space? Does the exhibit re-create or
cataloging of nature itself became narrative.’
challenge Euroimperialism's self-conception of
Stories to make sense of the world were wound
the metropole as the center of the universe? If
into the ordering of nature. The taxonomic
two exhibits allow different amounts of
classification that structures the fourth floor
transculturation, what does that say about
overtly is embedded into the rest of the museum
colonial knowledge itself? We will have to return
through anthropology. Classification from its
to these questions as we explore specific exhibits
inception was the job of ‘the (lettered, male,
more closely.
European) eye that held the system’ (Pratt, 1992). This is a totalizing force, one that put the
The second major history Pratt defines which will center this exploration is at the roots
European in a position of power while
of natural history itself: that of classification. For
simultaneously re-creating him as an objective
this, it might be best to leave the Rotunda and
scientist. As museum viewers, we are invited to
follow the flow of traffic to the exhibits that most
occupy that same power position: ‘a utopian
commonly represent AMNH, the dinosaurs on the
image of a European bourgeois subject
fourth floor. The fourth floor is a museum unto
simultaneously innocent and impartial, asserting a
itself, creating a complete loop of prehistoric
harmless hegemonic [3] vision that installs no
animal life. Beginning in the Wallach Orientation
apparatus of domination’ (Pratt, 1992). The paradox of a hegemony without
Center, hundreds of specimens are evolutionarily arranged into a ‘giant family tree’ (AMNH.org)
domination is all too clear. The power of the
[2]. An easy-to-follow thick line on the floor
museum is that it lets its ideal subject exist
guides the viewer through evolutionary time,
within that paradox. It is a fantasy world where
from the origin of vertebrates to dinosaurs and
our surroundings can be benignly classified,
wooly mammoths. Viewers move through the
where the order of civilization was simply
museum in a way that teaches us evolutionary
destined to emerge fully formed from the chaos of
history, the development of complex life,
the prehistoric.
2. Citations from AMNH’s website and exhibits do not include a date. This is because the dates are not available as a part of the displays, and while further archival research will show exactly when each piece of text was written, the lack of available context within the museum is a part of the structure of racism at work within the museum. 3. Emphasis mine.
20
Part Two: Loxodonta africana There are many pathways into the museum. Donna Haraway takes a different path from the
Haraway argues, this viewer is an active, participating requirement. Haraway identifies a pattern in the
Rotunda into the museum in her chapter, Teddy
relationship between the viewer and the animal
Bear Patriarchy: Taxidermy in the Garden of
dioramas. The animals mimic the heterosexual
Eden (1990). She, too, climbs the marble steps
nuclear family. There is also ‘at least one animal
and passes the equestrian statue. Her narrative of the Rotunda jumps past barosaurus to focus on Teddy’s quotes along the walls, narrating values of ‘Nature, Youth, Manhood, the State.’ Those viewers who, like Haraway, aren’t so tempted by the dinosaurs might take a different first step, into the Akeley Hall of African Mammals. Haraway’s chapter is a close reading of the hall’s internal language of dioramas, its history of expedition and acquisition, and its politics as ‘a time machine’ (Haraway, 1990), able to transport the viewer to a specific location in time and space. Taxidermy’s connections to anthropology are pervasive in physical space as well as history. In AMNH, The Hall of African Mammals is directly connected to African Peoples. Though these adjacent halls don’t overtly narrate continuity, proximity in the museum fuels narrative-building. Further, Haraway’s reading of the taxidermy dioramas applies easily to the anthropology exhibits, producing an eerie if unintentional narrative. For this continuity to occur, we must understand three of Haraway’s key concepts: the
that catches the viewer’s gaze and holds it in communion’ (Haraway, 1990) in each diorama. Usually, the animal that looks into the eyes of the viewer is also the male in the display. Haraway argues that the act of meeting the eye creates a unique moment between the viewer and the displayed: "The animal is frozen in a moment of supreme life, and man is transfixed. No merely living organism could accomplish this act… the animals in the dioramas have transcended mortal life, and hold their pose forever… Taxidermy fulfills the fatal desire to represent, to be whole; it is a politics of reproduction” (Haraway, 1990). With their glass eyes, the dead animals amaze us in their ability to be more than their live counterparts are. In the museum, we are able to see African mammals better than anywhere else in our lives. The gaze of the exhibit allows taxidermy to transcend concepts of reproduction and display. Rather than being a representation of its (living) self, the taxidermized animal becomes an immortal, ideal self. The relationship between the idealized display and the imagined white male viewer produces a utopic world—one where ‘man is not
intended audience, the gaze of the object, and the
in nature partly because he is not seen, is not the
envisioned utopia. We’ll explore Haraway’s
spectacle’ (Haraway, 1990), and man is white and
concepts in the Hall of African Mammals and
male, and nature includes the entire field of
carry them into African Peoples. The continuities
anthropology. If ‘dioramas are meaning-
and inconsistencies between portrayals of animals
machines,’ as Haraway argues, then what is not
and humans are some of the symptoms of the false
included is as important as what is displayed.
realities required to display othered peoples.
Narrative is how we understand the meaning and
We as viewers are the same character to
truths of our world, Richard Delgado writes of
Haraway as to Pratt. Haraway knows us to be
the foundational concepts of Critical Race
‘necessarily a white boy in moral state, no matter
Theory, ‘Our social world, with its rules,
what accidents of biology... might have pertained
practices, and assignments of prestige and power,
prior to the museum excursion’ (Haraway, 1990).
is not fixed; rather, we construct it with words,
An ideal viewer is always implied in visual
stories and silence’ (Delgado et al., 2001). The
displays, but in the Museum of Natural History,
strong gaze of a taxidermized animal is a statement, so an averted or disrupted gaze of a displayed subject is a form of silence. By walking the anthropology
halls, the viewer participates in a power
Nothing marks when an artifact was made or
relationship beyond the story of ‘history’ overtly
collected, when a diorama is imagined to take
displayed. This story allows the viewer to sit
place, or when the displays themselves were put
comfortably in their role as protagonist, as the
together.
armchair anthropologist of Pratt’s travel writings,
Perched outside of any diorama is a man
as the consumer of knowledge. Entering the Hall
in a leopard costume, looking dark and surprising
of African Peoples, we can begin to ask what
and animal with his face covered by a hood. A
visual forms make the protagonist/viewer
sign somewhere describes his cultural
comfortable in his role.
significance, but it is in shadow and hard to find.
In the Hall of African Peoples, the ceiling
He is a hooded Black man in the shadows, hard to
sits low and footsteps are muffled by glass
notice and ready to jump out [4]. The existence of
displays placed close together. African music, its
a display built to surprise, which reinforces
sources cited in small text towards the end of the
current racist visions of black masculinity, show
hall, plays. The organization of the hall is laid
how important it is to question how a viewer is
out at the entrance: ‘The hall highlights lifestyles
meant pass through this space.What moves us in
and customs—many of them disappearing—of
this space to stop or ponder or read?
peoples living in four environments: grasslands, deserts, forests, and river regions’ (AMNH.org).
Part Three: Elephas maximus
Already, this focus on geographical ‘habitat’
From the Rotunda, one could also enter
rather than cultural group or historical era
into Asian Mammals, which in turn feeds into the
reckons back to the organization of the Hall of
Stout Hall of Asian Peoples. Similarly as well,
Mammals. Further, the explanation of this
there are a handful of dioramas in Asian Peoples
organization describes the relationship of culture
with people in them. These people have either no
to land, stating that ‘man is an inseparable part of
eyes painted on or their eyes averted. However,
nature.’ This further emphasizes the dynamic in
there are distinct differences between the displays
anthropology between the exhibitor and the
of African Peoples and Asian Peoples.
exhibited, where the viewer is a part of the
Specifically, Asian Peoples uses many more
present/civilization, and the object is of the
dates, giving the viewer a sense of narrative
(disappearing/disappeared) past/nature. I will
through historical time. As we enter a close
return to this as we compare African Peoples to
reading of the Hall of Asian Peoples, I’ll focus on
later museum halls.
the ways that the gaze is similar, but the language
Most of the displays in this Hall are of artifacts, but the occasional diorama displays individuals or groups of people, all of whom have
and configuration different, between these two halls. From Asian Mammals, we can hear the
averted gazes. Clearly, we are not meant to share
faint sounds of stringy music over the footsteps
the same transcendent, meta-representational
of tourists. Once we enter, the first display
experience with African Peoples as we are with
grounds us with a detailed map of the hall: first,
its mammals. And if the taxidermy dioramas, as
there is an orienting loop of general themes, later,
Haraway argues, freeze the reader and the animal
a complex series of paths depicting various
in transfixed, supreme life, then where in time
cultural traditions (some religious, some
and history do these human beings belong? The
national). The description of the orienting loops
answer is, apparently, nowhere: the dates in the
reads, ‘whether you approach peoples of Asia to
hall are rare and tend to refer to invasion from the
the left, through time, or to the right, through
outside rather than the history of object or cultures themselves.
4. Though outside the scope of this essay, the significance of this figure, especially in the specific historical moment during which I write, cannot be overlooked. The racial trope of a threatening Black man, especially young, hooded, and in shadow, is old, but young Black men continue to be murdered today. The museum is a supposedly objective place where tourists and school groups, children, come to learn how to understand the world, and this figure reinforces racist tropes and shows a long and bloody history.
22
Top Image: Hiroshi Sugimoto's Alaskan Wolves, 1994 from the series "Dioramas" Credit: Hiroshi Sugimoto/The Pace Gallery. https://www.pacegallery.com/exhibitions/12709/still-life Bottom Image: Diorama depicting Apache life in Arizona. Credit: Department of Library Services, American Museum of Natural History. http://images.library.amnh.org/photos/ptm/catalog/desc/159845
space, you will find exhibits in the Hall arranged
Mannequins are less common, but they maintain
to bring out major themes of human activity.
the most eye contact here. Each section's system
Taken together, these themes interact to produce a
of display is complex and unique, but I will focus
characteristic way of life, or culture—the sum of
on the overall structure: how the two sections
all things that people do or believe.’ Already,
work together.
there are more ways to approach and understand
Haraway's analysis places the
Asian Peoples than African; in African Peoples
representational form of taxidermy within a
the only way to move was through space. Time
transcendental forever, where animals achieve the
did not exist there as it does here.
highest form of their own selves and maintain a
To our left are dioramas of life-sized
timeless, deathless, supreme existence. Following
humans of prehistoric societies, with their eyes
this logic, we can ask where in history the
averted or left off entirely. To our right, bones,
anthropological exhibits place their human
skulls, and artifacts, charts of prehistoric eras in
subjects. Both are anachronistic, creating peoples
various locations (including ‘Eurasia/Europe’)
who exist only in the past and have no bearing on
dominate one wall, while another shows dioramas
present life, who accept the gaze of an idealized
of miniature people, shelters, and animals. Key
viewer passively. However, the lack of dates and
points highlight ‘man's rise to civilization,’
the placement of people in geographical space in
marking a linear progression of time not
Africa creates a timelessness, a never rather than
demonstrated in the Hall of African Peoples or
a forever, while Asian Peoples’s reliance on
even the Hall of Human Origins down on the first
linear development and heavy dating, along with
floor. A wordy diorama in the section on
its transitions from a progressive discourse into a
civilization demonstrates the evolution of the
display of ‘traditional’ cultures, places the
written word, including alphabetic systems.
conceptual understanding of Asia in a fixed and
Mesopotamia, Greece, and ‘the near east’ have
ancient history, despite some dioramas showing
their own small offshoot with paintings of these
scenes less than two centuries old. The present is
‘great civilizations.’ The loop continues: Jews of
not meant to be breached any more from a
Asia includes translated and dated texts and
specific moment than from a never, [6] and while
descriptions of religious practices that avoid
Haraway's forever creates a place where the
language of mystification and superstition, [5]
viewer can reimagine himself as an ever-more
both rarities in anthropological displays.
masculine subject, the anachronistic pasts where
Alexander the Great gets a small wall, maps and
African and Asian Peoples are placed is forcibly
dates. After a section on trade, the first loop ends
discrete from our own.
and we enter a long hallway where major cultural groups are placed to approximate geographic
Part Four: Vultur gryphus
distribution.
