Trump's Culture War Targets America's Museums

ThatRobGuy · Sunday at 6:25 PM

Hans Blaster said:
I didn't pay attention to your numbers. Spain and Portugal are part of Western civilization and have been for 2000 years. I don't know why this is so hard to grok.

I don't use Grok...it's not refined enough...

But even if I did, attacking a source doesn't prove any points.

Did the Portuguese and Spanish empires engage in the practice more than we did?
Did the Spanish empire keep the process going longer than we did?

If the answer to both of those is "Yes", then the source of the information is a non-issue... we're neither the worst, nor the most recent to engage in practice, therefore, hyper-fixating only on the US's involvement (to score political wins with regards to modern policy debates) is misguided.

Pundits like Nikole Hannah Jones, Imbram X Kendi, Joy Ried, Ta-Nehisi Coates will all claim that slavery was not just present in the US, but foundational to the current US political, social, and economic systems (and they'll get standing ovations when they publicly espouse their tropes)

Yet, you don't really hear much about Spain and Portugal...weird.

And on the few occasions where some will acknowledge it, they won't specifically condemn Spanish and Portuguese people and put some onus on them to "get on board" with a particular political initiative, they'll attribute it to "colonialism" in a broader sense...which then is used to dovetail back into "white people in the US"

durangodawood · Sunday at 6:35 PM

Hans Blaster said:
I think you meant "Greco-Roman" which is a traditional dividing line.

No I definitely meant Judeo Greek. The Jewish (into Christian) heritage of individually oriented moral understanding plus the Greek intellectual / democratic heritage which all seem to have gotten fused together by the after Rome Christianized.

ThatRobGuy · Sunday at 6:35 PM

durangodawood said:
Not sure what exactly thats referring to.

I'll put it in blunt terms

College Academia, Entertainment, and TV punditry had zero issues with portraying slavery as a uniquely American problem (specifically a White American problem) while ignoring a lot of other history about the subject, and telling a very one-sided tale.

Yet, when a conservative administration says "I want our national museums to tell only the good stuff about our country" (another one-sided tale), then all of the sudden people have an issue with the concept of "complete history not being told".

If I were to say "Mexican-Americans are far more likely to have familial roots that trace back to slave owners than your average Irish-American", would that be well received by the people who claim to want "unvarnished/uncensored history taught"?

Hans Blaster · Sunday at 6:37 PM

ThatRobGuy said:
We already know what the particular interest is with regards to the reason...

In this case, it's because there's social credit to be gained by "going hard" on the privileged group.

[NB: The "Western culture" and slavery string of posts is differnet and not specifically about the US. This post IS about the the US.]

Is this just a complaint about being identified with the "privileged group"?

ThatRobGuy said:
Modern descendants of American slave owners are primarily White European ancestry...thereby "privileged group"

Unless you are talking about southern "high society" there is no special privilege for having slaver ancestors that differentiates them from the rest of us "white people". Even those of us whose ancestors went Marching to the Sea. (Also, your statement wasn't correct. The slavers did a lot of r*ping and there are a lot of Black descendants of American slavery with slaver ancestors.)

ThatRobGuy said:
Modern descendants of Spaniard slave owners are, well... not white. So being critical of Spanish slavery would introduce a faux pas.

(NB: Spaniard is a noun. Spanish is the adjective.) Are you sure about that? Spaniards themselves are "white" and in Latin America they do have "blancos" descended of Europeans. I don't know who did own slaves in Latin America and who their descendants married. (I'm also not sure why it would be relevant in the US or related to "privilege in the US" about racial groups in Latin America.)

ThatRobGuy said:
But where this conversation becomes perceived as "unfair", and why people want to do a "counterbalance/overcorrection"....

The institutions of Academia and and Entertainment are already heavily stacked in favor of one viewpoint.

Overstacked to what point of view? "Slavery is bad."? "Segregation was bad"?

ThatRobGuy said:
Yet, when a person from the other side who wields some power wants to take a different institution and stack it in favor of a different viewpoint, all of the sudden there's pearl clutching over an institution taking a non-neutral position.

And that position is to whitewash away and minizmize slavery and segregation.

durangodawood · Sunday at 6:48 PM

ThatRobGuy said:
College Academia, Entertainment, and TV punditry had zero issues with portraying slavery as a uniquely American problem (specifically a White American problem) while ignoring a lot of other history about the subject, and telling a very one-sided tale.

