segregation

Multidirectional Memory: Remembering the Holocaust in the Age of Decolonization

admin — Fri, 12 Feb 2010 09:00:00 +0000

In Multidirectional Memory, Michael Rothberg offers an alternative to competitive memory, or the idea that the capacity to remember historical injustices is limited and that any attention to one injustice diminishes our capacity to memorialize another. Rothberg also disputes the idea that comparisons between atrocities erase differences between them and imply a false equivalence. In focusing on the Holocaust, Rothberg navigates between two extremes: the tendency to proclaim the Holocaust so distinct that it should not be compared to anything else, and the tendency to universalize the Holocaust, turning it into an abstract lesson about good and evil that can be applied to any and all atrocities. His solution is “multidirectional memory,” which describes collective memory as “subject to ongoing negotiation, cross-referencing and borrowing; as productive and not privative.” In other words, comparisons can both aid in understanding and illuminate differences.

In part one, Rothberg explores the idea of “boomerang effects” found in Hannah Arendt’s The Origins of Totalitarianism and Aimé Césaire’s works on colonialism and genocide. Through these works and many others, Rothberg examines how, prior to a full accounting for the Holocaust and its reinvention as a historically unique event, scholars such as Arendt and Césaire were constructing the Holocaust and totalitarianism as colonial practices, ideas and structures brought to Europe from the colonies. While Rothberg does a serviceable job of explaining and justifying the productive nature of the comparisons in the abstract, he glosses over the unfortunate concrete relationship between colonial genocides and the Holocaust, specifically Hitler‘s modeling of concentration camps after the North American reservation system and his co-opting of the language and tactics of the so-called Wild West. He mentions these links briefly, but so vaguely as to conceal them from any reader not familiar with the historical facts.

In part two, Rothberg focuses on the works of W. E. B. Du Bois, André Schwarz-Bart, and Caryl Phillips as they explore the light the Holocaust and anti-Semitism shed on the Black experience in the United States, Europe, and the Caribbean. Here, the comparisons are limited to the abstract connections between the historical oppression of people of African descent (including slavery, colonialism, segregation, and genocide) and the Nazis’ racialization, ghettoization, and extermination of the Jews. This section also emphasizes both peoples’ histories with “ghettos, ruins, and other diasporic spaces.” This is perhaps the best example of multidirectional memory in the book.

In parts III and IV, Rothberg explores various works (both literary and cinematic) to examine the connections between the Holocaust and the Algerian War in the waning days of French colonialism and the opening days of the Eichmann trial that would transform the public discourse surrounding the Holocaust. Here, Rothberg does a better job of distinguishing the abstract connections between colonialism, racism, and the Holocaust from the concrete connections between French treatment of the Algerians and French complicity in the Holocaust. Perhaps most disturbing is the implication that a timely attempt to address French complicity in the Holocaust may have prevented many if not all of the atrocities committed against the Algerians, as both involved the same people, places, and tactics.

Overall, Rothberg does a decent job of showing how multidirectional memory can improve understanding through comparison; however, the book fails in a few places. By limiting himself to elite discourse, Rothberg underestimates the public’s capacity to undermine or diminish memory of one atrocity through competition with another as part of the self-fulfilling nature of competitive memory. He also doesn’t seem to fully explore how the taboo against comparisons in general and certain comparisons specifically undermines attempts to make such comparisons productive. Finally, his language is often so stereotypically academic that it may be inaccessible to non-experts. In the end, I am left uncertain whether to recommend the book or suggest that readers attempt to find some other work that addresses these concepts more clearly and completely.

Written by: Melinda Barton, February 12th 2010

Westover: Giving Girls a Place of Their Own

admin — Sat, 21 Nov 2009 17:01:00 +0000

By Laurie Lisle

Wesleyan University Press

Few phrases in the English language conjure up more vivid fantasies than the words all-girl school. The education of women—especially in an all-girl environment—is highly political. The ACLU has made the argument that single-sex education has not proven to be noticeably effective, and that it in fact weakens Title IX. There is a constellation of preconceptions that swirl around single-sex education. Many assume that all-girl schools serve as a kind of cocoon and cage, sheltering girls from the real world to their detriment.

So, why make a case for separate but equal schools for women? Myself a former student of an all-girl school, conflicted about my experience, I was curious to read Westover: Giving Girls a Place of Their Own. Written by an alumna, the book is a history of the 100-year-old private boarding school in Connecticut for girls. This well-researched and beautifully designed book tells the story of the headmistresses and headmasters from the school’s founding to the present, closing with an examination of recent debates about single-sex education.

From the very start, women had a voice in the operation of Westover. The school was founded by headmistress Mary Robbins Hillard, a formidable woman and a strong presence in East Coast schools around the turn of the twentieth century. The school was designed by one of America’s first female architects, Theodate Pope Riddle. Thanks to her ingenuity and taste, Westover's gorgeous campus with grounds sprawling over more than 100 acres is now on the National Register of Historic Places. Around the 1960s, a string of male headmasters took the school's helm; however, the current leader of Westover is female, a former math teacher who helped to bolster the science and math curricula at the school.

One of the most interesting aspects of the book is the description of the school's shifting demographics and what caused them. When Westover opened, it was white and socioeconomically homogeneous, with the student body largely comprised of the daughters of the East Coast elite. However, in the 1940s, Westover headmistress Louise Dillingham boldly stated that schools should take a stand on behalf "equality of opportunity in democracy,” and advocated for voluntary integration of the school. The school's board stood firm in their support of the headmistress' statement, though it was controversial at the time. While Westover's progressive pro-integration stance led to declining enrollment, there was an eventual increase in diversity at the school: currently, 21% of the student body is "diverse", per Westover's brochures.