The Hall of African Peoples and the Hall
This second, larger section of the Hall of
of Asian Peoples both lead into a spacious,
Asian Peoples is long and busy. At certain points
refreshingly well-lit and quiet hall: Birds of the
we can hear two different music recordings
World. The harmless avian dioramas are arranged
playing at once. Large glass displays tend to hold
by biome. If you enter Birds of the World through
brightly colored or gold artifacts. Texts use the
the Hall of African Peoples, this is a familiar
present tense and the word ‘traditionally.’
logic.
5. For reference, the description of a ketubah on display in this section. Note how words are translated and traditions set down in terms of history. This will stand out more fully after reading texts later in the museum. “Marriage in Judaism is called kiddushin, or holiness… Jewish law specifies that in order to marry, a man must deliver to his future wife a ketubah, a marriage contract… and that the contract must be signed in advance of the wedding by two witnesses. The ketubah is still written in Aramaic… according to a formula set down in ancient times.” 6. The differences between treatments of races understood through orientalism and through other forms of exoticization are fully fleshed out by many other texts, including Margaret D. Jacobs, White Mother to a Dark Race (2009) and Andrea Smith, Heteropatriarchy and the Three Pillars of White Supremacy (2009). For my purposes, note that there are differences between understandings of race. Some are ready for assimilation and some are seen as destined for extermination.
24
The hall is then broadly arranged by
Birds of the World then feeds into a journey through two halls: Mexico and Central
geographically constituted cultural groups, with
America and South American Peoples. Though
attention paid particularly to the ‘obscurity’ and
these halls are not meant to be continuous
‘unavailability’ of information. Whereas in
narratives, spatially they feed directly into each
African Peoples text is written in the present
other, once again fueling narrative by association.
tense, all text in Mexico and South America is in
Once you enter Mexico and Central America, the
the past tense, isolating these peoples from the
only options are to move forward or turn around,
current in yet another way. The focus on
and South American Peoples dead ends at its
archaeological inquiry and difficult-to-obtain
completion, forcing us to backtrack out. The
information sets yet another contrast. Despite
direct, unbroken spatial continuity between
using the past tense, Asia’s use of linear time and
Mexico and Central America and South American
the development of civilizations is wildly
Peoples makes the dissonance between their
different from the past imagined by Mexico and
internal logics particularly noticeable. While Asia
Central America. South America has a language
and Africa differ from each other in their uses of
distinct from any of the other halls, focusing
space, language, and dates, their attachment to
more on culture and ways of life, relying heavily
their own sets of mammals and physical
on photographs and dioramas of people. We’ll
separation allows the viewer to separate their
first examine Mexico and Central America as its
logics. In this new section, the closeness of the
own hall, then South American Peoples on its
halls makes an analysis of the internal poetics of
own, and finally, we will sort out more of the
the ethnographic exhibit most productive.
connections and dissonances between the space
The most glaring differences are literally
analyzed thus far. In Mexico and Central America, the heavy
written on the walls of these halls. While Africa was arranged by geography and Asia by nation-
use of artifact brings up questions about the
state, the opening of Mexico and Central America
specific forms of display that contains them.
tries to explain a different, perhaps more
Henrietta Lidchi’s chapter, ‘The Poetics and
complex, geo/historical form of arrangement:
Politics of Exhibiting Other Cultures,’ [7] delves
"Within this hall an attempt is made to
into the history of ethnographic museums. She
illustrate the history of the civilization of…
refers to ethnographic displays as ‘an attempt at a
Mesoamerica—a task not easily done, for it is a
complete representation of the diversity of
history not recorded in written form… the map
existence in miniature—a “microcosm”’ (Lidchi,
and chronological chart seen here are meant as a
1997). A glass case full of pottery or sculptures
basic guide to this complex history. Each of the
or jewelry is an attempt to summarize the world,
regions listed had its own particular style,
to condense the totality—the chaos referenced in
apparent in the materials to be seen in the several
Pratt's analysis—into a bite-sized piece. And the
sections of the hall. The chronological chart
display is only a small section of the question of
explains the archaeologist’s attempt to identify
ethnographic museums: ‘The museum does not
the changes in culture that occurred through time.
deal solely with objects but, more importantly,
Each name refers to a cultural phase of a
with... ideas—notions of what the world is, or
particular site… Despite the sometimes marked
should be’ (Lidchi, 1997). Following this logic,
differences between the cultures of different
the existence of the ethnographic museum
regions, all are to some extent interrelated, and
specifically is a continued assertion of the false
we must think of them as constituting one great
world, the utopic benign hegemony, that has been
civilization."
reinforced over and over again in our journey thus far.
7. In Hall’s representation
As we wander through Mexico and Central
Put behind glass, a Koran has more in
America, the power of artifacts becomes clear.
common with the saddle with which it shares a
This hall is one of the most object-driven in the
display case than it does with Korans in use
museum, its focus on archeological finds rather
around the world. Alienated from its initial
than cultural heritages. Lidchi examines the work
purpose, an object ceases to be its own self. We
that artifacts do, arguing that the artifact is used
are looking at the ghosts of these objects,
as objective evidence despite its complex history
imagining their continued presence in reality the
of extraction and exploitation: ‘objects are
same way we imagine the assortments of bones
frequently described as documents or evidence
upstairs to be a proper encounter with a
from the past, and are regarded as pristine
Tyrannosaurus Rex. Objects represent and
material embodiments of cultural essences which
constitute reality in the same way words do. As
transcend the vicissitudes of time, place, and
Stuart Hall explains, green means go. It follows
historical contingency. Their physicality delivers
that bones mean T-Rex and artifacts mean dead.
a promise of stability and objectivity; it suggests
It would be nonsensical to display people
a stable, unambiguous world’ (Lidchi, 1997).
in this artifact-driven hall of obscure prehistoric
Artifacts are portrayals of stability rather than
artifacts, but as we examine it more closely, other
information, and these permanent anthropological
forms of representation show themselves. There
exhibits have remained unchanged for decades
are reproductions, where we are asked to trust a
while the Planetarium or Hall of Ocean Life
professional replicator to show us what something
undergo regular renovation and update. The dates
like the Aztec Stone of the Sun, stelae from
of these renovations are intentionally not given to
Guatemala, or other large architectural
the viewer, because dating the exhibit would
achievements look like. Walking past a life-sized
undermine the objectivity of its contents. If
reproduction makes the museum space seem less
something must be identified as having been
constructed, de-politicizing (mythologizing) the
written in a certain historical moment, then the
exhibit [9].
writer is identifying himself as being from that
South America has a very different setup.
moment, and therefore not perfectly objective.
Created to ‘highlight the rich mosaic of
AMNH depends on its status as an objective
archaeological cultures that developed in the
space, and to maintain that, its artifacts must also
Central Andes and those of the Native peoples of
remain acceptably objective. Lidchi continues
Amazonia as they existed when first contacted by
that the location of the object reinforces this
Europeans,’ South America is a labyrinth. Its
process of validation: ‘The status of the object as
stated purpose is to examine cultural practice
invariant in presence and meaning is underpinned
rather than archeological discovery. Music plays
by the popular representation of museums as
in South America (reckoning back to other
grand institutions... engaging in scholarly
anthropological exhibits), while Central was
fashion… the popular perception of curatorial
silent (much like the Mammal and Bird halls). It
practice as a descriptive rather than an
is brighter in South America as well. The hall is
interpretative activity lends further support to
broken into three sections. In the first, artifacts,
this elision’ (Lidchi, 1997). [8] Again, the
maps, reproductions, photographs, and notably
scientist is seen as a describer, rather than a
the first actual human bones so far work together
cataloguer, of information. However, the artifacts
to orient the viewer to different spaces in both
are far more complex. Lidchi points out that none
time (‘first arrivals’ ‘early peoples’) and space
of these objects were created with the intention of
(‘the Caribbean’ ‘southern South America’), each
being displayed.
of these a small display.
8. Emphasis mine. Note the connection to Pratt’s descriptions of scientists, drawing order out of chaos. 9. Lidchi (1997) discusses myth as a form of representation which uses constructed transhistorical values to justify its internal systems. She claims that ‘myth purifies its motivation.’ Origin and construction are erased by the myth.
26
Top Image: Hiroshi Sugimoto's Neanderthal, 1994Â from the series "Dioramas" Credit: Hiroshi Sugimoto/The Pace Gallery. https://www.pacegallery.com/exhibitions/12709/still-life Bottom Image: The Spectrum of Life, at the American Museum of Natural History, an evolutionary trip through the amazing diversity of life on Earth. Credit: Matthew Pillbury
In the corner is a reproduction of an
to ask about AMNH and anthropology more
archaeological dig in Peru. Next, the largest
broadly. Using Lidchi’s vocabulary and
section of the hall displays first Andean culture,
knowledge, I extend her critique of the exhibit to
then Amazonian. The section on Andean cultures
the museum as a whole. The museum enacts
follows a somewhat similar format to Central
power by reinforcing certain truths rather than
America, but Amazonia provides another
through acts of domination, a perfect example of
divergence from forms of display seen thus far.
the Foucauldian framework of knowledge/power.
We walk down a slight incline into
There are some universals of knowledge/power’s
Amazonia, and the flute music of the Andes is
operation throughout the history of anthropology,
overtaken by recordings of birds and the rustlings
but there is also a conversation occurring between
of the rainforest. Here, we are welcomed by a
exhibits in this specific museum, showing how
series of portraits. The entire hall utilizes a great
different forms of knowledge and display
deal of photography, which Lidchi says ‘eases the
perpetuate and are born out of similar acts of
work of representation... by virtue of [its]
domination and exploitation.
verisimilitude’ (1997). Individual mannequins are
AMNH contains broad power dynamics,
seen in action, hunting and gathering. Practices
such as Teddy Roosevelt out front, alongside
around eating, drinking, marriage, death, travel,
smaller locations of specific understandings—
shelter, and more are closely examined in the
each anthropology hall describes the world
long, curving, and once again darkened space.
differently. Rather than formulating a single
Shrunken heads are displayed. There is a photo of
dynamic of power, the anthropology exhibits
a man using a snuff tube, a drinking bout is
reproduce overlapping and interacting inequalities
described in exotifying language [10]. A short
through the methods curators chose to make
documentary which is not credited as being made
certain people and cultures visible and others
in any particular time (but by the looks of the
invisible: not all colonial knowledge is the same.
film used had to have been made before the mid-
Summarizing what we’ve seen so far, different
1980s) plays in a pitch black room behind a
aspects of different cultures are made visible
reproduction of a giant tree that ‘does not
through a gaze (averted or challenging), a human
represent a particular species.’ In this space
presence (through photographs and
perhaps more than any other, we are allowed to
reproductions), or a recognized stake to time and
gape, to gasp, and to stare at a strange and
place (presence/absence of maps and dates).
unimaginable Other existing again in a mythical,
When these cultures are made visible or invisible,
undated, present tense. The tree’s lack of defined
the stakes lie in how they are then subjected to
species is a perfect example of the priorities of
power (Lidchi, 1997). This museum is a space
this display.
where discrete colonial epistemologies interact. They shore up (purify/mythologize) broader
Lidchi discusses museums as a larger concept, describing them as ‘a historically
understandings of white supremacy and patriarchy
constituted space’ (1997) and showing how the
through their languages while deconstructing
objectivity of ethnographic displays is
(creating nonsense, decontextualize, undermine)
constructed as well. However, most of her work
individual discursive systems meant to uphold
focuses on case studies of individual exhibits and
that power through their contradictions. As we
forms of display. While I have pulled a great deal
enter more exhibits in the museum, we will
of analytical framework from her case studies, I
examine some of the history that created these
hope to use my close readings together
different forms of knowledge and seek out the echoes of the past.
