Historical Perspectives on Whiteness: An Intersectional Conversation with Dr. Nell Painter

so welcome everyone I'm dr. Lisa Coleman I'm a senior vice president for global inclusion and strategic innovation here at NYU we are very excited for this today's conversation thank you for everyone who's joining us we have over seventeen hundred and eighty people registered for this webinar so that's why I was waiting for everyone to load in to come in and that takes a little bit of time I want to first thank my amazing team in global inclusion I just have to say your your your Superstars and you have just been so helpful in all putting everything together and in particular this reading series before we get started of course I just want to alert people that there's closed captioning so if you need closed captioning at the bottom of the screen there's a button that says CC and you can just press that and you will have closed captioning so I'll just give a moment make sure everybody if you have questions about that just put it in the QA and someone from my team will answer we hope that everybody's taking good care you know some people have been talking about this is the new normal I've been saying a lot this is not normal this is a new unusual or something like that a very disruptive and so um so we know we have a lot of disruption happening we've seen the disparities that have been exacerbated by this pandemic and and racism xenophobia all kinds of things directed toward historically marginalized communities and we know that this happens historically and we saw it during the AIDS pandemic we saw it during SARS we saw it doing even during the 1918 flu pandemic and so today we're going to have a little bit of discussion about about history right and about some of the histories that inform where we are today the perverse pervasive systemic and anti black racism and violence in the United States that has just reared its head again some people have found this surprising as many have heard me say this is certainly not new we are very familiar with these patterns of racism embedded within systems and institutions and again part of our series and part of our ongoing conversation has been to look at these things some of you are able to join us for our blackness protest and racism panel featuring some of our scholars at NYU and then featuring two out scholars outside scholars scholars dr. Timothy McCarthy and dr. Christina Greer with Jennifer Morgan and our own faculty Kirk J James so we were very excited to do that and of course then we were able to feature Rachel swarns for a Juneteenth conversation so thank you for joining for that as well I want to also just get just give some thank-yous to all the people who are working behind the scenes the frontline workers all the people who have put their lives and have had to put their lives at risk during this pandemic we know that when we talk about essential workers a lot of people talk about health care workers etc so let's thank them and let's also thank the delivery workers those people who are cleaning the hospitals all those people who actually make it possible for so many of us to shelter at home and be safe in our homes so right now I'd like to take a moment to honor our ancestors those people who came before us who've paved the way some of who died historically and some who've died more recently and as well to honor the land the indigenous lands upon which we stand and we occupy and I'd like to take ten moments of silence thank you so much for that I would also like to thank our the libraries the NYU libraries for partnering with us to increase access to the summer reads and just for partnership in general thank you to Austin booth and dr. Karen Jackson Weaver from my team for and everybody for creating the supporting materials that you all will receive after this webinar on there be some webinar some materials that you'll receive some reading materials etc to allow you to engage in discussion around around the text that we will be discussing today so we welcome you to today's conversation NYU summer reads some of you are familiar that this was announced in President Andy Hamilton's letter with the Board of Trustees that we would be doing this this initiative is part of our NYU be together initiative some of you have already heard about to be together initiative but I just want to again refresh and say many of you know we were able to do an assessment here at NYU where we got a lot of information and a lot of data and people have been asking a lot about what we're gonna do with that data how we're gonna follow up with this foundation we can build grow and reimagine where we want to go as a globally dynamic institution and addressing such issues as we're addressing today and we know that we can be stronger together so it seems and even though Colvin has certainly pressed with the fractious of who we are we hope that as we come together this moment has pressed upon us the urgency of this work and the accelerated work that we all must do to engage and address issues of racism sexism heterosexism xenophobia ableism etc and to build on the strength of our community here at NYU as we can continue to confront systemic oppressions and our global communities we hope that you'll continue to join us for these programs particularly as we think about not just education but the action steps that we can take a lot of you have heard me to talk about this in the firm former presentations what are the action plans what are the plans what are the steps this is not just about talk this is about rhetoric this isn't just about rhetoric this is about how are we actually going to make meaningful impact so today's conversation