Vegas, baby! I'm at the NCPH 2018 conference this week and TOMORROW, myself and ten other public historians will be meeting to continue what has been nearly a year-long online conversation and collaboration. We are a working group (check out #wg1 on Twitter!) focusing on issues of racial bias and positionality in historical interpretation.
Our blurb:
Who gets to do what kind of work? In a “top-down” approach, practitioners aid disenfranchised populations in the interpretation of their histories. In a “bottom-up” approach, the disenfranchised originate grassroots initiatives to disrupt institutional power. When people of color interpret the past, we wrest the dialogue of inclusion from those who would undermine it by “giving voice” to our struggles. This working group grapples with institutional and individual self-assessment of positionality.
Our organizing questions:
- Institutionally and individually, how do we prioritize POC perspectives by affirming the value of POC-led projects (through organizational policy, funding opportunities, one-on-one dialogues, etc.)? What are the pros/cons of these approaches?
Example: jobs and academic appointments geared toward recruiting POC sometimes go to those “willing to work with diverse populations,” rather than actual POC.
- How do we ensure that POC are neither shut out of the interpretation of their own histories, nor pigeonholed as experts on said histories?
Example: inclusion is everyone's responsibility, but the role of POC in interpretation often goes unrecognized. When we assert that our work in the institution is valuable and should not/could not be done without us, we are met with workplace intimidation.
- How do we balance the right to tell our own stories with the burden of that responsibility? Does “performing race” give or take away power? How do we confront tokenization (in hiring practices, in the workplace, etc.)?
Examples: “performing race” encompasses everything from day-to-day macroaggressions (like being treated like the spokesperson for one's entire race/ethnicity), to explicitly being called upon to perform a racialized role at a historically painful site (like Black historical reenactors performing enslavement at a plantation for the white tourist's gaze).
- How do our own positionalities as POC doing POC-based interpretation shift when we interact with one another on projects outside of our own identity spheres?
Examples: “POC” have been made a monolith – a blanket term used to obscure issues like anti-Blackness among non-Black POC. What happens when a non-Black POC interprets Black history? Meanwhile, we must contend with intra-racial class, gender, and sexuality dynamics (like a straight, middle-class POC researching poor queer folk).
Our people:
- Facilitators:
Shakti Castro, BOOM!Health
Patrice Green, University of South Carolina
GVGK Tang, Temple University
- Discussants:
Omar Eaton-Martinez, Smithsonian National Museum of American History
Blanca Garcia-Barron, The University of Texas at El Paso
Gloria D. Hall, Unaffiliated Scholar
Margaret Huettl, University of Nebraska at Lincoln
Marion McGee, Smithsonian National Museum of African
American History and Culture
Lauren O’Brien, Rutgers University – Newark
Carol Park, University of California, Riverside
You can see our locations on this map I made!
The purpose of this working group is to determine the best ways to affirm POC-originated/led public history projects, and identify the reasons why white practitioners are privileged in project leadership positions. Be sure to follow the conversation on Twitter (#wg1) and the other sessions I'll be livetweeting (@gvgktang)!
100% of the SBD rewards from this #explore1918 post will support the Philadelphia History Initiative @phillyhistory. This crypto-experiment is part of a graduate course at Temple University's Center for Public History and is exploring history and empowering education to endow meaning. To learn more click here.