10. ‘A drinking bout often accompanies ceremonies in Amazonia. But holding it requires no ceremonial reason: the prestige gained from giving it and the fun derived from participating are reason enough. For the occasion, the host family makes enormous amounts of beer, which they ladle out from large jars. Even after guests have drunk their fill, it is bad manners for them to refuse more, and they may induce vomiting to be ready to drink again. A mood of unrestrained joking, laughter and general merry-making prevails. Couples may sneak off into the woods for some extramarital sex. Passed over lightly at the time, it may later lead to quarrels. The partying continues day and night until the beer runs out.’
28
Part Five: Homo Sapiens The museum’s many modes of representation
worked with them were both educational and amusing white supremacist culture. Once again,
and forms of displays show it to be not simply a
scientists were organisers of chaos, this time
space where the idealized (white, male) viewer
using Linnean and Darwinian racial logics. The
comfortably observes an Other or has his
Chicago World’s Columbian Exhibition
understandings of the world around him
particularly consolidated these racial hierarchies
reinforced. Knowledge/power is not a universal,
into tangible forms, ‘defin[ing] social realities...
evenly enacted force and the stories the museum
into a realization of utopia’ (Rydell, 1984). This
tells have layers. These layers are well-utilized
utopia, as much a no place as a good place, is
by the museum itself. They are made of fantasy
directly related to the utopian vision of
and history. Some of the fantasy and history have
Haraway’s analysis.
roots that we can see most clearly at the 1893
As a eugenic, hierarchical understanding of
Chicago Columbian Exposition. The Exposition
race was presented in this space of so-called
included a physical utopia which will help
entertainment (Rydell, 1984), the central Midway
solidify my understanding of the utopia on
Plaisance hosted a series of educational/
display at the American Museum of Natural
recreational exhibits where living people from
History today. I’ll take this understanding into
around the world were displayed to be looked at.
the anthropological halls on the third floor,
Villages were set up where ‘primitive’ groups
directly above the halls we just explored, where
were organized along the hierarchy of
in the same configuration is a pathway through
evolutionary relationships. This hierarchy led to
Primates, Eastern Woodlands Indians, Plains
the main exposition—‘an image of utopia.' This
Indians, and Pacific Peoples. Once again, the
utopia, called the White City, was made of large
phylogenetically-arranged Primate Hall isn't
white plaster buildings modeled after Greek and
meant to narrate directly into Eastern Woodlands
Roman architecture and represented the end-goal
Indians, but it's difficult to make the separation.
of evolutionary racial science. This work made
Natural history museums in the United States have a history that is tied up with International Expositions. Robert W. Rydell’s All
racial exploitation around the world seem inevitable (Rydell, 1984). At AMNH, primates lead into Eastern
the World’s a Fair: Visions of Empire at
Woodlands Indians, where the opening text on the
American International Expositions, 1876-1916
wall uses past tense and the passive voice when it
(1984) explores their history and hegemonic
states, "When the first European explorers arrived
functions. Rydell identifies concepts of
on the eastern seaboard in the very late fifteenth
classification similarly to Pratt, showing how
century, Indian culture was flourishing over all of
"Americans were engaged… in a 'search for
the Eastern Woodlands. In the succeeding 350
order'" (Rydell, 1984). With the publication of
years, many of the tribes of the Eastern
Charles Darwin’s On the Origin of Species, post-
Woodlands were annihilated by disease and
Linnaean classification in natural history gained
warfare; others were driven west of the
new justification for hierarchical reasoning.
Mississippi River. Later, a few tribes were
Racial scientists drew from Darwin’s writings to
assigned to reservations in their aboriginal
classify races along an evolutionary timeline.
territories… Although the bulk of Eastern
This timeline gave whites the ability to decide
Woodlands culture has vanished, the modern
who could and could not approximate American
Indians still maintain some of their old customs
modernity, a logic shored up by Darwinism.
and ceremonies which serve as reminders of an
Simultaneously, Darwin’s understanding of
ancient and proud heritage."
evolution utilized a language of racial hierarchy that already existed. The Fairs and museums that
This contextualizes the Eastern Woodlands people as having been annihilated not
by Europeans, but by disease and warfare.
displays are color-coded to demarcate locations
Everything that happens in this narrative lacks an
within the Pacific: Australia, Indonesia, the
agent; everything that happened was destined and
Philippines, Melanesia, Micronesia, and
fixed. One side of the hall is dedicated to ‘pre-
Polynesia. Another section shows some common
European times,’ the other to ‘late pre-European
themes: music, body art, batik, coconut, betel,
and historic times.’ This places any history and
exchange/money, and culture contact.
context in the hands of European
The section on contact continues to
settlers/scientists. The post-European side of the
reinforce the idea that native and indigenous
hall mainly displays articles of clothing hung on
people are ‘passive’ races. ‘CONTACT between a
eyeless mannequins or heads. The Indians in this
dominating, complex society and a less complex,
space are passive to their destined extinction,
native society inevitably leads to the latter
accepting their fates and our gazes. In Rydell’s
undergoing greater change,’ is written in this
discussion of displayed races at the world’s fairs,
opening section of the hall. This framing resets
he brings up 19th century ethnographer Gustav
the Pacific into the obsolete, where an
Klemm, who developed theories of ‘passive’ and
anthropologist made her mark, and
‘active’ races, where passive races were ‘assumed
where contact will slowly make everything on
to be on route to extinction.’ This way of thinking
display in the rest of the hall seem meant for
allowed certain races to be cast off or left to
display, meant for this cold and quiet hall.
extinction, while others were candidates for
Visitors generally go directly to the Rapa
assimilation into ‘advanced’ white culture, often
Nui Moai at the end of the hall to take photos and
through violence. Native Americans were (and
say ‘dum-dum’ (a Night at the Museum
continue to be) [11] placed as passive races which
reference), but the hall as a whole branches
had no ability to participate in modernity. In the
representational forms seen so far. It resembles
next hall, Plains Indians, the first explanatory
Amazonia in some ways, with texts that focus on
text on the wall reinforces this passive,
cultural practices as extreme and strange.
extinction-bound concept by narrating acts of
Physically, though, the space is more like Africa,
violence and genocide in vague, passive voice:
with displays primarily of artifacts, lowered
"The life of the modern Plains Indians...differs
lights, and color-coding. The heavy use of artifact
radically from what it was in buffalo days. Many
paired with the text allows exoticism to lift the
Plains Indians are now participating successfully
artifacts, already alienated from their origins and
in every aspect of modern American life, but
original locations, to leave the mapped locations
some, handicapped by poverty and inadequate
and simply become anywhere but here.
education, have been less successful. The
There is no White City inside of the
transition from a nomadic hunting culture to full
American Museum of Natural History, nor are
participation in a modern industrial society has
there live human beings on display. However, the
been difficult."
hierarchy of viewership, where the white male
The next hall is the Margaret Mead Hall of
ideal viewer observes the cultural Other, remains.
Pacific Peoples, where, as the title suggests, we
Therefore, there does not need to be a physical
learn about Margaret Mead, an anthropologist,
White City in the museum: its existence is
before we learn about any Pacific Peoples. The
implied by the viewer-subject relationship. The
texts alternate between past and present tense,
lack of a displayed White City in the museum
focusing mostly on contact and how it affects
carries a second implication. If the City is
Pacific Island culture. Photographs showing
implied but not displayed, then perhaps we are to
fishing, driving, building, and shopping [12] open
assume that the White City is the outside
the exhibit. In the main hall, the
11. See Philip J. Deloria’s Indians in Unexpected Places (2004) 12. A family just walked by and pointed to a photo of a man in Sydney purchasing food at a railway station. They commented, ‘isn't that funny!’
30
Top Image: Elephant display at the American Museum of Natural History. Credit: Akeley Scott Frances / American Museum of Natural History Bottom Image: Gemsbok Deer displace from African Spectacle. Credit: Arran Q. Henderson/American Museum of Natural History
world. This is the cruel utopia, a world where
What ‘appears to be not there’ are, in the
agency is the sole property of whiteness. The
case of the museum, the invisibilized thefts and
dissonance between the world the museum asks
murders and traumas required to catalogue and
the viewer to believe in and the world outside of
display artifacts. I’ve been looking for its
the European imperial legacy creates a space of
‘seething presence’ throughout this analysis,
theft and of murder, a space of ghosts.
looking into dark corners and flashy dioramas to interrogate the silent stories within. I am looking
Part Six: Ghosts My use of ghosts and haunting is drawn
into the space between the exhibit and its history, where a rift in reality was created by the repeated
primarily from Avery Gordon's Ghostly Matters:
lies and acts of silencing that build the discourse
Haunting and the Sociological Imagination
of white, Eurocentric history. My research has
(1997), where she explores the ‘animated state in
looked primarily at processes of invisibilising
which a repressed or unresolved social violence is
rather than the moments of theft, but the traumas
making itself known, sometimes very directly, sometimes more obliquely’ (Gordon, 1997). She discusses both emotional and physical manifestations of oppression, cruelty, and genocide. She utilizes fictions such as Toni Morrison’s Beloved to reconnect the narratives of ghosts with their own realities, allowing observation and stories to carry weight. This is relevant to my reading of the fictions of the museum. Similarly, the ghosts that I am looking for are in one sense theoretical—they represent the social trauma that is anthropology's invisible backdrop. Gordon makes clear, however, that ‘haunting, unlike trauma, is distinctive for producing a something-to-be-done’ (Gordon, 1997). Because haunting involves a tangible effect on the present and projects a need for change into the future, to understand what is to be done requires a belief in literal ghosts: "If haunting describes how that which appears to be not there is often a seething presence, acting on and often meddling with taken-for-granted realities, the ghost is just the sign... that tells you a haunting is taking place. The ghost is not simply a dead or a missing person, but a social
and genocides are real, and the rift is real. Then, so too must the ghosts be real for this examination to matter. Between the moment of violence (lived historical reality) and the representation of it (that reality which is shaped by symbols, signs, and power), there is archive—the work that is done throughout the years to catalogue and create events. The museum is much larger than its open-to-the-public halls. Its archives of animals, plants, bones, and photographs are constantly in use for scientific research, field guide creation, public relations, and education. Most of the archive is inaccessible to the public, though staff members will welcome biology classes and postgraduates. The research library, open to the public for reduced hours and by appointment, is hidden on the fourth floor behind the hall of Vertebrate Origins, where children and tourists rush from skeleton to skeleton, following its phylogenetic map, passing (as we did) right by the library. A locked door behind the circulation desk leads to Special Collections, where there is a single old PC where you can scroll through the scanned card catalogue to call various texts. Past the PC are
figure, and investigating it can lead to that dense
rows and rows of filing cabinets storing the photo
site where history and subjectivity make social
archives. Organized by museum department, the
life. The ghost or the apparition is one form by
photos show men building taxidermy exhibits,
which something lost, or barely visible, or
putting together reproductions, planning and
seemingly not there to our supposedly well-
arranging halls. In the anthropology section
trained eyes, makes itself known or apparent to
(multiple rows, countless photos), the
us, in its own way, of course."
organization is by voyage and location. Portraits of people, bodies, and lives. Individuals and families,
32
unnamed, long-dead. A rich trove of data. Behind
ceiling above us, a central passage of plantlife
the rows of filing cabinets are more locked doors,
and biota, a tiger staring us down [13].
more hidden texts, places harder and harder to
of Ocean Life is dark and cavernous, and families
access as a member of the public.
lie on the floor to stare up at the famous blue
Amongst the photo archives is a filing
The Hall
whale. Next we walk through North American
cabinet full of photos from World's Fairs.