with dr. Nell painter I cannot tell you how excited I am for this conversation some of you know of course we haven't have a summer reads also assignment a Bryan Stevenson's just mercy and we will have a discussion ongoing discussions of that book in the fall with providing historical context for some of the realities of race and racism incarceration and intersexuality we will be hosting a number of other readings this summer and so I just want to say this thank you to Kenji Yoshino who will be also joining us later on July 23rd we'll be discussing his book covering the hidden assault on our civil rights and then later this summer in August I will the data's forthcoming will be having a discussion with Matthew Frye Jacobsen from Yale University on whiteness of a different color these readings as I said are to serve as conversations to inform strategic action as we think about addressing equity issues across NYU we know that we have a global focus across our NYU and these conversations and dr. painter will help us engage this conversation please also note that we have lots of resources on our website so this is just one of the many efforts that we have so please visit our website I don't have time to go through all of the initiatives and programs we have increased our trainings on anti-racism and microaggressions we have our deal in my Institute we have our inclusive teaching and faculty seminars we have a Digital Inclusion toolkit that we've put up so again please just visit visit that that that our website for more for more information we will be taking live Q&A from the audience so you can put your questions in at any point those questions will be curated and given to me and so then I will be able to we will be grouping questions obviously we do not have time to answer we won't have time to answer all of the questions so we'll try to group them on common themes as we identify them and again I just want to say let's turn to two thinking dr. painter so some of you know that I used to teach a class a few years back when I was at Tufts University and then I redid it for another institution I used to teach a class called the history the constructions of whiteness 1790 to 1924 and in that class I had the pleasure of teaching nails work at the time I had not yet met nail painter and so I mean I had met her she had met me I guess I should put it that way I had met her at lectures of course followed her around like the groupie that I am to just hear the amazing work and hear about her amazing work as many of you know now painter is a leading historic historian historian couldn't get that word out historian in the United States she has been the Edwards professor of American history at pressed Princeton University and she was director of the Princeton program in African American Studies from 1997 to 2000 her doctorate in history was from Harvard University and she receives has received numerous honorary doctorates from Wesleyan Dartmouth Yale I could just go on and on and on she has published numerous books articles reviews and other essays her recent her book the history of white people which we will be discussing today and then she has six other books still in print and of course with those of you I'll come back to this actually at the end she served on numerous editorial boards as an offer officer many different professional organizations including the American Historical Society Association the organization of American Historians the American antiquarian Society the Association for the study of African American life and history the association of black women historians she is currently she's also the counsel of the prestigious Society of American historian historians her work is interdisciplinary as she's taught numerous courses during the course of her career and really focusing on the construction of gender race gender and race our first summer read selection obviously is really to help us think about this you know the 2,000 years of framing of Western civilization that the dr. painter does in her book and again on a personal note I would just like to say that it is an absolute pleasure to be able to host you dr. painter to be able to engage in a conversation with you and thank you for accepting our invitation I said this to our team earlier I've been receiving all kinds of notes and congratulations and all kinds of things about having this conversation so I can just tell you that I know we have a lot of people out there who are super excited so we're gonna get started okay so my first question is and it's pretty broad so let's let's begin by discussing for our participants what brought you to map the long and sometimes the cutest history of whiteness in the history of white people well thank you Lisa and first of all let me thank you and your wonderful team this has been a really easy an easy entry and of course I'm really glad to see you again and I do have to brag that you're a collector of my art which of course makes me very happy too well let me put it in my acknowledgments and thank you you asked what brought me to the history of white people I it was a question I I was watching the Russians bomb a part of the Caucasus Grozny in Chechnya and Chechnya is in the Caucasus and I was thinking well why are our American white people called Chechens why are American white people called Caucasian that's where it started I just wanted to answer a question but I must say that's how I start most of my books well the biography of Sojourner Truth I wonder it was a question about the ill fit between how she was represented in words she did not say aren't I woman or anti woman but the words that supposedly she uttered were very confrontational