Here youre making slavery (bolded up there), like slavery generally, the topic. But we dont typically have mandatory courses on "world slavery" any more than we do on "world literature". We have mandatory courses on American history, where slavery plays a justifiably huge role.

ThatRobGuy said:
Yet, when a conservative administration says "I want our national museums to tell only the good stuff about our country" (another one-sided tale), then all of the sudden people have an issue with the concept of "complete history not being told".

Now youre switching to making the country, our country, the topic. Of course a good-stuff-only focus should be shot down.

ThatRobGuy said:
If I were to say "Mexican-Americans are far more likely to have familial roots that trace back to slave owners than your average Irish-American", would that be well received by the people who claim to want "unvarnished/uncensored history taught"?

Who cares. Living people dont inherit the guilt of a more or less likely slave owning ancestry, do they?

Hans Blaster · Sunday at 6:51 PM

durangodawood said:
No I definitely meant Judeo Greek.

Eww. I can't go with that definition. That's just too far for me.

durangodawood said:
The Jewish (into Christian) heritage of individually oriented moral understanding plus the Greek intellectual / democratic heritage which all seem to have gotten fused together by the after Rome Christianized.

I have no idea what this "moral understanding" is. Traditional Judaism (pre-Christian) doesn't look any different that other Near Eastern religion to me. Its offshoot (Christianity) was a bit Westernized at the beginning and then took over the West and becomes a characteristic of Western culture forever entwined with the West and its culture.

ThatRobGuy · Sunday at 7:01 PM

durangodawood said:
Who cares. Living people dont inherit the guilt of a more or less likely slave owning ancestry, do they?

According to people who want to fixate on the America's role in slavery...actually yes, they do inherit the guilt...or at least the responsibility to "make up for something"

In fact, it doesn't even have to be direct familial link.

Merely having the same relative level of pigmentation of someone who owned slaves (despite the fact that one half of my family were Polish Jews who came over in the 1920's, and the other half were Irish/German/Catholic/Protestant mutts who came over in the 1890's...and my significant other is not white) makes me complicit according to them.

At least to the degree where my "privilege" indicates that I owe it to someone to vote for progressive economic policy proposals.

A few of the names on the list I provided before have suggested that since post-slavery immigrants benefited from racial hierarchies previously established, they're on the hook.

RDKirk · Sunday at 7:01 PM

Merrill said:
Apparently, this is one of the exhibits the administration is objecting to

The Shape of Power: Stories of Race and American Sculpture

americanart.si.edu

The main issue that I see with this exhibit is not the sculptures, but rather the top-down "interpretation" of them. From the description, it seems like all of this stuff is grouped together into one frame, and then analyzed from a Neo-Marxist, or "Critical" lens, regardless of the nuance, original intention, or impulses of the artists themselves.

which is a classical example of the Intentional Fallacy and a projection of ideology onto art

this isn't about art, aesthetics, or even culture--it is about selecting historical artifacts, throwing them together, and then making political and ideological pronouncements.

you know who else did that? The Nazis, when they gathered together paintings and sculptures and pronounced them as degenerate, and examples of the decay of culture, and the evil intentions of those who created the works.

in this case it is the Marxists who say "look at these sculptures, they show how victimized the artists were by inherently racist and genocidal white people, and the class oppression endemic in the country"!

I have begun to understand, as I look at more and more actual examples, that a great deal of what I was taught, understood, and accepted as "history" had, in fact, been re-interpreted though Critical Theory classification conflict lenses since the 1980s.

It's not that the basic facts have been changed, but that they have been arranged along classification conflict lines, which is the fact of Critical Theory.

What I was taught as "black history" is sometimes being presented as "black non-binary" history or "black feminist history." Issues that I studied studied from a variety of angles are being presented as purely White Oppressor versus Black Oppressed issues.

I had not realized until recently how deeply Critical Theory had penetrated.

I can't gasp very hard at the effort Trump is making because when I take my own look at the situation, I find myself gasping at what has already been surreptitiously done.

durangodawood · Sunday at 7:03 PM

Hans Blaster said:
I have no idea what this "moral understanding" is. Traditional Judaism (pre-Christian) doesn't look any different that other Near Eastern religion to me. Its offshoot (Christianity) was a bit Westernized at the beginning and then took over the West and becomes a characteristic of Western culture forever entwined with the West and its culture.