Forests, New York State Environment (where ‘the
Drawers are filled with photos from St. Louis and
forest primeval’ includes Algonquian peoples and
Chicago of their displays of cultures and bodies.
‘the settlement’ does not). This leads to the Grand
There are layers here: the museum, which is
Hall, where we can go to Northwest Coast Indians
meant to be observed by the public, hides an
[14] or a temporary exhibition hall. The Grand
archive of photos of displays (which were meant
Hall displays a enormous canoe [15] and, at the
to be observed), but which are increasingly hard
time of this writing, an origami Night at the
to find and see. The historical work of
Museum Christmas tree. The final set of halls
ethnographic representation is concealed in order
begins at the far end of the Grand Hall and is
to allow the viewer his fantasy in which scientific
directly underneath the two dead-ends we saw on
research, observation, and classification are not
the second and third floors (leading to South
acts of violence. Though it is hidden, the direct
America and the Pacific Islands up there), here
lineage from displaying living humans to
leading through the Hall of Human Origins, the
displaying cultures permeates the museum.
Hall of Meteorites, and the Hall of Minerals and
Exiting the library back into the Hall of
Gems. The floor is overwhelming. More
Vertebrate Origins is deeply unsettling. What is
information, space, and time is covered here than
all of this doing here? What does it mean to
in the rest of the museum combined. This begs the
include the animal in this narrative? How do these
question, what is the broadest perspective at
continuities and contradictions animate the
AMNH? What constitutes natural history? What
Museum of Natural History?
makes a display or exhibit relevant to this museum?
Part Six: Balaenoptera musculus
The anthropology sticks out as the most
I still haven’t touched an entire floor of
out-of-place amongst astronomy, geology,
the museum, containing a few billion years of
zoology, paleontology because at the surface,
history. After a brief documentary on The Big
anthropology is exhibiting people and cultures
Bang narrated by Liam Neeson, The Hall of the
rather than animals, plants, or oceans. But from
Universe takes us down to the first floor along the
the entrance to the museum, where Theodore
Cosmic Pathway of 13 billion years since the
Roosevelt sits above a Native American man and
beginning of the universe. Next to that is the Hall
a Black man, we have seen the ways that
of Planet Earth: geology and ice ages, volcanoes
whiteness is set to be the true human-ness. The
and climate change. Through that hall is the
contradicting ways that non-white peoples are
Theodore Roosevelt Memorial Hall (‘lifelong
displayed has shown the ways that purportedly
explorer,’ ‘conservation president,’ ‘young
lesser forms of human-ness are portrayed as
naturalist,’ ‘firsthand observer’). We cross
variable, some more human than others. However,
through the memorial hall into the Hall of
the full scope of the museum, from the Big Bang
Biodiversity, a gorgeous and chaotic display of
to Roosevelt, begins to draw into question the
the sum of life on the planet with the full
validity of the human/non-human divide
phylogenetic tree of life covering one wall and
necessary to classify some humans as less-human.
escaping so squids and jellyfish can swim the
In Jonathan Goldberg-Hiller and
13. Note that this hall, which encourages us to think about conservation in a personal way, includes a taxidermized animal which can look into our eyes. 14. Northwest Coast Indians is, of course, as complex and problematic as the rest of the ethnographic halls. Due to its location in the floor plan, I am unable to treat it to the full analysis the other halls received. I leave it to future researchers and observers to apply my theories and others to the exhibit. 15. A kid walking by just said “look at the Viking Ship!”
Noenoe K. Silva’s "Sharks and Pigs: Animating
and life into the silent haunted space of
Hawaiian Sovereignty against the Anthropological
the museum.
Machine" (2011), the authors use cases of shark attacks and pig hunting in Hawai’i to show that Western colonialism’s conceptualization of
Part Eight: Ben Stiller Night at the Museum is a children’s comedy
humans and animals as separate categories is not
set at AMNH where a down-on-his-luck divorced
universal. They write that ‘animals, as a linguistic
dad played by Ben Stiller gets a job as the night
and cultural category, are often conspicuously
security guard at the museum, only to discover
absent’ (Goldberg-Hiller and Silva, 2011). So
that its contents, from the dinosaurs to the
while a non-colonial understanding of knowledge and life might place humans and nonhumans in the same narrative of history because of the continuity that the universe and the planet and all its inhabitants share, the colonial framework places only certain humans in the shared category of nonhuman, drawing a firm line between natural history and modernity. Philosopher Takeshi Umehara writes similarly about indigenous Japanese spiritualities and their effects on current-day Japanese Buddhism, referring to the ways that anything, ‘mountains and rivers, grasses and trees, all can become Buddhas’ (Umehara, 2009) and connecting this to the forest-based spirituality at the roots of Shintoism. In this tradition as well, there is no hierarchy or division between human life and non-human life. He sets this in contrast to philosophies that seek to conquer and control the non-human, locating some roots of individualistic Western ideologies with the Descartian distinction between the rational, thinking mind and other matter. He shows the ways that Western ideology disregards the value of non-human life. Knowing that these exploitative colonial ideologies are not the only framework for
dioramas, come alive at night. Stiller’s character eventually takes the sage advice of Teddy Roosevelt, impresses his son, saves the day, and brings peace to the raucous museum inhabitants so they can have nightly lobby dance parties. Many of the characters are the butts of unfortunate racist tropes (Sacajawea is the only character who is locked behind glass, rendering her unable to speak or hear, though Teddy Roosevelt develops a crush on her and watches her with binoculars), and the main characters are white-washed historical figures who don’t exist in the actual museum (a Roman soldier and an American cowboy feature prominently) or animals. But what matters here most is the presence of an animated and alive AMNH in the popular imagination. This picture of the museum as an animated space is at odds with the deadly epistemologies behind natural history collections. On some level it is evident that the museum should not be a dead and stagnant space, that it is in fact very much alive despite its best efforts. The very concept of a ‘permanent’ exhibition, especially one that describes interactions between cultures, is
knowledge production allows the colonial
nonsensical. And while Night at the Museum
framework to be more fully critiqued for its
portrays this rebellion against cultural death in a
inherent violence and its inconsistencies, many of
comedic manner, closer examination of the
which which are visible in the halls of AMNH.
histories and visual languages of AMNH shows
Umehara continues his analysis, arguing that post-
the trauma and violence that truly animates the
enlightenment thought is, therefore, a ‘philosophy
dead at the museum. Once we learn to listen to
of death.’ Silva and Goldberg-Hiller’s example of
the stories behind the displays using critical and
mass shark killings in Hawai’i show the most
intentional observation, we can begin to talk back
literal side of the death necessary to shore up
to this strange and haunted space. We can begin
human individualism. This ‘inevitable dead end’
to ask what life the museum wants. We can begin
kills knowledge the way it kills forests, sharks,
telling its silent stories.
and humans, forcing billions of years of energy
34
Postscript
References
The whole universe depends on everything fitting
Barnathan, Michael & Levy, Shawn. (2006). Night
together just right. If one piece busts, even the
at the Museum [Motion Picture]. United States:
smallest piece, the entire universe will get busted.
Twentieth Century Fox.
...If you can fix the broken piece, it can all go right back.
Delgado, Richard and Stefancic, Jean. (2001).
...Sometimes, you can break something so bad,
Critical Race Theory: An Introduction. New
that it can't get put back together.
York: New York University Press.
-Hushpuppy, Beasts of the Southern Wild
Goldberg-Hiller, Jonathan and Silva, Noenoe K. (2011). "Sharks and Pigs: Animating Hawaiian Sovereignty against the Anthropological Machine." The South Atlantic Quarterly 110:2, pp. 429-446.
Gordon, Avery F. (2008). Ghostly Matters: Haunting and the Sociological Imagination. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.
Hall, Stuart. (1997). Representation: Cultural Representations and Signifying Practices. London: The Open University.
Haraway, Donna. (1984). "Teddy Bear Patriarchy: Taxidermy in the Garden of Eden, New York City, 1908-1936." Social Text. N o. 11 (Winter, 19841985), pp. 20-64.
Pratt, Mary Louise. (1992). Imperial Eyes: Travel Writing and Transculturation. New York: Routledge.
Rydell, Robert W. (1987). All the World's a Fair: Visions of Empire at American International Expositions, 1876-1916. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Umehara, Takeshi. (2009). "Ancient Postmodernism." New Perspect Q 26:0, pp 41-54.