but her photographs were very bourgeois very respectable very quiet she was very well dressed she held her knitting she held a picture of her grandson so these things seemed in commenced to me so that was my question there so I always start with a question and this question was why are white people why don't white Americans call Caucasian and I would ask people and nobody knew and they would say well I thought I should know and I was too embarrassed to ask so I asked and found the answer in Goethe in Germany and so let's so so let's turn to the text itself and so so I happen to know why I happen to know something about 1790 in the particularly particular marking of white hands and then in your 2016 New York Times article you write that and I'm gonna quote this so I read this they quote the election of 2016 marked a turning point in White's identity thanks to the success of make America great again yes a call for a return to the times when white people ruled and thanks to widespread analysis of voters preferences in racial terms white identity became marked as a racial identity and quote which is a differentiation from the initial marking or some of the initial markings you might say in 1790 or 1924 when it's reconfirm reconfirming so can you tell us a little bit more about whiteness as marked both historically and as you discuss it in the contemporary moment and then I'm going to ask you a follow-up question about what that's produced over these last four years okay well let's just settle in for two weeks here yeah you you mentioned 1790 as the first time the race word like white gets into American legislation and that's that you could only naturalize if you were white and I should probably add though it's not in the wording if you were male because women white women even lacked lacked human rights at that time so 1790 makes white part of American law that is to say national law because usually the racial designations when state by state or locality by locality so 1790 makes makes American law racialized his American law 2016 just a fascinating moment a scary moment and I remember the the pundits talking about 2016 after Trump won and they said oh it's just these poor working-class people meaning working-class white people these poor working-class people they've lost their jobs and it's all about economics that did not ask why non white working-class people who had lost their jobs were not Trump supporters it was like white people got class analysis and all the rest of us just got race or feminists so that's all there was there was no class issue at all on the non-white people's non-white Trump voters side and over the course of about two years that discourse changed from all these poor working-class voters who lost their jobs it's all economic to oh maybe there's some more and then by 2019 it was really clear it was about racial resentment but for those of us who were watching and had a sense of American history it was clear in 2016 that make America great again was make America white again and it was all about racial resentment and a hatred of what they call political correctness which meant talking to non-white people or women respectfully it was wanting to be able to blurt out whatever nastiness came out of your mouth so that's why 2016 was a turning point and I would also add about 2018 after Charlottesville and just social scientists digging in and talking to people about why they supported truck so Trump in 2016 racialized white Americans dramatically which is only increased with the passage of time for the vast majority of white Americans I don't know if this is still the case but certainly in 2016 and perhaps even in 2018 racial identity was for somebody else that was something that black people had to worry about or maybe racialized others or Latinos Hispanics but not them they were individuals and they moved through the world as individuals that has that has fallen kind of by the wayside now and I think it's a good thing for our for our national society our national culture race it's such an important part of how Americans how we Americans all of us think of ourselves and there's a great deal of history that you you ignore if you don't know the racial part of our history yeah yeah and one of the things that you also say because you say about governing as white right like that that this is that shift to the moment where right the it's it's a difference in terms of the way that gets embedded into right the law and the government in this 2016 moment so could you just expand a little bit more on that that idea governing as white well--there's governing this white and there's governing as American so the pre Trump was you know everybody practically everybody in government was white and mostly male but they didn't govern well since the civil rights time since the civil rights movement in the of the mid sixties they could not govern as white they governed as Republicans Democrats representatives of the voters in excess County New Jersey or Essex County in New York what Trump has in his meanness has helped masses of white Americans see is that they don't act they don't govern as universal individual subjects they also govern as white people unless they take conscious steps not to do so it's not automatic right there has to be an intentionality there yes thank you so so as you know and I mentioned a little bit of reference this during my comments there have been some recent deaths and we've seen number the terrorism and violence has just you know risen dramatically some people have been surprised yeah it's that this is occurring Lisa I'm not sure it has risen dramatically I think attention yes absolutely however I will add that in that