Im thinking mainly of the current Jewish end point, which is Christianity. not really the old school Jewish understanding of things we see in the older Bible. I just called it Judeo for the sake of the heritage vector.

As for the moral understanding, Christianity seems to place the soul and choices of the individual person at the center of importance in a way distinct form all the other near eastern religions. I think this explains its appeal and expansion from a tiny nothing to a superpower religion. And thats how we get to the heavy western emphasis on rights and so on: the individual as most fundamental unit of consideration.

RDKirk · Sunday at 7:04 PM

essentialsaltes said:
and Anti-German and Communist.

This EO labels things "anti-American ideology" and you have labelled it Marxist.

And it is.

The ideology is very specific: Critical Theory.

RDKirk · Sunday at 7:07 PM

durangodawood said:
No I definitely meant Judeo Greek. The Jewish (into Christian) heritage of individually oriented moral understanding plus the Greek intellectual / democratic heritage which all seem to have gotten fused together by the after Rome Christianized.

Hans Blaster said:
Eww. I can't go with that definition. That's just too far for me.

That would be "Hellenist Judaic."

Yes, it's a thing.

durangodawood · Sunday at 7:07 PM

ThatRobGuy said:
According to people who want to fixate on the America's role in slavery...actually yes, they do inherit the guilt...or at least the responsibility to "make up for something"

In fact, it doesn't even have to be direct familial link.

Merely having the same relative level of pigmentation of someone who owned slaves (despite the fact that one half of my family were Polish Jews who came over in the 1920's, and the other half were Irish/German/Catholic/Protestant mutts who came over in the 1890's...and my significant other is not white) makes me complicit according to them.

At least to the degree where my "privilege" indicates that I owe it to someone to vote for progressive economic policy proposals.

A few of the names on the list I provided before have suggested that since post-slavery immigrants benefited from racial hierarchies previously established, they're on the hook.

Thats total nonsense. Almost all the reparations proponents see it as a national responsibility. Not the task of certain various individuals whos ancestry traces back to slave owners or importers, while the rest are off the hook.

BCP1928 · Sunday at 7:08 PM

ThatRobGuy said:
I don't use Grok...it's not refined enough...

But even if I did, attacking a source doesn't prove any points.

Did the Portuguese and Spanish empires engage in the practice more than we did?
Did the Spanish empire keep the process going longer than we did?

As far as I know, neither the Spanish nor the Portugese empires employed slaves in the United States.

ThatRobGuy said:
If the answer to both of those is "Yes", then the source of the information is a non-issue... we're neither the worst, nor the most recent to engage in practice, therefore, hyper-fixating only on the US's involvement (to score political wins with regards to modern policy debates) is misguided.

Pundits like Nikole Hannah Jones, Imbram X Kendi, Joy Ried, Ta-Nehisi Coates will all claim that slavery was not just present in the US, but foundational to the current US political, social, and economic systems (and they'll get standing ovations when they publicly espouse their tropes)

Yet, you don't really hear much about Spain and Portugal...weird.

You would if you were studying slavery in Spain and Portugal.

ThatRobGuy said:
And on the few occasions where some will acknowledge it, they won't specifically condemn Spanish and Portuguese people and put some onus on them to "get on board" with a particular political initiative, they'll attribute it to "colonialism" in a broader sense...which then is used to dovetail back into "white people in the US"

You really are sensitive about this. Maybe you can explain it to me: I am a white, straight native English speaking male. Almost all my ancestors came from the British Isles and were traditionally members of the Anglican Church, as am I. Many of my ancestors arrived in this country before the Revolutionary War, the most recent being an Englishman arrived in 1850, son of a man who served aboard the Victory at Trafalgar. I am just as good an Anglo Protestant as any you are likely to find at short notice.

My question to you is, What's my dog in this fight?

Hans Blaster · Sunday at 7:09 PM

ThatRobGuy said:
I don't use Grok...it's not refined enough...

Have you not read Heinlein?

"grok" is a verb.

ThatRobGuy said:
But even if I did, attacking a source doesn't prove any points.

I wasn't attacking a source. I was questioning your understanding of classical Western history.