Zeitlin, Benh. (2012). Beasts of the Southern Wild [Motion Picture]. United States: Cinereach
SOME PIECES ABOUT PROTEST JAHMAN
HILL
36
Sankofa
We’ve been here before This scene is nothing new This oppression has been pressed into our bones Our veins run with the struggle of my ancestors In their blood In my blood In this skin Cursed before birth I found myself drowning in a sea of my history Submerged by the call of reconciliation Choking on bullets and chains They say we the new slaves But being slaves is nothing new for us Tell me what do you know of this pain This skin What do you know of these roots What do you know of the suffering We have nothing to lose but these chains These shackles that grip us tighter with every Crispus, every Emmet, every Trayvon What do you know of being blindfolded with black skin Taught to hate your own complexion My children yearn for insurrection BUT NO This is not the fate Our ancestors did not die in vain We won’t stay silent We will dig until we find every unmarked grave, every forgotten bone every hidden history We will not leave a single stone unturned We will obliterate the blanket of ignorance from the American psyche We will be confrontational And confront our past Not a single eye will hide from this Sankofa This revolutionary renaissance This pedagogical past, agitated antiquity This effervescent enlightenment We will be heard We will be heard We will be Heard
Title Image: Protesters and counter-protesters embraced after a Black Lives Matter rally in Dallas. Credit: Carlo Allegri/Reuters Top Image: Church women of the Mt. Zion Methodist Episcopal Zion Church in Montgomery, Alabama who organized the Montgomery Bus Boycott in 1955. Credit: Photo by Dan Budnik/Contact Press Images Bottom Image: Mothers whose children have died at the hands of the police. From left: Tynesha Tilson (Atlanta); Wanda Johnson (Oakland, Calif.); Felicia Thomas (Atlanta); Gwen Carr (New York); Monteria Robinson (Atlanta); Dr. Roslyn Pope, author of "An Appeal for Human Rights" (Atlanta); Dalphine Robinson (Atlanta); Patricia Scott (Atlanta); Montye Benjamin (Atlanta); and Samira Rice (Cleveland). 2019. Credit: Sheila Pree Bright. https://www.nytimes.com/2019/01/29/lens/sheila-pree-bright-civil-rights-black-lives-matter-mothers-atlanta.html
38
Top Image: Police in Birmingham, Alabama take a group of black schoolchildren to jail on May 4, 1963, after their arrest for protesting against segregation. Credit: Bill Hudson/AP Bottom Image: Protestors participate in a vigil for Freddie Gray in Baltimore, Maryland. Gray, 25, died from spinal injuries on April 19, one week after being taken into police custody. Credit: Drew Angerer, Getty Images
The 5th Step (Octavius on Infinity)
All it takes is four steps for you to fire 8 bullets. But before you point your weapon at me you will remember these words. When my body is void of life and my casket is heavy with the weight of the world that I carried on my shoulders my black skin a symbol of death reincarnated the manifestation of some sick curse the white man’s target practice you will hunt the fire of my soul and be met with the ice cold bane of my existence what you fear is my ability to stand up to your oppression. You will remember these words Because my name was destined to be preceded with a hashtag, just another step towards a revolution where our black men play the martyrs that my name is just meant for a tombstone too soon that the children that I wished for never got the chance to breathe because it's 2015 and I can’t breathe you put that on your t-shirt, I wear that on my skin tone if Cupid had a gun he would point it at my back and disperse the love America has for our black man You will remember this moment when I have graced the headlines of your news station, when they have cr-cr-cracked my spine and br-br-broken my spirit when all I have left is this moment when I look up to the heavens and ask Jesus why he has forsaken me I am not ready to go You will remember the silence
You will remember the silence
You will remember the silence
You will remember that I did not know how to love. That my heart was hardened by a world that taught me constant betrayal. That I learned from an early age to push others away so that when my time came it would be easier for everybody to stomach you will remember that I always ate my veggies. That I sang in the choir. That I watched my baby siblings hoping one day to have my own beautiful black babies You will remember that I was scared.... that by the time I turned 18 I ran out of tears so the only thing left for me to do was to write. That I feared that if I were to ever bring kids onto this earth that I feared that they would hate me, because how could a father with so much love force a kid to live in this much hate. You will remember that I tried. And that I always knew that I wouldn’t be good enough. I prayed for an ocean of acceptance
40
Top Image: Mamie Till Mobley at the funeral of her son, Emmett Till, in Chicago in September 1955. Credit: Chicago Sun-Times/Associated Press. https://www.nytimes.com/2015/06/22/magazine/the-condition-of-black-life-is-one-of-mourning.html Botton Image: Men mourn the death of Freddie Gray in West Baltimore, April 28, 2015 by Yunghi Kim. Credit: https://www.vanityfair.com/culture/2015/06/police-deaths-baltimore-ferguson-james-wolcott
and I was met with an array of bullets that my senior year of high school I hid from cops in a ditch for three hours and the only thing I felt was that I belonged. You will remember how the sun etched its existence into the left side of my face as I lay sprawled out on the concrete with 8 shots lodged firmly into my back forming a constellation made out of stars like Trayvon Martin stars like Michael Brown stars like Eric Gardner stars like Walter Scott just another hashtag hero for the new millennium. You will remember my smile as the police searches my history for a reason to paint me as a deserving villain the same way ignorance has painted my posterior something scarlet. You will remember that I told my little brothers not to come to my funeral. Because I did not want them to see their future. I did not want that to be their future. As my brother sits there detained and realizes he fits a description destined for him to match my brother of 11 years wrote a poem this winter about how racism and prejudice is destroying our nation. I am hurting. And you will remember this pain. If I have to force it down your throat you will swallow the fear of my black body and birth magnificence. I am a king. I am king. I deserve to exist. You deserve to exist. You deserve to exist you deserve to be you. You get to be you. You get to be you and I get to be black. And that means that all it takes is four steps for you to fire 8 bullets.
42
ORANGE JUICE WITH A SIDE OF POLICE BRUTALITY MAI
MIZUNO
In 1984, a black man by the name of Dethorne Graham felt a diabetic insulin reaction coming on. Graham had his friend, Berry, drive him to the nearest convenience store to purchase orange juice to counteract the reaction. Graham ran into the convenience store and saw that there were a number of people waiting in line for the cash register. Rather than risk waiting in line for his orange juice, Graham decided to go elsewhere to get the sugar he needed instead. Graham hurried out of the convenience store and got into Berry’s car, instructing him to quickly take him to a friend’s house. A city policeman, Officer M. S. Connor, happened to see Graham rushing in and out of the convenience store from his parked police car. Officer Connor deemed the behavior suspicious and followed Berry’s car while simultaneously radioing the convenience store to see if there had been a robbery. Connor eventually pulled Berry’s car over to make an investigative stop and instructed the two to wait until he found out what occurred at the convenience store. Graham, who began suffering from the insulin reaction, opened the passenger door and exited Berry’s car. Graham stumbled around the car twice before sitting down on the curb. His body started going into shock. Graham lost consciousness right as four backup officers arrived at the scene. The officers handcuffed and arrested Graham, thinking that he was drunk and out of control. At this point, Graham began going in and out of consciousness and attempted to tell the officers that he was a diabetic. Graham wildly waved his arms to try and communicate that he had a medical card proving his diabetic identification in his wallet. The officers ignored Graham, instead slamming his head on a car as his behavior
44
behavior became more erratic before throwing him in the back of one of the police cars. Graham sustained head and shoulder injuries, along with scratches along his wrists and a broken foot. Once Officer Connor learned that nothing had occurred at the convenience store, he drove Graham—still handcuffed in the back of his police car— back to Graham’s residence and left him lying on his front lawn. Graham decided to challenge Connor’s use of force in court, a decision that would soon be at the crux of shaping the outcome of all subsequent police excessive use of force cases. Graham v. Connor (1989) took place under the looming spectre of the long history of police brutality against communities of color in the United States. In the decades prior, the 1965 Watts Riots in Los Angeles and the hundreds of race riots that occurred during a period known as the Long Hot Summer of 1967 were all ignited by instances of police brutality against African Americans. [1] Tensions between the black community and police officers continued to boil over from the Civil Rights Era into the 1980s. Graham v. Connor took place during a time when many people of color were fed up with the lack of accountability within police forces. Police officers benefited from a nearly 100% rate of acquittal when complaints of excessive use of force were brought to trial. [2] Prior to Graham v. Connor, excessive use of force cases were determined by a standard of malicious intent under the Fourteenth Amendment. Plaintiffs had to prove whether or not the officer in question acted with the specific purpose of causing harm in order for the officer to be indicted. The high rate of acquittals was indicative as to how this was a near impossible standard to meet—even in the case of a police officer beating up a diabetic undergoing an insulin reaction and leaving him unconscious without medical care. Graham’s case eventually found its way to the Supreme Court. The facts of the case were clear, but determining malicious intent was murky. It was only when Thurgood Marshall, the first and only black Supreme Court Judge at the time, asked, “What reason was there for handcuffing a diabetic in a coma? What was he doing that was so violent that he had to be handcuffed?” with such incredulity that it became clear that a new standard needed to be established. Marshall’s questioning guided the Supreme Court to unanimously side with Graham. In writing the majority opinion, Chief Justice William Rehnquist outlined that all claims of excessive use of force by police officers during an arrest, investigatory stop, or other form of “seizure” of a person must be analyzed under the Fourth Amendment’s “objective reasonableness” standard, rather than the standard of malicious intent. The Supreme Court’s decision was seen as a breakthrough for those who were fighting police brutality; for civil rights advocates, Graham v. Connor seemed to mark the dawn of a new era of justice in the United States. An objective standard was in place to determine police use of force cases for the the first time in U. S. history. It appeared as though victims of police excessive use of force could now depend on a new, universal standard that merely required an objective analysis of the facts of the case and a comparison to what a reasonable officer would do in that scenario.
Title Image: (From left to right) Sandra Bland, a 28-year-old woman who was found hanged in a jail cell in Waller County, Texas, on July 13, 2015, three days after being arrested during a traffic stop, Eric Garner died on July 17, 2014 after a New York City Police Department officer put him in a chokehold while arresting him, and Michael Brown Jr., an 18-year-old, who was fatally shot on August 9, 2014, by a police officer in Ferguson, Missouri Credit: https://www.refinery29.com/en-us/2018/11/218115/sandra-bland-hbo-documentary-true-story-jail-murder-case, https://www.nydailynews.com/news/national/eric-garner-mom-calls-ag-lynch-move-chokehold-case-article-1.2869877, https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/mike-brown-notched-a-hard-fought-victory-just-days-before-he-was-shot-adiploma/2014/08/12/574d65e6-2257-11e4-8593-da634b334390_story.html?utm_term=.a66eeaabef08 1. “50 Years After Race Riots, Issues Remain the Same.” U.S. News & World Report, U.S. News & World Report, www.usnews.com/news/nationalnews/articles/20170712/50yearslatercausesof1967summerriotsremainlargelythesame. 2. “Radiolab Presents: More Perfect Mr. Graham and the Reasonable Man.” Radiolab Podcasts, www.radiolab.org/story/radiolabpresentsmoreperfectmrgrahamreasonableman/.
Image: Alton Sterling, a 37-year-old man, was shot at close range by two police officers in Baton Rouge, Louisiana on On July 5, 2016. Credit: Photo via Alton Sterling / Facebook
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After Graham’s victory at the Supreme Court level, the case was sent back down to the trial court to determine whether or not Connor was guilty of excessive use of force under the new standards. A new jury was selected and the facts of the case were presented again. This time, in accordance with the Graham v. Connor decision, the jury was asked to assess whether or not Connor acted as a reasonable officer would have in that exact situation. The jury was instructed to follow the definition of “reasonableness” laid out by the Graham v. Connor decision. Chief Justice Rehnquist stipulated that the “reasonableness” of force “must be judged from the perspective of a reasonable officer on the scene, rather than with the 20/20 vision of hindsight.” Furthermore, the reasonableness standard must allow “for the fact that police officers are often forced to make split-second judgements—in circumstances that are tense, uncertain, and rapidly evolving—about the amount of force that is necessary in a particular situation.” [3] In other words, the jurors had to put themselves in Connor’s shoes in the split-second before his use of force with the understanding that the situation was unpredictable and Connor was under significant pressure. The jury decided in favor of Officer Connor. The Graham standard had established the opposite effect of what many had hoped for, and perhaps even against what Thurgood Marshall had intended. By focusing on what a reasonable officer would have done, the Supreme Court decision narrowed the scope of analysis to only an officer’s point of view of the situation. In this case, Officer Connor had seen a black man running in and out of a convenience store into a waiting vehicle that subsequently sped away. When Connor stopped the vehicle, he experienced a man acting erratically and incomprehensibly. The jury inferred that a reasonable officer could assume the man to be dangerous and would reach the conclusion that there was a need to subdue him. Furthermore, in that pressure-filled split-moment, Connor had no way of knowing that Graham was a diabetic suffering from an insulin attack and had no intent of harming him. Therefore, Connor acted reasonably. He was off the hook. No case has subsequently overturned the Supreme Court ruling in Graham v. Connor. Today, the reasonableness principle set forth under Graham v. Connor still stands as the universal standard for excessive use of force cases. Ironically, the very standard meant to hold police officers accountable would soon be known as the “first amendment for cops” within police forces, a protection that would reliably hand down acquittal after acquittal for officers. [4] In fact, Graham v. Connor is widely studied during police trainings, with some police departments even listing the Supreme Court case in their officer handbooks. POLICE Magazine, a popular magazine for law enforcement officials, published an article in response to the shooting of Michael Brown in 2014 stating that “every American law enforcement officer should have a sound understanding of the Graham case and what it means.” The magazine goes on to describe how “a generation of officers has been trained in the case's practical meaning and has spent decades applying it to every use of force decision.” [5] Three decades later, Graham v. Connor has stood as the silent giant in the backdrop of recent cases of police brutality and the birth of the Black Lives Matter movement. In July 2014, an unarmed black man named Eric Garner was placed in a
3. Supreme Court. Graham v. Connor. 1989. 4. “Radiolab Presents: More Perfect—Mr. Graham and the Reasonable Man.” Radiolab Podcasts, www.radiolab.org/story/radiolabpresentsmoreperfectmrgrahamreasonableman/. 5. “Understanding Graham v. Connor.” POLICE Magazine, Oct. 2014, www.policemag.com/channel/patrol/articles/2014/10/understandinggrahamvconnor.aspx.