space in June I think there was a rat-a-tat-tat of of atrocities and atrocities we could see and know about both things yeah I can't remember who it is who said it's not a rise it's the recording right that we're getting it's different different so yeah so yeah and I see or just see so so so thank you for that and so so in New York in the you may have seen the New York Times June 29th article and they had 70 cases of I can't write so so everybody then I'm just bringing this up because it's like sort of isolated that's the point right so this is not a rise as you said right there were all these deaths before nobody paid attention to these death that's right see these rise of protest and I don't know if you were able to hear the descendants of Frederick Douglas deliver on the 4th of July yeah yeah sorry so I was my question really is can you talk to us a little bit about the history and the science of race as a category comes out of the Enlightenment the 18th century enlightenment before the 18th century enlightenment kept people categorize people but mostly by religion or by whatever you needed those are the people who don't eat pork those are the people who do eat pork those are the people who have their their Sabbath on Sunday those are the people who have their Sabbath on Saturday it was to be month or Sabbath on Friday and so forth before the Enlightenment human beings could see human difference but they didn't talk about it in terms of race race is a scientific category and science as a way of understanding the world broadly is a product of the 18th century enlightenment so that's something new Under the Sun and even the man who made white people Caucasian Jean Friedrich blumenbach at Goethe University in Germany writing in his very prestigious and influential tongue in which she discovers five varieties of mankind he says well you know to draw these sharp lines which he does draw really obscures the fact that people kind of blend in there's there's no border lines there and many draws border lines he also says that well I use five but other people use other numbers and he says like there's 21 different numbers of human races and then then and over the course of time there has never been unanimity on how many races there are on how many white races there are and or how you decide do you measure the head do you measure the nose do you measure the height the eye color the skin color how much counts for what at the turn of the 20th century a very prestigious English anthropologist called British people he arranged them on a scale of an aggressive and thought that the Irish were notably dark so this goes on and there's never unanimity but what I I'll stop by saying we need to understand that racial classification is ideology racism is behavior and laws they're not the same thing and because we can change by the way we act and the way we think we can change racial ideology but we have to do something affirmative to change racial laws and race racism so they're not the same thing but they're related thank you for that distinction I know my video is having some difficulty but I I can still see you they are fixing the video okay so thank you very much so I would and thank you for that answer and I'm glad you made that distinction because I think that's an important distinction right between between this sort of behaviors right and the ideology yeah and so let's let's let's talk a little bit more I'm gonna expand this a little bit where we have when you talk about the science of race right the science of race obviously manifested itself in Europe in the United States across the globe and we're a global institution yes yeah yes we are we have campuses in Europe Australia the UAE China etc and they're people in this meeting who are outside the United States that's exactly right and we have people joining us from all over so we wanted to just talk for a minute about and I'm sure you've seen some of the news where the cases of racism in other parts of the world are also you know happening and just like they're happening here in the US and so just if you could talk to us a little bit about the situatedness of racism right in in other contexts and and how you've seen that connected to you right the US the European us racism right connected to each other and then connected to the rest of the world yeah let me start with the last part about connectedness and I I think that is based on the widespread nature and still the prestige of American culture so what goes on in the United States reaches people all around the world in a way that what goes on even say in Britain or France doesn't and would have even more difficulty with smaller countries so for instance what goes on in let me find a small country that will be listening and get upset by going in a small country ok Georgia in the Caucasus what goes on in Georgia in the Caucasus is not going to stir people in the way what goes on in the United States does so so part of it is the strength and prestige the soft power of the United States part of that soft power a lot of that soft power is the cultural productions of African Americans and more largely people of color ethnic Ethne sized Americans so black people through what we have written what we have made our art our politics all of that is part of the soft power of the United States and the resonance of what happens in the United States and then let's go to the earlier part of your question which is what happened around the world what very heavily covered in the media that I read was the pulling down of Edward Colston's statute in Bristol which I just had to cheer that on yes I noticed also that the mayor who is black had to fish it out afterwards