ThatRobGuy said:
Did the Portuguese and Spanish empires engage in the practice more than we did?
Did the Spanish empire keep the process going longer than we did?

Who is "we"? You and I? (I doubt it.) Anglo-America? (Those ain't mein volk.) Southerners? (Confused about my avatar?)

ThatRobGuy said:
If the answer to both of those is "Yes", then the source of the information is a non-issue... we're neither the worst, nor the most recent to engage in practice, therefore, hyper-fixating only on the US's involvement (to score political wins with regards to modern policy debates) is misguided.

It really depends on what the topic is. If we are talking about the Smithsonian's National Museum of American History then you should be able to figure out why that is the focus. If we are talking about your "western culture" claim, then it should also be obvious why I was including Spain and Portugal.

ThatRobGuy said:
Pundits like Nikole Hannah Jones, Imbram X Kendi, Joy Ried, Ta-Nehisi Coates will all claim that slavery was not just present in the US, but foundational to the current US political, social, and economic systems (and they'll get standing ovations when they publicly espouse their tropes)

Do you understand their arguments or are you just rejecting them?

ThatRobGuy said:
Yet, you don't really hear much about Spain and Portugal...weird.

If you're talking about slavery and segregation in the US, then, frankly you shouldn't.

ThatRobGuy said:
And on the few occasions where some will acknowledge it, they won't specifically condemn Spanish and Portuguese people and put some onus on them to "get on board" with a particular political initiative, they'll attribute it to "colonialism" in a broader sense...which then is used to dovetail back into "white people in the US"

It's really hard to tell what train you are on board. Your post is all over the place.

RDKirk · Sunday at 7:20 PM

ThatRobGuy said:
In your honest opinion, if Westernized/Euro culture hadn't been become the global powerhouse... would the slavery situation have been better/worse/same today?

Based on the fact that they're still practicing it in several regions of the world... I'm not confident that they would have come to the "this is bad, we should outlaw and stigmatize it" conclusion on their own.

We both know the real answer to that question... So why is there an insistence on fixating on only one culture's complicity in the process?

If we're talking about the history of the United States, slavery is an issue in that history. What was happening with regard to slavery outside what would become the national borders of what would become the United States and became the United States is only peripherally important.

IOW, it's totally irrelevant that slavery is being practiced in Africa today, and only peripherally important that it was practiced in Africa 300 years ago.

What is important is how slavery was handled in the US.

My personal opinion on reparations: Both sides of my DNA show enough African and the census and slave records of both sides of my family would make me applicable for reparations. If a check comes my way, I'll cash it.

However, I don't expect that's going to happen any time. The last generation that might have been guilted into it would be the white Boomer population only because they are the last generation to have directly benefited from Jim Crow. And if you ask me, if any reparations are deserved, it would only be for Jim Crow and to those people who were directly affected by Jim Crow...that would be my generation.

If reparations were going to happen at all, the Boomer generation would be the last affected generation.

Going into the future, later white generations are never going to vote for reparations to descendants of American slavery. Indian, Chinese, African immigrants are never going to vote for it. Latinos are never going to vote for it.

Realistically, it's a dead issue.

Hans Blaster · Sunday at 7:21 PM

RDKirk said:
That would be "Hellenist Judaic."

Yes, it's a thing.

I know about the Hellenized Jews. That's why the Greek translation of the Tenach exists and why it was the source for the NT writers. Some Greek philosophy gets in there too.

I don't think that is reason enough to classify the West as being "Judeo-" anything.

durangodawood · Sunday at 7:33 PM

Hans Blaster said:
I know about the Hellenized Jews. That's why the Greek translation of the Tenach exists and why it was the source for the NT writers. Some Greek philosophy gets in there too.

I don't think that is reason enough to classify the West as being "Judeo-" anything.

Think of it as "Christo-" then because thats closer to the actual content of the idea.

ThatRobGuy · Sunday at 7:36 PM

BCP1928 said:
As far as I know, neither the Spanish nor the Portugese empires employed slaves in the United States.

BCP1928 said:
You would if you were studying slavery in Spain and Portugal.

Again, why is the conversation typically centered around the United States?

Yes, having a conversation about US slavery...makes perfect sense to have that conversation centrally focused on the US.

However, conversations about slavery (in general) should include more than the just the "US honkies", correct?

