Imagine this, I told my students.
A man graduates valedictorian from Rutgers University while also starring as an All-American football player. Then the NFL drafts him and he simultaneously studies at Columbia Law School while he continues to be a star on the field. On the side, he acts: his performance of Othello is heralded as the greatest moment in Shakespearean productions in the 20th century. Along the way he also makes considerable contributions to a major American literary movement.
Who is this man, I asked my students — we were discussing James Baldwin's If Beale Street Could Speak.
He must be like some modern-day Leonardo Da Vinci or Julius Caesar or Achilles, no?
Oh. Did I mention —he was black? And accomplished all this well before Brown v. Board of Education?
I should think this list of accomplishments would get you a place in history textbooks alongside the likes of W.E.B. DuBois, Booker T. Washington, Martin Luther King, Jr., Barak Obama and the like.
But have you ever heard of Paul Robeson?
Doubtful. No holidays. No place in our pantheon of national heros, no sweet children's books to inspire little boys and girls to be great just like him. As far as I know, there's a street named after him in Princeton and not much else.
Why?
Because he was a little too interested in Communism and the rights of colonies and former colonies in Africa. Blacklisted. Woops. Goes to show you McCarthy didn't mess around. That's a powerful lesson about the awesome impact of the Red Scare in the United States.
It reminds me a bit of the ideological mass delusion an organization like the NRA manages to maintain. And it's not a theory if the conspiracy is true. Lots of conspiring going on these past few weeks, I'm sure, in between the mass orders for more guns and ammo. Maybe people re-read or re-watched McCarthy's The Road while searching for holiday cheer and felt the need to be prepared for any contingency.
Does anyone else remember this?
Talk about tragic déjà vu.
But I'm prepared. Fewer guns in fewer peoples hands in 2013. And teaching about Paul Robeson. Two resolutions for 2013.
PS: As Renan put it, "L’oubli, et je dirai même l’erreur historique, sont un facteur essentiel de la création d’une nation, et c’est ainsi que le progrès des études historiques est souvent pour la nationalité un danger."
A man graduates valedictorian from Rutgers University while also starring as an All-American football player. Then the NFL drafts him and he simultaneously studies at Columbia Law School while he continues to be a star on the field. On the side, he acts: his performance of Othello is heralded as the greatest moment in Shakespearean productions in the 20th century. Along the way he also makes considerable contributions to a major American literary movement.
Who is this man, I asked my students — we were discussing James Baldwin's If Beale Street Could Speak.
He must be like some modern-day Leonardo Da Vinci or Julius Caesar or Achilles, no?
Oh. Did I mention —he was black? And accomplished all this well before Brown v. Board of Education?
I should think this list of accomplishments would get you a place in history textbooks alongside the likes of W.E.B. DuBois, Booker T. Washington, Martin Luther King, Jr., Barak Obama and the like.
But have you ever heard of Paul Robeson?
Doubtful. No holidays. No place in our pantheon of national heros, no sweet children's books to inspire little boys and girls to be great just like him. As far as I know, there's a street named after him in Princeton and not much else.
Why?
Because he was a little too interested in Communism and the rights of colonies and former colonies in Africa. Blacklisted. Woops. Goes to show you McCarthy didn't mess around. That's a powerful lesson about the awesome impact of the Red Scare in the United States.
It reminds me a bit of the ideological mass delusion an organization like the NRA manages to maintain. And it's not a theory if the conspiracy is true. Lots of conspiring going on these past few weeks, I'm sure, in between the mass orders for more guns and ammo. Maybe people re-read or re-watched McCarthy's The Road while searching for holiday cheer and felt the need to be prepared for any contingency.
Does anyone else remember this?
Talk about tragic déjà vu.
But I'm prepared. Fewer guns in fewer peoples hands in 2013. And teaching about Paul Robeson. Two resolutions for 2013.
PS: As Renan put it, "L’oubli, et je dirai même l’erreur historique, sont un facteur essentiel de la création d’une nation, et c’est ainsi que le progrès des études historiques est souvent pour la nationalité un danger."
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