and because this does statutes like that need to go from public spaces where they say this is what we are two historical museums where they can be contextualized and they don't say this is what we are they say this is what somebody thought was important at a given time so that kind of revision of history the taking down of King Leopold and Belgium for instance that all followed from the George Floyd black lives matter protests and demonstrations in the United States which had international support I read in today's New York Times that between 5th 18 and 26 million Americans took part in the George Floyd black lives matter protests and demonstrations which still go on thank you so much dr. Pinner and it when you this is a question that I just want to follow up on because as you were talking I was thinking a little bit about the amnesia right the way in which amnesia has worked in the in the in this sort of retelling and reimagining and so one of the my next question is really about the symbolic right you're not only a scholar of history but also a well-known and celebrated artist which is this is what I was going to talk about the artwork that I own yeah you got yours and I for this question I'd like you to talk both through the lens of historian and artist right and talking about the levels of meaning in the recreation of representations of blackness and whiteness right and in that because I think in some of those recreations the reason I brought up amnesia sometimes we recreate images that actually abstract some things right snow so if you could just talk to us a little bit about how you see representation and then the work of course that you've done in the history of white people but also in your amazing book creating black America thank you there's a lot there as an artist I wanted to be to work free of historical truth so my art at least before now was not terribly political that changed in 2017 I must say that Trump has made me into a political artist and the most recent artist book I made which you don't have access to but which I will mention because it just went up today is on the gallery a pharaoh website in Newark a fer ro and it's it's called from slavery to freedom and the resonances with the classic text by John Hope friend who would stink with historian and that text first came out in 1947 was revised and reissued over more than 50 years so from slavery to freedom already talks about history but the other fourteen panels in the book are about now and they're about death about the many sacrifices and atrocities about about the people in the streets right now about Juneteenth so there are three there are three pieces of music that go through only with the words one is America the Beautiful one is Dixie and one is the black national anthem I always have to stop myself I know now I have to say the black national anthem but I grew up singing that is the Negro national anthem I grew up in the time when you capitalize negro and it was a very respectful term it it was succeeded by black and african-american and I understand now that if I don't say the black national anthem people will think I'm retrograde so I don't want to do that so that's in the May the way I have dealt with this particular time as an artist I got started in art actually it was the drone of truth who got me into art because sedona truth didn't read and write so i couldn't use the tools that i'm used to she didn't have an archive but she did take her photographs so her photograph sent me over to the art and art history library at princeton and really got me into images when i was writing a narrative history of african-americans which is creating black Americans including please remind me to come back to the working of the title I decided to use black fine art and I did that for two reasons one was to introduce my readers to this incredibly rich tradition of black fine artists visual artists and I grew up knowing about some artists knowing about Charles white Elizabeth capitulated romare bearden i knew about that but i didn't know about oh this incredible bounty of black art and i wanted to introduce my readers of a narrative histories not an art history but a narrative history to the fact of representation the word that you used and very often in that book I used more than one image of the same figures Frederick Douglass for instance or Martin Luther King junior to say we see these people the representations change over time because at the very beginning of the book I say history changes because what questions we ask the past those questions change and our answers change because we ask different questions so art in the service of history so those were illustrations if you wish what I make now is autonomous that is to say it should only it should work if only you use your eyes even if you don't know the history even if you don't run the history that so many Americans have treated with willful unknowingly all right thank you so much and and maybe it was as I asked the next question we can come back to the title question they so creating black Americans contains not unbeautiful beautiful images and you sort of you started to started to go down this road as you were answering this last question and you're you know when you're as a historian part of your role has been to document taste or size right and so as I think about as an artist in creating images and putting this book together how how important was you to go back to this idea of representation right and you talked about you know the demonstrating the artists and etc but the artwork the beauty of the art working and the texture and the feeling tell us a little bit about trying to get that into the book well