Welcome friends!
I was just reading a little news item on the imminent opening of the new Museum of African American History and Culture in Washington DC. Have you seen pictures of it? Interesting and attractive building if a bit somber in color for my tastes. Anyway, it got me thinking a bit about ancestors and “race” and so on so I thought I might as well say a few more words about that this week.
The first thought that crossed my mind was that “African American” is only one sort of American among many so can we expect to see similar museums for the other sorts as well? I guess we already have a museum on the national mall for “Native Americans” so they’re covered. What about “European Americans?” I know we have a generic museum of American History but that’s supposed to cover everyone, right? Actually I’m not sure all “European Americans” had the same sort of experience. My understanding of the bad old days is that some European immigrants faced a heck of a lot more difficult time than some others. I’m thinking just now of the Irish and then later the Italian immigrants but probably others as well. Indeed, I think for some time the USA had special restrictions on immigrants coming from the swarthier and less Protestant parts of Europe. Are we going to now just lump all “European Americans” together or should we have separate museums for “Irish Americans,” “Italian Americans” and all the various other European subgroups? How about “Hispanic Americans?” They were here as long as anyone else or I guess in some parts of the country were actually here first. How about “Asian Americans?” We have a couple of very nice museums devoted to Asian art and culture but none specifically relating to the “Asian American” experience that I know about. And you know early “Asian Americans” in particular faced a lot of discrimination. We had plenty of Chinese immigrants working on our early transportation infrastructure who I’m sure faced all manner of bigotry and commentary relating to their foreign ways when they first arrived. And it’s no secret the US government rounded up “Japanese Americans” during WWII and sent them to internment camps in the desert just in case they had sabotage on their minds. Didn’t round up any “German Americans,” “Italian Americans,” or “Spanish Americans” that I know about. Weird. Anyway, this line of thinking got me wondering whether there was something special about “African Americans” that made a museum to their history and culture more appropriate or anyway more urgent than museums devoted to the history and culture of some of these other groups. After the requisite ten minutes of thinking I decided yeah probably. If we’re going to start devoting museums to subgroups of US citizens African Americans seems an appropriate group to follow Native Americans, who must surely take pride of place as the group most adversely affected and maligned by the creation of our nation. So let me talk about that for a few minutes. Then I’ll say a few words about my use or I guess overuse of quotation marks and explain why I think we should be a little careful how we talk about subgroups and race and ancestry and history and culture and all that stuff.
So what makes “African Americans” so special? ... Sorry but only selected archived (previous year) posts are currently available full text on this website. All posts including this one are available in my annual anthology ebook series available at the Amazon Kindle Bookstore for a nominal fee. Hey, we all need to make a buck somehow, right? If you find my timeless jewels of wisdom amusing or perhaps even amusingly irritating throw me a bone now and then. Thank you my friends!
