LisaHistory Blog

Viewing Book TV on C-SPAN the other day, I came upon a panel of AfricanAmerican authors and activists discussing the Politics of African American Identity.

I was particularly struck by Paul Robeson Jr.'s answer to an art and culture question. He set up a pattern that applies to art, politics, everything.

You start with the search for beauty and truth. Then you speak this truth to power, which leads to resistance, which leads to revolution. Revolution must then lead to the search for beauty and truth. If it doesn't, the oppressed become the oppressors. Which is why forgiveness is hard, but it has to happen.

I am considering dividing people into Long Viewers and Short Viewers. (After all, there are two types of people -- those who divide people into two types of people, and those who don't.)

Long Viewers would be people who take the historical past into consideration as they move through daily life. Short Viewers don't. I teach both American and European history (Western Civ and History of England). In my modern U.S. history class, I give students this cartoon to discuss:

This semester I've gotten some good discussion, with some students supporting social Darwinistic activities of the U.S., and others being much more cynical. I like to have some objectivity, even though Howard Zinn says it's my obligation to share my views, since I am a Long Viewer (an issue for another entry!).


So today I am reading Bill Bryson's book on Australia, In a Sunburned Country. He and a companion drive 10 hours to get to Alice Springs, in the middle of the Australian outback, only to find Kentucky Fried Chicken, McDonald's and a large K-mart. His companion remarks, "You Yanks have a lot to answer for, you know". He wrote,

He was right. We do. We have created a philosophy of retailing that is totally without aesthetics and totally irrestible. And now we box these places up and ship them to the far corners of the world. Visually, almost every arrestingly regrettable thing in Alice Springs was a product of American enterprise, from people who couldn't know that they had helped to drain the distinctiveness from an outback town and doubtless wouldn't see it that way anyway. Nor come to that, I daresay, would most of the shoppers of Alice Springs, who were no doubt delighted to get lots of free parking and a crack at Martha Stewart towels and shower curtains. What a sad and curious age we live in.

I like this passage in particular because it emphasizes the American lack of the Long View, and the fact that the shoppers themselves are part of the whole sordid thing. Enjoy your Big Mac.

This blog serves a couple of purposes, but mostly it's a repository of links and comments I'm keeping in one place for easy access. The focus is on connections in history, particularly the connections of the present to the past.