I couldn't quite do that because those questions you just asked our art historical questions and we as artists say you're asking formal questions questions about the the formal characteristics of the work how does it look what's it made of how big is it tell me about the composition those aren't historical questions that I I could not address in a narrative history so in creating black Americans the images that fine art images work as illustrations of a historical point in my own work but I do not do that well I did not do that so the affair Oh piece for instance and then the piece that I made from Nazi Arnie Belasco which is American whiteness since Trump they do have a heavy historical ingredient but they work as visual products rather than historical products though their subject matter is historical and so this is uh summon it's the probably my last question but we have a lot of questions so I've got a lot of questions for thank you so and some people have already asked about this and we cannot leave this I cannot and this this question my question is without talking a little bit about this old in art school oh yeah memoirs starting over your most recent book and changed like some really amazing images that's that's all my work yes yeah yes and someone was someone that actually in the Q&A was actually writing I guess they saw a conversation with tre last year and Montclair I was there yeah yeah and we're bringing tre so she's gonna be one of the people I have a conversation with later yeah yeah of course so but we don't want to give too much away because I told you I'm inviting you back and we're gonna have a whole conversation about your art but I don't I want to just just ask this question a little bit tell us a little bit about the connections between right creating black Americans and your and then old an art school right because you there's a shift right there's a shift interest representation of your over but it's shift in the way and it's not just about memoir right there's a shift in the way you're sort of doing them yeah yeah creating black American showed me this very rich tradition of black fine art and showed a place where I could conceivably fit and after I did that book I spent time sort of trying it out taking classes I did in the studio school I did the drawing and painting marathon which was very intense and I loved it it's no can really do this and I did it it was the hardest thing I've never done let me tell you getting a PhD at Harvard in history is a piece of cake compared to getting an MFA I happen to know something about this yeah and so I wanted to do art and I wanted to do it in a very serious professional way I didn't understand how how obsessed with youth art is and I am NOT a young person I was not a young person when I went to art school you know 10 years ago and in my experience that was the salient of how my experience felt how I experienced art school sure I'm a black woman sure I'm from Oakland sure I used to teach at Princeton but the biggest thing was I am old and that's why I called it old in art school not black in art school or a woman in art school or a black woman in art school or an old black woman in art school it's old in art school and I will tell you Lisa that writing personally I really had thank Heaven I had an agent who could hold my hand and then also sort of buck me up when I needed to bear down more in changing the way I write and one big difference between scholarship and art is that with scholarship well I'll just say the way I wrote scholarship was to spin out a narrative that that is soundly based in research but that presents a narrative so that I want you to see the past through my eyes I want you to agree with me I want to tell you what you need to know art doesn't work that way all right thank you thank you dr. Kramer so I'm gonna turn to some questions from the audience there's lots of questions it just seemed to fit our audience again we're not going to get to them all but we'll include them in our reading guide etc so the next question I have which has come up several times it looks like so and I just want to you know you kind of answered it but I want to make sure that we answer this one so some people say that history doesn't matter I know I don't know who those people are but yeah I know I can't believe it but some people say that history doesn't matter that right when we talk about slavery or things like that that happened in the past you know I didn't own slaves my grandparents didn't own slaves you know may it was my great great grandparents or something like that you know I'm not a I'm not an overt racist right I mean I'm I'm a regular person so you know why does this matter it matters because where we are today how our economy works how our politics work how our neighborhoods are set up how our schools are set up have a history that is ongoing I I don't want to take you step by step backwards but one that comes up over and over now when we're talking about the economics of race is that the FHA the Federal Housing Authority started offering guaranteed 30-year mortgages in the 1930s and they became really important in the 1950s with suburbanization and so that that policy decision made it possible for large numbers of Americans to buy their own homes after the Second World War and homes have been a major if not the major source of family wealth in the United States now in the early 1950s when my father wanted to buy a house he could not get an FHA loan because at that point the FHA did not lend to black people we were not looking for a house in the suburbs but because we lived in Oakland and we wanted to stay there but if you lived in New Jersey or New York and