chokehold by Officer Daniel Pantaleo during an arrest. Garner pleaded eleven times to Officer Pantaleo that he could not breathe. Garner was pronounced dead one hour later from the chokehold. A grand jury decided that Officer Pantaleo acted reasonably and he was not indicted in Garner’s death. The following month, an unarmed black man named John Crawford III was shot and killed by Officer Sean Williams inside of a Walmart. Crawford was holding a toy BB gun, which Officer Williams mistook for a real weapon. A grand jury decided that Officer Crawford acted reasonably and he was not indicted in Crawford’s death. Four days later, Michael Brown, an eighteen-year-old unarmed black man, was shot and killed by Officer Darren Wilson. Officer Wilson was chasing down Brown for stealing cigarillos from a store when he shot six bullets into Brown. A grand jury decided that Officer Wilson acted reasonably and he was not indicted in Brown’s death. Two months later, Officer Timothy Loehmann shot and killed twelve-year-old Tamir Rice. Officer Loehmann shot the boy because he mistook the airsoft gun in Rice’s hand for an actual gun. A grand jury decided that Officer Loehmann acted reasonably and he was not indicted in Rice’s death. Alton Sterling was selling CDs when he was shot and killed by police officers for resisting arrest. Both the Justice Department and Office of the Attorney General of Louisiana decided that the officers had acted reasonably and they were not indicted in Sterling’s death. The next day, Philando Castile was driving a car with his girlfriend and her four-year-old daughter when he was pulled over, shot seven times and killed by Officer Jeronimo Yanez. Officer Yanez claimed that Castile was reaching for a gun, rather than his ID. A grand jury decided that Officer Yanez acted reasonably and he was not indicted in Castile’s death. Officers were also acquitted in the deaths of Jamar Clark, Terence Crutcher, and Keith Lamont Scott, to name a few more black men who were recently shot and killed by police officers. Graham v. Connor was cited in the officers’ defenses in all of these cases. The continual acquittal of police officers has infuriated civil rights advocates and Black Lives Matter activists alike who see police brutality as today’s preeminent racial justice issue. Interacting with the police remains a high-stakes game in which police officers hold a get-out-of-jail-free card. Encountering even the most well‐ meaning police officer becomes dangerous due to implicit bias structures in American society. The American Psychology Association states that “one of the most well‐ demonstrated types of implicit bias is the unconscious association between black individuals and crime.” [6] Joshua Correll, PhD, a professor of psychology at the University of Colorado, developed a paradigm known as “the police officer’s dilemma” that illustrates the impact of implicit bias on the black community. Correll tested this paradigm through a first-person shooter video game in which participants were shown pictures of both black and white men holding either a gun or an object such as a cell phone. The participants were tasked to shoot the pictures of men holding guns. The peer-reviewed study revealed that participants shot pictures of armed black men with more frequency and more immediately than armed white men and refrained more often from shooting white men. It also found that the most common, consistent mistake was shooting an unarmed black man and failing to shoot an armed white man. Furthermore, the study found that the participants’ race did not impact their level of implicit bias, and that bias reflected perceptions of cultural stereotypes rather than personal racial prejudice. [7]
6. Wier, Kirsten. “Policing in Black & White.” Monitor on Psychology, Vol 47, No. 11, American Psychological Association, Dec. 2016, www.apa.org/monitor/2016/12/coverpolicing.aspx. 7. Correll, Joshua, et al. “The Police Officer's Dilemma: Using Ethnicity to Disambiguate Potentially Threatening Individuals.(Abstract).” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, vol. 83, no. 6, 2002, pp. 1314–1329.
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Image: (from left to right) Trayvon Benjamin Martin was a 17-year-old African American teenager from Miami Gardens, Florida, who was killed by George Zimmerman on February 26, 2012, Aiyana Mo'Nay Stanley-Jones, a seven-year-old who was killed during a raid conducted by the Detroit Police Department on May 16, 2010, and Tamir Rice, a 12-year-old boy killed by police on November 22, 2014, in Cleveland, Ohio. Credit: https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-36273488, http://blackyouthproject.com/national-sayhername-day-acknowledginginjustice-against-black-women-girls-and-femmes/, https://www.gq.com/story/tamir-rice-story
It did not matter that someone was racist or not; they still acted on their implicit bias. A follow-up series of studies found that special unit officers who routinely interact with minority gang members were more likely to shoot black men—both armed and unarmed—in the first-person shooter simulation. The training and experiences that the officers received exacerbated the likelihood of exhibiting racial bias in their decisions to shoot. [8] These findings reflect real-world statistics in which an unarmed black person is three and a half times more likely to be shot by police on average than their white counterparts. [9] This statistic fluctuates depending on the locale. For example, unarmed black people in Oklahoma are seven times more likely to be killed by police officers than their counterparts in Georgia. [10] More disturbingly, though black people bear the brunt of a significant racial disparity in police use of force cases, there is no correlation between police use of force and the crime rates of black individuals. A variety of studies produced by University of California, Los Angeles’s Center for Policing Equity reveal how black people are more likely to be targets of police force after adjusting for whether or not they actually engaged in crime. In other words, crime rates are not driving police behavior. This conclusion is supported by other data. A study conducted by psychologists at Stanford University found that black men are four times more likely than white men to be stopped and searched at a traffic stop, even though black people are no more likely to be found with contraband than their white counterparts. [11] These studies re-emphasize how policing is an issue of civil rights, and providing a fair trial for victims of police brutality is an issue of justice. Though Graham v. Connor was meant to impose integrity on police accountability against excessive use of force, in practice it became a protectorate of police misconduct. The Fourth Amendment reasonableness standard was intended to provide an objective analysis based off of facts on the ground, but it instead prioritized the police officers’ perspective of the situation over that of the victims’. As a result, black and brown communities have continued to suffer at the hands of police brutality and an unjust legal system. As a society, we must ask what possible solutions may exist to the legal conundrum that has followed in the wake of Graham v. Connor. Excessive use of force can be addressed, to some extent, from a policy standpoint. Implicit bias trainings paired with bias assessments in police departments should be one component of addressing the issue. [12] Mandating sufficient deescalation training for police officers is also important. President Obama’s administration released a report in 2015 stating that deescalation training should be the top priority of all police departments. [13] Currently, thirty-four states do not require deescalation training at all, and a larger number of states do not provide sufficient enough deescalation training sessions. While support for the implementation of deescalation training exists amongst a fraction of police chiefs, there is a much larger faction of police chiefs who denounce such programs. Those against the programs
8. Sim, Jessica J, et al. “Understanding Police and Expert Performance: When Training Attenuates (vs. Exacerbates) Stereotypic Bias in the Decision to Shoot.” Personality & Social Psychology Bulletin, vol. 39, no. 3, 2013, pp. 291–304. 9. Ross CT (2015) A MultiLevel Bayesian Analysis of Racial Bias in Police Shootings at the CountyLevel in the United States, 2011–2014. PLoS ONE 10(11): e0141854. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0141854 10. Saul, Josh. “Police Killed More than 1,100 People This Year and a Quarter of Them Were Black.” Newsweek, 29 Dec. 2017, www.newsweek.com/policeshootingskillingsusunarmedblackreformmichaelbrown764787. 11. Hetey, Rebecca, et al. Data for Change: A Statistical Analysis of Police Stops, Searches, Handcuffings, and Arrests in Oakland, California. Stanford Social Psychological Answers to Real World Questions, June 2016, stanford.app.box.com/v/DataforChange. 12. James, Tom. “Can Cops Unlearn Their Unconscious Biases?” The Atlantic, Atlantic Media Company, 23 Dec. 2017, www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2017/12/implicitbiastrainingsaltlake/548996/. 13. United States. President's Task Force on 21st Century Policing, Executive Office of the President. Final Report of the President's Task Force on 21st Century Policing / President's Task Force on 21st Century Policing. 2015.
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Image: Korryn Gaines, a 23-year-old woman was killed by police in her home on August 1, 2016, in Randallstown, Maryland, near Baltimore. Credit: https://twitter.com/bmorebloc/status/956911254605586432
argue that deescalation requires all participants in a situation to participate in said de‐ escalation, which cannot be controlled by police officers. However, supporters point to the need for change in how police are trained to act in different scenarios with the purpose of giving officers tools to relieve tensions for the overall benefit of everyone’s safety. [14] Beyond policy, there are legal battles being fought in the lower courts over the current interpretation of Graham v. Connor, which constrains the reasonableness standard to a sliver of time, prioritizes only what the officer is feeling, and rejects the consideration of hindsight in making a decision to convict or acquit an officer. Several plaintiffs are presenting cases that point to a different section of Rehnquist’s majority opinion, which tempers—and even contradicts—the previous interpretation by stating that the question of reasonableness should rest on “whether the totality of the circumstances justif[ies] a particular sort of...seizure.” The lower courts have so far been split in their interpretation: half are interpreting the “totality of circumstances” to mean whether or not the officer would have been fearful based off of what that officer would have known during that split-second moment before making the decision to use force, and whether or not the use of force was reasonable based off of the officer’s fear. The other half of the courts have decided upon a wider interpretation that includes the totality of what attempts were made to deescalate the situation or nonviolently subdue the individual leading up to the moment when the officer used force. In the latter interpretation, the factors that were previously left out of the picture would be allowed for consideration. In the case of Graham, these factors could include how there was no indication that Graham carried a weapon or how Connor did not attempt deescalation tactics before arresting Graham. In the case of Graham, these factors could include how there was no indication that Graham carried a weapon or how Connor did not attempt deescalation tactics before arresting Graham. This new focus on the “totality of circumstances” within the majority opinion delivered by the Supreme Court Court is seen by civil rights lawyers as a path towards requiring objectivity under Graham v. Connor. [15] Graham v. Connor is a prime example of the timeless, far reaching and often unpredictable consequences of the law. While Graham v. Connor may morph in legal interpretation, certain things remain steadfast: making a trip to the convenience store to get orange juice, playing with a toy gun in a Walmart, or driving around with loved ones in your car should not be scenarios of life or death. We should work towards living in a society where, when asked whether or not an officer was reasonable in shooting twenty rounds of bullets into a young man standing in his grandmother’s backyard with nothing but a cellphone in his hand, the law compels a jury to respond with a resounding “No.”
