Skins in the game

sidewalk plaque in Charlottesville, Virginia plaque featured chalk graffiti added by local artist Richard Parks.
(Courtesy of Richard Parks)

As if we need reminding (ed: we do!), set aside how much we hate women and remember how racist we are! The discussion about American universities – especially our oldest, most venerable institutions of higher learning – and their deep connections to slavery has barely begun to break through, even and especially at our oldest, most venerable institutions. So, while the public remains largely unaware of the history, we might wonder how universities have for so long escaped scrutiny about the past – about how they were built, how they succeeded, who they succeeded for, and how so much of this was connected to buying and selling people to use as free labor. The NYRB dives into a four new books, and sets the stage rather clearly:

One reason, perhaps, that academic institutions were spared from scrutiny was that they seemed, by design, to be physically removed from the vulgar transactions of commercial life. The trading houses where merchants contracted for consignments of cotton, rum, molasses, and human chattel; the insurance firms that indemnified slave owners for loss of human property; the clothiers that manufactured coarse smocks for enslaved field hands—all these were likely to be found among shops and markets, close to the banks from which they obtained credit and the wharves where human goods were loaded or unloaded for sale.

Think, on the other hand, of our early colleges: Harvard on its bluff above the Charles River, or Yale looking across New Haven Green toward the Long Island Sound, or Brown atop the heights of Providence. Their architecture (ecclesiastical) and setting (pastoral) seemed to say, “We stand above the fray, removed from the workaday world, in a high-minded sphere of our own.” For people like me whose shelves are filled with books about these colleges, it’s not a bad idea to paste a note every foot or so along the edge of the shelf bearing this reminder from the novelist James McBride: “The web of slavery is sticky business. And at the end of the day, ain’t nobody clear of it.”

And friends, of course it’s not just the Ivies. The preponderance of screaming denials (CRT!) and counter-recriminations (Woke!) arise out of fear and cowardice about facing this history as it bleeds to profusely into our present. Can’t stop the bleeding without finding the wound, cleaning it carefully, repairing as much damage as possible, dressing it and providing all available care for full recuperation. Only then can we attend and check on the healing.

Image via WAPO

‘Humility’

Many kids, when they first go off to college, are considered green in a way. But what if you went off to college just o be lucky enough to sit in a class taught by genius NYT columnist David Brooks?

According to its description, the course promises to explore “The premise that human beings are blessed with many talents but are also burdened by sinfulness, ignorance, and weakness,” as demonstrated by men such as Moses, Homer, and “others,” like maybe Paul Krugman. “I taught at Yale about six or seven years ago and at Duke since and really enjoyed it,” Brooks told Intelligencer, “so I was pleased to be able to do it again. I’m going to commute up Mondays and Tuesdays each week.”

But yes, he knows how it sounds. “The title of the Humility course is, obviously, intentionally designed to provoke smart ass jibes, but there’s actually a serious point behind it,”

I wish I was kidding about this, and I bet many of the kids at Yale do to. Brooks is the conservative many liberals love to love. But they should get real; Brooks is a tool. And probably a more dangerous one in that his rabid foam comes in colors and flavors that so many people find acceptable. Caveat discipulus.

Open your art books to page…

A reminder that there are all shades of green, some of them not Eco at all. Via, this little meditation on, faced with school budget cutbacks that always, ALWAYS, get aimed at the art curriculum first, how we should teach art instead of history.

This general scenario matches up with other stories I’ve seen. But why should art be on the chopping block before history class? I believe we romanticize history, making it seem practically and ideally more important than it is. People defend history in the gauzy language of citizenship, with appeals that rarely rise above aphorism. “Those who don’t history are bound to repeat it”. This doesn’t hold up in a practical sense though. There’s a reason the phrase isn’t “those who have history as a significant part of their high school curriculum are bound to repeat it”. Being taught history doesn’t make you better voters unless you remember that history. I’m not going to go down the litany of things that huge percentage of Americans incorrectly believe about history, instead I’ll just give one prominent example. How many hundreds of millions of dollars to we spend each year teaching kids about the Civil War, and still 42% of people don’t know we fought it over slavery?

Sign me up. I would even say (but never write) that we would better off teaching (more) people about art. An example? a survey about the work of JL David will render the history of French Revolution unforgettable. And once you have The Death of Marat or The Tennis Court Oath in your head, along with the stories behind them, you’re only going to want to find out more. Moving through history on the basis of art movements is a more durable sort of engagement. Why the salons of the 1870’s happened or Goya’s dark paintings just doesn’t go away. That knowledge moves and grows into something else. Something we need.

And this is to say nothing of the benefits of people learning printmaking or drawing. It would be like mass producing the keys to critical thinking and problem solving. Then we can finally get back to that Shangra-La where no one locks their doors.