you wanted to move to those cute little affordable houses in Levittown you couldn't because it was red light it was it was whites only so the just the policy decisions that have governed family wealth in the United States this is within my lifetime within your lifetime and as children and the grandchildren of people in my generation Americans live in the shadow of the FHA they live in the shadows of lily-white suburbs thank you very much for that I do want to say there people who are also giving shoutouts to you I have a will Stevens from Berkeley California as I come across those I'll just do the shoutouts yeah so the next question really though is about this the new majority minority right so black there's lots conversation about that ending of whiteness and as America moves toward right and so there's lots of conversation about the multi-ethnic multiracial more people of color quorum call being born etc do you think there would be a widening of the definition of who is white and who do you think will be included if if so and if not what do you what do you see as move in moving forward with these sort of racial definitions particularly it's because of what you said in terms of the movement to post to 2016 to this move to whiteness to right naming it governing as this has already happened most Americans I think assume that the US census is a kind of scientific means of categorizing it is not the US census is a political document that changes every 10 years and as you watch that changing you can see how Americans are identifying themselves because now you identify yourself either know both as a race and as an ethnicity since 2000 you have to do two things the changes over time have meant that people who identified themselves as the ethnicity of Hispanic or Latino have moved more into whiteness than before so that's changing but what I what I just think will really happen we make race and lots and lots of ways not just food sense it's not just through checking boxes we make race through the music we listen to the flags we fly the neighborhoods we live in the friends we hang out with and that you can see changing over time well what what will be really important to see and that you can hold is the money that is the economics of race and also the politics of race so if what does it mean if even a majority of Americans think of themselves is not white what does that mean if it's not registered politically it's not going to be registered very clearly politically because people are going to disagree Americans exist in the millions all over a very large country and so somebody who says oh I'm afro Latino in Florida may not be somebody who says oh I'm everyone Latino in Wisconsin so a lot will be going on but already since the 1960s the salience of race is less than it was before in the 1960s whiteness was protected hedged around with laws those laws no longer exist and the law is a powerful motive for definition and for protecting so moving into the other area away for a little bit away from the law is let's go back to aesthetics and I have a question about so in your assist in your book the history of white people you account their early aesthetic discourses in Europe right and the contribute to the construction of whiteness so this goes back to that representation those representational questions and then identification of white people that preceded or at least were moved along as the same time as the scientific discourses and can you discuss a little bit about the importance of the aesthetics in relation to the creation of racial ideology and then subsequently influence on racism okay let's do that in two parts the first is the creation of the taxonomy of race and there we get to white people as Caucasian this is the late 18th century the particular skull that gave that name to those people was the skull of a young female sex slave from Georgia in the Caucasus so beauty was already embedded into racial classification and that was the role of young Friedrich blumenbach talking about his most beautiful skull as I read the science of race I kept coming up over and over and again so we measure the head we measure the nose we measure the color we measure the eye color plus our white people are the prettiest of all it that was kind of the center is since cinching of the arguments from psy and it was science it wasn't pseudoscience that was science at the time science changes too and that was respectable science at the time and then the question of beauty over the the next 300 years of course and Duty has always been of supreme importance for women so that's a big big story leading into body shape and color ISM and wealth and all sorts of I mean that's a huge subject all in its own it is it actually has at so let's I want to make sure I get to as many questions as possible okay so so I have a question about voting I mean it's that time so so could you talk a little bit about race and gender in voting and in particular right the giving your understanding of US history and this question is it's an interesting when I guess does it surprise you that we that did we had a black president before we had a female and that we had Trump following Obama if you had asked me that before Obama became president I would say oh that's not possible we will not have a black president in my lifetime Americans can't do that if it was only the popular vote we would have had a white woman president before Trump we might well have had Trump after Hillary Clinton as president because the hatred his hatred and the hatred of people I will generalize as his ardent supporters are ardently anti-feminist as well so all of those things are going on I don't know if anything will