Its being done as political leverage.

BCP1928 said:
You really are sensitive about this. Maybe you can explain it to me: I am a white, straight native English speaking male. Almost all my ancestors came from the British Isles and were traditionally members of the Anglican Church, as am I. Many of my ancestors arrived in this country before the Revolutionary War, the most recent being an Englishman arrived in 1850, son of a man who served aboard the Victory at Trafalgar. I am just as good an Anglo Protestant as any you are likely to find at short notice.

My question to you is, What's my dog in this fight?

Anyone's "dog in the fight" should be "I'm responsible for my own actions, and my actions alone...I can't control what did or didn't happen 150 years ago".

If hyper-fixation on White America's role in slavery was a stand-alone education course with no ulterior motives, I doubt many would have an objection to it. The same way the overwhelmingly majority of people agree that it was stupid and evil to burn women at the stake due to suspicion that they were "witches"

However, the moment one political faction says "people used to burn women at the stake due to witchcraft accusations, and that's why you should vote for XYZ policy today", that when things get more complicated.

ThatRobGuy · Sunday at 7:55 PM

RDKirk said:
If we're talking about the history of the United States, slavery is an issue in that history. What was happening with regard to slavery outside what would become the national borders of what would become the United States and became the United States is only peripherally important.

IOW, it's totally irrelevant that slavery is being practiced in Africa today, and only peripherally important that it was practiced in Africa 300 years ago.

What is important is how slavery was handled in the US.

My personal opinion on reparations: Both sides of my DNA show enough African and the census and slave records of both sides of my family would make me applicable for reparations. If a check comes my way, I'll cash it.

However, I don't expect that's going to happen any time. The last generation that might have been guilted into it would be the white Boomer population only because they are the last generation to have directly benefited from Jim Crow. And if you ask me, if any reparations are deserved, it would only be for Jim Crow and to those people who were directly affected by Jim Crow...that would be my generation.

If reparations were going to happen at all, the Boomer generation would be the last affected generation.

Going into the future, later white generations are never going to vote for reparations to descendants of American slavery. Indian, Chinese, African immigrants are never going to vote for it. Latinos are never going to vote for it.

Realistically, it's a dead issue.

A very good post and all valid points

But you can see how a "chip on the shoulder" can be formed, correct?

If policy proposals are going to proposed on the basis of a historical sin (that most cultures were doing), but only one culture is going to be viewed as "on the hook" for it...it's understandable that the culture in question would want to throw a counter punch. (especially with the political leverage dynamics that are at play)

I don't think it's any accident that any conversations/debates/discourse about the institution of slavery are US-centric. That's yet another counterbalance attempt aimed at the fact that we hold an outsized geo-political influence.

We have some ugly parts of our history (like almost any country), but when one particular faction seems dead set on only focusing on our "ugly parts of history", and doesn't want to discuss any of the others, and in some cases, claims that the others are "racist" to even bring up, that can be quite telling.

In a thread on here a while back, I got some serious flak on the fact that I posted about the Barbary pirates and their propensity for taking slaves (in fact, nearly triple the amount of slaves originally imported into the US), and highlighted how it was their religious dogma that made them feel justified in doing so.

Apparently that's "Un-PC" to talk about.

When everything is filtered through an "oppressed vs. oppressed modern day" lens, it does complicate certain issues.

In the case of my example, because Muslims are considered part of the "marginalized class by modern standards" it's in bad taste to bring up that they took more slaves than the US ever did, but it's perfectly acceptable to suggest that people have a moral duty to vote for <insert progressive policy here> due to the US's role in slavery

Of course, I could just let Christopher Hitchens provide a "Hitch Slap" to the progressives to explain it

Hans Blaster · Sunday at 8:09 PM

durangodawood said:
Think of it as "Christo-" then because thats closer to the actual content of the idea.

I'm not fool enough to think the Christian religion didn't enter and dominate Western society for many centuries. Effectively changing and becoming part of it. But Christianity is certainly not only found in "the West".

I do find the "Judeo-" prefixing of things that weren't so prefixed before more than a bit annoying. Mostly, "Judeo-Christian" which is not a coherent thought (they are non-compatible religious positions) and seems to be nothing more than "Holocaust" guilt inserting "oh, yes, and Jews" into their Christian dominance narratives".

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