The story of Westover is an engaging one charmingly told, and it gives a good overview of the shifting notions of what makes a well-educated woman throughout the twentieth century. However, when making a case for the continued existence of women's schools into the twenty first century as in the last two chapters of the book, the author—and the heads of Westover—rely strongly on difference feminism—the theory that men and women are fundamentally different in how they communicate and approach problems. I must admit that I'm not entirely convinced by this argument: I feel that all girls’ schools succeed—sometimes—because of more supportive parents, the absence of boys and other factors.

Westover isn't meant to be a scholarly treatise on all-girl's schools and so doesn't succeed as one. Don't read it for a well-balanced look at current debates on single-sex education. Do, however, pick it up if you're interested in the history of American education and possibly its future. To quote current headmistress Ann Pollina, "We need to send out a phalanx of girls who are going to do what the world needs, which is to embody those qualities of care and nurture and community that our culture is desperate for right now. The culture needs our girls." Girls—and not just those at Westover—should take note.

Written by: Catherine Nicotera, November 21st 2009

Patsy Mink: Ahead of the Majority

admin — Wed, 05 Aug 2009 23:13:00 +0000

Directed by Kimberlee Bassford

Making Waves Films

As the title indicates, Patsy Mink is the story of a woman of the same name, the first Asian American woman and the first woman of color elected to the U.S. Congress. If her story began and ended there, Mink’s life would have been important enough to have made history. Fortunately for every woman who lives in the world she transformed, Patsy Mink’s story and her life were far greater than that.

Born in Maui, Hawaii in 1927, Mink faced a world where opportunities for people who shared her race and gender were all but nonexistent. During World War II, Mink, a third generation Japanese American, witnessed the internment of her fellow Japanese Americans, faced tremendous wartime discrimination, and watched in horror as her father burned his final connections to Japan and his father. While attending the University of Nebraska, Mink was assigned to the international dorm due to the university’s longstanding segregation policy, and Mink’s 1947 protest of that policy led to its abolition the next year. Denied entry to medical school due to her gender, Mink went on to law school only to be unable to find a job post-graduation, once again due to her race and gender.

Denied a job, Mink went into politics, where she would change the rules that had once prevented her and countless other women from entering medical school and finding a job in the legal profession. Amongst a long list of achievements, Mink's co-authorship of Title IX (now renamed as the Patsy T. Mink Equal Opportunity in Education Act) and authorship of the Women's Educational Equity Act made it possible for generations of women to play sports, attend college and graduate school, work in traditionally male professions, and otherwise move beyond the traditional roles assigned our gender.

At a mere fifty-six minutes, the film named after Mink is filled with stories of accomplishments and obstacles, the former greatly outweighing the latter. Comprised of archival footage, interviews with both friends and foes, and the words of Mink herself, Patsy Mink is a fitting tribute to a woman who chose to be a participant in history, not merely a witness to it. It is well organized and interesting and carefully places Mink’s life within its personal and historic context. The only real problem is that it is far too short, and therefore, offers only cursory coverage of issues that surely deserved more detailed examination. But there are worse things to be said about a documentary than that it leaves you wanting more.

Written by: Melinda Barton, August 5th 2009

Journey Toward Justice: Juliette Hampton Morgan and the Montgomery Bus Boycott

admin — Sun, 11 Mar 2007 12:52:00 +0000

By Mary Stanton

University of Georgia Press

For those of us who remember the Civil Rights struggle of the '60s and '70s, this book is a valuable reminder of just where life stood back then, how far we’ve come and how much further we still have to go. Journey Toward Justice is the intimate story of one woman’s emerging awareness of the injustice permeating the life of her community and the development of a conscience that would not be denied.

This story shows clearly where women were back then and the courage required to step outside an appointed role. It shows how determined the white majority were to maintain the status quo, how courageous were those determined to effect change. Most women today don’t know what it meant to be a second class citizen, to know that career opportunities were limited to nurse (not doctor or hospital administrator), teacher (never principal), secretary (period) or librarian. And this was for middle-class white women.

Juliette Hampton Morgan starts out as an eminently likable young woman. As her story unfolds she becomes an eminently admirable one as well. Her story reads more like a novel than a real-life story. Her childhood was shadowed by family conflict - her young adulthood tainted by family responsibilities and sacrifices she shouldered - which makes the reader burn at the injustice of the demands made. Through it all she was sustained by the lifelong friendships she made, many of them in the organizations she joined or helped establish while seeking to better her community.

Working as a librarian, Juliette took the bus to her work and, in doing so, began to observe not just the segregation, but the ill treatment accorded black riders. In protest, she began getting off the bus every time she witnessed a bus driver cheating or abusing black riders. This brought no change, so she began writing letters to the editor of the local newspaper.

Since Juliette knew the editor, her letters were published. What followed was not a concerted campaign on her part, but a series of eloquent letters written over time in support of desegregation. Her letters were not written to be published, but as the personal expression of someone distressed by the inequities she witnessed,and her prognosis for a future vastly improved by allowing equal access to publicly funded education, transportation and housing. During the second World War she wrote that if a black man was good enough to die for his country, surely he deserved a seat on the bus.

As events around Juliette escalated, she refused to change her position, refused to “shut up” and resolutely stood her ground, despite the toll it took on her physical health. It eventually cost her her life.

Written by: Margaret E. Guthrie, March 11th 2007