14. Jackman, Tom. “DeEscalation Training to Reduce Police Shootings Facing Mixed Reviews at Launch.” The Washington Post, WP Company, 15 Oct. 2016, www.washingtonpost.com/local/publicsafety/deescalationtrainingtoreducepoliceshootingsfacingmixedreviewsatlaunch/ 2016/10/14/d6d96c74915911e69c85ac42097b8cc0_story.html?utm_term=.4948b86223e9. 15. “Radiolab Presents: More Perfect Mr. Graham and the Reasonable Man.” Radiolab Podcasts, www.radiolab.org/story/radiolabpresentsmoreperfectmrgrahamreasonableman/.
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Image: "White Arches" Credit: Abraham Garcia
MORNING LESSON LYNN
TAMAYO
If you ask, and if they are honest, most people will tell you that they believe those who are homeless got that way because of mental illness or because of their own bad decisions. I work at a school of social work at a major university. I was told that homelessness could also be caused by the loss of a job along with the lack of a strong personal network. I was unconvinced until I met Grace.
She stood beside me at the bus stop, and asked me
Grace said that she had been an accountant in a
if I was on my way to work.
manufacturing plant. “Before that, I was a typist.” Her loose brown pants were torn and stained. Her
I told her that I was.
once-white blouse matched the greyness of her once-white sneakers. Her wavy brown hair was
“What do you do?” she asked.
pulled back tight, revealing a dirt smudge on her forehead. But her eyes were vivid green and
“I’m an administrative assistant,” I said and
sparkled with clarity.
adjusted the lapel of my periwinkle suit jacket. I stepped up to her. “What happened?” I asked. She looked me up and down. “I used to be
The expected stench of stale alcohol was not
something too.”
there. Neither was the dull stare of an addict. Instead, I was accosted by days of unbathed skin
I fought the urge to look her up and down. I
and unwashed clothing.
wanted to tell her, “But you are something.” I checked my watch.
“Company closed,” she said, and bent over the trashcan. “I looked for a job. Sent out my resume.
She told me that her name was Grace and that she
Got tired. Lost my house.” She examined the
had a degree from a junior college. I was sure her
trashcan’s contents, opening Styrofoam
comment was inspired by the USC logo on my
containers and paper bags. “Got more tired. Got
carryall.
hooked. Got clean. Came here.”
My cell phone buzzed a text from the
The chicken pesto sandwich in my carryall tugged
receptionist. He was taking a sick day. He thought
on my shoulder. I relieved myself of the burden.
it was a stomach flu, or maybe he ate something bad.
54
Top Image: Los Angeles' Skid Row. Credit: AFP photo/Robyn Beck/Getty Images Bottom Image: A bus at dusk. Credit: Pau Casals
She thanked me and put it into an old blue denim
The bus door opened and unenthusiastic workers
backpack.
lined up and trudged in. A short stocky woman doused in cheap flowery perfume pushed up
I asked her if she had family. “My sister died. Car
against my back. She smelled like a funeral parlor
accident.”
filled with dying flowers. It was worse than the body odor and the open trashcan—combined. I
“I’m sorry,” I said, and stared down the perfectly
crinkled my nose and put my index finger under
tailored man who looked at me in disbelief. He
my nostrils.
clutched his Brooks Brothers briefcase, dusted a non-existent speck from his navy blue trousers,
Grace squeezed her nose, smiled and nodded in
and stepped away. Maybe it was the odor or
agreement. Her teeth were slightly yellowed, but
maybe it was shame. He grimaced and stepped
her smile had the wide flat perfection of a mouth
into a taxi.
that had once known the torture of braces.
“I think I have some cousins in Chicago,” she
“How about friends?” I asked as I joined the line.
said. “My parents got divorced when I was a kid.
I thought, maybe a different time, a different
I don’t know them. You know what I mean?”
place.
“I guess so,” I said. I thought about my own
“I’ve always been kind of a loner,” she said. “I
distant cousins and wondered if I could still find
was always so busy working, I forgot to work on
them. A panicked feeling welled in my stomach,
my friendships. You know what I mean?”
but I took solace in the existence of social media. The smudge on her forehead caught my eye again.
I took the last sip of my coffee cup and tossed the empty cup into the trash. “I know,” I said.
“Do I have something up there?” she asked. She opened the small zippered pocket of her backpack
She picked out the coffee cup, took off the plastic
and took out a compact mirror. The cover was
lid, looked inside and tossed it back into the
inlaid with mother of pearl. She shook a once-
trash. “You sleepy?” she asked.
white handkerchief and wiped off the smudge. I noticed the handkerchief was embroidered with
“I didn’t sleep well,” I lied. “Caffeine addiction”
the letters “G-M-A.”
would have been a truthful answer.
My eyes involuntarily scanned her clothing again.
“You like your job?”
Despite my best efforts, I was not able to hide the judgement behind my glances.
“I guess so,” I said. “But I’m going on an interview later today.”
“I signed up at the women’s center,” she said, and checked the buttons on her blouse. “They said
Her expression hardened. “I used to dream,” she
they can help me.” She paused and looked more
said and turned away.
like a candidate replying to an interviewer than a homeless woman standing over a trashcan. “I also
Dream? I wanted to follow her and ask, “Dream
have a storage unit,” she said. “I still have my
in your sleep or dream in life?” I was late for
work clothes. They’re a little big for me now, but
work. I stepped into the bus. I wish I could meet
they’re still in good condition.”
Grace again. I would tell her that she is something—a teacher.
“That’s wonderful,” I said.
56
DEAR AMERICA/ BEAUTIFUL COUNTRY ESTHER
RA
When I first learned you could murder, I cried.
tight as a noose on some necks,
I wanted so badly to believe in you, in your
where freedom rubbed raw on wrong skin.
American dream, which placed shining words
Yet you placed eloquence in my mouth,
on my tongue. Migak, sense of taste, sweet
gave me the tongue with which I condemn you.
as apples. Country, I thought, with a conscience.
I became full of life, other, daughter—
In Korea, we called you Migook, beautiful country.
O my mother, allow me to speak:
Meaning we saw you as buffalo, full of dark strength,
from my migoo, my fragmented body,
roaming prairies of vast possibility.
let words flow like rivers of stone.
You fed us cigarettes and salt crackers during the war,
How long will you hide the bloodstains
snapped chocolates as easily as limbs. We became
on your cloak, build floorboards over
your bargirls and babies, eager for one glance from your
your dead bodies? Migook, O America,
eyes. Be consistent with grace: Your arms enveloped me, foster child
Your own children lie shot in the streets.
from an ancient and terrified land, and my past
Migook, my America, do not belch out with
learned to clutch at your sleeve. I loved you, America,
pride,
with your sky large enough to hold every race
but swell with the warm yeast of mercy. Be bread in the pockets of the hungry,
and your story so brazenly young, everyone could tell
and rise like fresh dough to your name.
where it began to go wrong. Misook: your ignorance, or mine. You swaggered that God was on your side. And I clutched you like a hope. Like a rope. A rope
Image: Child refugees during the Korean War. Credit: Wikimedia Commons.
58
ONE STAR REVIEWS OF THE
ESTHER
RA
One-Star Reviews of the DMZ
“What was it,
Not worth the money. You can
a found poem; after Aimee
what have we just seen?”
access it online. Overrated: THERE IS NOTHING
Nezhukumatathil Hurry, hurry, hurry… We lived to regret it.
Hardly exciting.
There were too many stops At the restaurant in the tour,
to go shopping.
TO SEE!!!
and wait!
We never got to do the tour.
my bibimbap was cold. You can’t take pictures. Not
The rice dried up.
Unfortunately,
very scenic. And we were
We saw North Koreans working
this was just the beginning.
NEVER ONCE told
on a field.
that the drinks were extra. Too many restrictions We shuffled on and off
for safety. Doesn’t allow you
the tour bus, from building
to walk into North Korea.
to building. They play
BORING!
on perceptions of danger.
Armies of tourists. A waste of time.
Title Image: South Korean soldiers stand guard at the Military Demarcation Line in the Demilitarized Zone (DMZ) in the border village of Panmunjom, South Korea. Top Image: A Korean People's Army guard watches as preparations for a repatriation ceremony are made Nov. 6, 1998.
60
(HAN)NAM / KOREAN BOY ESTHER
RA
“Korean boys will be Korean boys.” —my male South Korean friend
“I suspect he has a Korean fuckboi hidden in him somewhere.” —my friend, joking about her half-Korean boyfriend
A Korean boy is composed of a mother’s tears. Sometimes, a mother’s bright fists.
A blow cracks across his face in the dark, like lightning splitting a dry sky.
Korean boy learns that the sky is a bruise under which fathers shrivel like snails.
Korean boy saunters the hallways of school, picks up the jargon of wit.
He jingles a new vocabulary like coins, tastes their taut texture in his teeth.
Crock pot for brain, wet rag for girls. Penis a universal adjective.
Korean boy chucks a girl under her chin, calls her a hog, buys her ice cream.
For every Korean boy who tells me how he gets girls drunk to fuck them,
Another Korean boy runs out in the night to watch over his friend when she’s wasted.
Korean boy knocks down noodles and beer, conquers kingdoms in the space of his screen.
Korean boy plays soccer till dawn, tears chicken wings like a wolf cub.
When flirting, Korean boy calls himself a wolf on the prowl, threatening to eat the girls up.
Korean boy longs for a horizon called worthy, stays adrift in saltwater for centuries.
Korean boy says that most stories of rape are inventions to gain easy money.
62
Korean boy isn’t sure how to define rape.
Korean boy cups his fist and thrusts in his fingers
to introduce his lover to his friends.
Korean boy shimmies when he walks or talks to the script of his private K-drama.
Korean boy hurls chairs at a cowering girl. Somewhere else, he comforts her fears.
A Korean boy dies in the army. Another is injured for life.
Korean boy fragments his youth for a country that seldom remembers his name.
Korean boy returns with a body sky-blue with beatings and a mouth rot with anger for years.
Sometimes the dam in Korean boy’s throat is floodwater damn near to bursting.
Korean boys fall from the sky like hailstones and glass. Nobody looks up to catch them.
Somewhere, a broken gingko leaf grazes Korean boy’s face.
For a moment, he raises his palm in a gesture of wonder, only a boy,
only Korean, only a fatherless child in the war,
unable to start or stop crying.
RECIPE FOR NACATAMALES: A TRADITIONAL HONDURAN DISH BESSIE SHANTIH
F.
ZALDÍVAR
original
publication
rights
64
Ingredients:
It is time we share the recipe for nacatamales; it
4 tomatoes
is time we share what life as Honduran is.
3 green chilies 1 white onion
1.
Place 4 tomatoes, 3 green chilies, and 1
2 potatoes
white onion (2 if small) in a blender. Liquefy
2 ½ lb. chicken or pork
until completely liquid.
Salt and pepper for seasoning ½ lb. lard
“You gotta hook me up with some Ecuadorean
4 cups of water
girl or guy,” Tiff says in between bites, “they’re
2 ½ tbsp of margarine
fineashell,” the last three words mushing up into
½ cup of rice
one, as she tries to swallow and talk at the same
12 cups of corn flour (MASECA)
time. “I don’t think I even know any Ecuadorean
226g of tomato paste (NATURAS)
people,” I say, confused as to where this is
5 oz. annatto powder
coming from. She frowns, “Wait, aren’t you from
3 bags of plantain leaves
Ecuador?” “I’m from Honduras,” I say, not annoyed nor upset. “Yeah, yeah, that’s what I
I stopped thinking of my birthplace as a country
meant. It’s the same thing, the Hispanic people.”
and allowed it to become my identity. I’m not
I laugh; it wasn’t malicious, and at least she
from Honduras, I’m Honduras. It is easy, and
didn’t say we’re all Mexicans. Ecuadorean,
tempting, to disassociate. I need not to sit
Honduran, Mexican—we’re as different and
thousands of miles away, far from the night’s
similar as tomatoes, chilies, and onions. But
gunshots and hungry babies’ screams, to do so. I
we’re blended all the time. Liquefy into one
could stand right in the center of Tegucigalpa and
single substance. Eventually, only through careful
believe myself to be far, very far, from the
smelling and tasting could anyone guess what we
morning smell of coffee dancing in the air with
use to be— what we really are. I smile, “Yeah, I
that of death. Death. The smell of death in
suppose I know a couple of Hondurans you could
Honduras is not that of a rotting corpse. The
be interested in.”
smell of death in my city is that of routine, of triviality. Thus, it is a smell that stirs no one, that
2. Clean and cut 2 ½ pounds of either pork or
hurts no one, that moves no one. A much more
chicken (according to preference) into small
powerful smell is that of the nacatamales, and I
pieces.
don’t say just because of all the starving faces pressing against car windows at every stoplight.
“In immigration they won’t ask you: Where are
Nacatamales are more Honduran than the five
you coming from? Where are you going? Why?
stars in my flag. It is a smell every Honduran
How? With whose money? How long will you
knows, every Honduran craves. The rich buy them
stay? No, no, you’re too white for that,” Ligia
by the dozen in the corners of busy streets. The
tells me. She’s right; they have never asked me
poor prepare them by the hundreds every night
anything at all, and I had always wondered how
and dawn, before daybreak comes, requiring their
come everybody else in front of me in line
swollen feet and hands back at their corners. It
seemed to take forever to be allowed into the
was in the process of preparing them for the first
country. “I’m light skinned, not white,” I say,
time this previous Christmas that I realized just
defeated. But she’s wrong. They can see my
how much nacatamales relate to my Honduran
passport, they can hear my accent, they can read
identity. Each step, each ingredient, is also a
my last name. Light skin doesn’t make me white.
facet of my everyday life as a Honduran woman,
It's pork or chicken. White or not. It can’t be
especially upon moving to America to study.
both.
3. Once clean and cut, place meat inside a
5. Place mix from step 4 on a stove burner at
container and season with salt, pepper, and a
230 degrees Celsius and continue to stir slowly.
little of the mix from step one. Set aside for the time being.
I wake to images of my city, Tegucigalpa, literally on fire. Riots, the media calls them.
“I love Cinco de Mayo,” my first college roommate tells me. I nod, not really sure of what I can say to that. I’ve seen her tweets about the “#TrumpTrain.” My family was very clear: It’s not your country, so don’t say anything about the election. Leave it be. Her retweets about building the wall and getting rid of all the “illegals” plague my feed. I keep my mouth shut, as she yells at the T.V. on the nights of the debates. A piece of a chicken nugget flies from her mouth as she screams, “Fucking Crooked Hillary wait 'til we drain the swamp, bitch.” On May 5th, she uploads pictures wearing a sombrero, along with some caption in faulty Spanish and the taco
Delinquents, drug dealers, gang members trying to destroy the country so they can rule free of the law. The U.S. government backs up the media by recognizing the tyrant’s reelection, the reason of the so-called riots. This city has always been on fire. In public schools, the children have always sat on bricks. “See, it’s a model of the Norwegian education system,” says the minister of education, “kids don’t have chairs so they can feel more comfortable working in groups.” His kids, of course, don’t sit on bricks nor on the floor. His kids probably don’t fear the school may crash down on them, leaving a pile of stone, chalks, and bones. This city has always been on fire. We have been stirring slowly.
emoji. On May 5th, she doesn’t mind the salt and the pepper and the mix of tomatoes and chilies and onions. She can embrace these things for one day. The next 364 days though, she sets aside the seasoned meat. She forgets she owns a sombrero.
6. Add ½ a pound of lard to the mixture on the burner. Boil and stir until it has a thick consistency. This may take several minutes. This will be the white mix.
I hit unfollow and move out. “How are things?” I ask Katherine via WhatsApp
4. Mix 6 cups of corn flour (preferably Maseca), 2 cups of water, and ½ of the mix from step 1 in a pot. Stir until liquid; the mix must be thin, not thick.
shortly after the protests break out. She responds by sending a one-minute video she recorded from her car. The street is full of burning tires and rocks. “I saw a man get killed the other day,” she adds. “Heard the gunshot first.” I wait for her to
I unroll my R’s. I read. I watch all movies in
type, mostly because I don’t know what to say. “It
English. I look for words in the Webster
was right in the head. His brains all over the
Dictionary app on my phone, and hit the play
sidewalk.” I wonder if brains on a sidewalk, like
button so the machine voice can confirm my
in Hollywood movies, resemble the consistency of
pronunciation is the right one, just in case I have
lard. I wonder for several minutes. Katherine will
to read it aloud in class or something. “Where are
know all her life.
you from?” my Uber driver asks. “Honduras,” I say, “Central America.” Surprised, he answers
7. Repeat steps 4 and 5 with the remainder of
“Really? You got great English. That’s good. I
mix 1.
hate when people can’t speak right. It’s like, speak American or get out.” I nod in response. I’ve stirred my tongue in training throughout the years to make my accent thin, not thick. Sometimes it slips. Sometimes, I wish it had slipped.
66
Title Image: Nacatamales / iStock Top Image: A market in Honduras. Bottom Image: A man carries a boy across a burning barricade erected by supporters of Salvador Nasralla. Credit: Rodrigo Abd./AP
8. Pour new mixture into another pot, and
Every headline cuts her into a smaller piece.
place on a stove burner. Add 2 sticks of
“Stop reading that stuff, Ma. We just don’t know
margarine (226 g), 2 bags of Natura’s tomato
what’s true anymore. Don’t torture yourself,” I
paste (226 g), and 5 ounces of annatto powder.
hear her daughter tell her. Still, in the morning
Boil and stir until it has a thick consistency.
she will rise. Rise and work. Some things have to
This may take several minutes. This will be the
be set aside to survive. And rising—well, rising is
red mix.
just what you do.
It’s December and everything is red. The Santa
10. Wash plantain leaves (3 bags) with water.
Claus in the street ringing his bell and asking for
Make sure to clean both sides of each leaf.
money. The string that goes around the Christmas tree in the middle of the mall, which has not been ransacked because it’s too close to the presidential plaza. And the streets, of course, running red with the blood of over 40 young women and men.
Alexia comes over a whole day. She brings bags and bags of dirty clothes. Hers, Joseph’s, her boyfriend, and Dana’s, her 7-month-old baby. “We have not had running water for two weeks,” she tells us. We don’t ask how they manage their bathroom situation, especially considering they
9. Cook ½ a pound of rice and add ½ a stick (56.5 g) of margarine, and 2 potatoes cut into small pieces. Set aside.
“Temporary Protected Status is going away,” the news says. Go back to your shithole countries. Ligia’s mom, who has been working and paying taxes in Florida for 20 years, cries until she doesn’t even care about the migraine she’ll have to endure the next day, while working from 6 in the morning to 10 at night. This is her life. The first ones to lose it are the Haitians. It’s just been
live with 8 other people. Or how they cook. Or how they shower. These are things we'd rather not know.
11. Build the nacatamales by placing two or three leaves as the base. Adding two spoons of the white mix to the center, two spoons of the red mix on top, two or three pieces of meat, and finally, rice. Fold edges of leaves up and wrap using the strings that accompany the leaves. Repeat process until running out of leaves. Boil nacatamales in a big pot of water at 230°C for 2-3 hours.
too long since the earthquake, the government explains. The Nicaraguans come next. There’s only about 2,000 of them, we reason, perhaps it's understandable. But then, the Salvadoreños, all 200,000 of them lose it too. Fuck. Fuck. Fuck. “Well—what did you think “temporary” stood for?” the government says.
At night, thinking about TPS going away is not what makes it hard to sleep. It’s not DACA either. It’s not the protests. It’s not the fires. It’s not immigration’s questions to those who are two tones darker than me. It’s not Alexia’s neighborhood without running water, that is not a
What’s not temporary is countries run by drug
neighborhood, but a whole country. It’s
cartels. TPS is renewed for Hondurans 6 months.
everything. It’s everything on top of everything
But, retire now, the news now says, or else we
on top of everything boiling at a million degrees
won’t give you any of that retirement money.
every hour of the day.
Ligia’s mom, who has been counting on that retirement money, cries again.
68
SUMMER IN THE CITY:
INNOCENCE LOST AND FOUND JULIE
LEOPO
Image: Emily, Artesia Pillar neighborhood A soul filled with undeniable charisma, Emily only demands a couple of things: attention and her daily allowance of $1 to purchase ice cream from her neighbor.
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Top Image:
Christopher, Central City neighborhood. “My name is Christopher, this is my gun.� He is shy but has no problem sharing his toys. He runs around the neighborhood shooting at imaginary targets.
Bottom Image: A young girl, Artesia Pillar neighborhood. She sits on her porch, barefoot and happy. She's only allowed on the front steps of her home while her grandfather watches from afar. She takes her dog everywhere she goes.
Image: Nata, Central City neighborhood. Nata is a quiet presence in the neighborhood—perched in her bedroom window.
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Image: (From left to right) Suzy, Robert, Arleen, Central City neighborhood Arleen: "Sometimes I’m scared to come outside, there’s drunk people.”
DREAM LYNN
TAMAYO
Dream of life, of love, of family, of friends, of shared joys and comforted sorrows, of belonging Dream of gatherings, of parties, of being in love, of being alive, of being Dream Dream of the time clock, of timecards, of paychecks, of purpose, of pride in a job well done Dream of co-workers, of lunch hours, of happy hours, of happiness Dream Dream of a home, of a key, of tables and chairs, of windows and doors, of personal space Dream of walls that surround, of a roof that shelters, of shelter Dream Dream of the familiar room, of the warm bed, of the soft pillow, of sheets and blankets Dream of the nightlight’s glow, of a calm night’s sleep Dream Dream of mealtime, of the pantry, of stocked shelves, of fresh food, of frozen food Dream of running water, of food, of nourishment Dream Dream of a bath, of a sink, of a toilet, of toothpaste, of hand soap, of dish soap Dream of clean clothes, of clean skin, of clean Dream Dream of a funeral, of a misplaced word, of a hasty move, of a last farewell Dream of the lost connections, of feeling lost Dream Dream of the rumors, of the broken promises, of the tempest lying in wait Dream of factories closing, of jobs vanishing Dream Dream of boarded up buildings, of pink slips, of unemployment lines Dream of lives uprooted, of hope destroyed Dream Dream of the ever-dwindling want ads, of “No Help Wanted” Dream of rejection letters, of rejection Dream of the last payroll check, of the last unemployment check Dream of the torn eviction notice Dream Dream of the long lines, of the shelters with “No Vacancy” Dream of the waiting, of wanting Dream Dream of the car, of windows closed, of eyes closed Dream of the vinyl’s cold touch Dream
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Dream of the last gallon of gasoline, of emptiness Dream of the impound yard Dream Dream of concrete, of dumpsters, of strangers Dream of sleepless nights Dream Dream of fading dignity Dream Dream of hunger, of thirst, of pain “Will Work for Food” Dream Dream of worry, of despair Dream of fear Dream Dream of loneliness Dream of need Dream Dream of survival
FRANCIS CHRISTINE
SLOAN
STODDARD
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