surprise me now but I do understand the backlash against a of intelligence integrity style good judgment with a fabulous family would drive millions of Americans crazy yeah so we have a couple of questions there's a few questions that want us to come back to the distinction that you made between racial ideology and racism yeah so people want you to expand upon talk a little bit more and I've got several questions about them so maybe yeah very often people saying well if race is an ideology does that mean racism doesn't exist or racism is not important no Reese is one thing and racism is related but it's not the same thing so one thing about race being an ideology is that it's a a bunch of beliefs and beliefs can change so racism based on the belief that race is real it's based on a belief that race is real and you need to do something about it within that ideology race is depending on who you're talking to based on color based on how people dress based on what music they listen to but the biological part is really important within the belief system that race is something inside the person and it's permanent and it goes from the parents to the children because it's inside and it's permanent and it's a biological that is the etiology racism acts to discriminate against people who are racialized racism acts to inflict petty and gross injuries it exists to make it possible for law enforcement to murder people racism is real race is an ideology a belief system thank you very much for making that distinction we I'm sure we'll be coming back to that in some of our discussions so my next question is about sort of unpacking whiteness and as you've talked about in terms of racial ideology right and sort of in the way and we know that a lot of that a technology comes through our educational systems so this next question is how do we go about unpacking this understanding of race and they say that emerged during enlightenment but you know is emerged over time right and and how do we begin to think about our educational systems right in sort of unpacking that yeah these are big questions that I one person cannot answer because they have the answers are local the answers depend on what realm you're talking about and where and when and who's involved that that's about action and I can't decree what action I mean I live in Newark New Jersey which I'm really proud of of how my city acts but I don't think even our wonderful mayor Ross Baraka would say well we solve some of these questions in Newark and here's how you're gonna do it in Plattsburgh no that's not going to work out but one thing I will say that it doesn't come automatically that people have to act they have to take action one action is education to learn to undo willful unknowing that is a huge step and to understand and that learning about oppression is one thing and learning about creativity is another it's not the same thing so there's a lot of learning that Americans need to do and I will not exempt black Americans from this as well we all need to know more well as an educator I would say we all always need to know more I can understand someone constantly reading and it tries to be a learner I think you know sometimes in education we we put our expertise first and we should we need to put our learning often so let me ask just just one thing Lisa there often calls for a national dialogue on race and I'm not up for that maybe it's because I've been around too long and I've seen too many and there is either devolve into people just getting in sniffs I think if somebody asked me right here in Essex County New York what that person should do I would say get together with someone different from you over something you have in common don't get together about race get together about what you're interested in what you love you know I was gonna wait until the end to ask this question but I'm going to ask it now because you've led into it so perfectly which is and it's because of because of what I said about an action plan and yes you said this that people are asking what are three things or four things whatever that you would suggest that people do right to raise their awareness to unpack to do those things and there are lots of different kinds of words being used so so you suggested one right to get just together with someone different than yourself which could be very helpful if you have other suggestions yeah go to your life well you can't go to your library necessarily but you can virtually go to your library you know over and over again people say well how do I find out about black people in fly-fishing oh I don't know but your reference librarian knows this is what libraries are for get educated learn something and learn something about what's important to you so there's not sort of one universal black person who will serve in all capacities for all time everywhere you you need we all need this is for all of us black non black white non white we need to know about the people who are are our contemporaries our peers people who share our interest one thing in my Facebook page we've been talking a lot about the controversy in the sense in the Cleveland Museum of Contemporary Art and one of the issues I think that came up there was that the museum which made a mess didn't understand that just the white the black person who you happen to have on hand has all the answers I one of the things that struck me throughout my historical career was how hard it seemed to be for my white colleagues to understand that they had black peers and I've said that on Facebook and other people in other fields have have agreed that it's like you if you are a fly fish here it's really hard to think about yeah there could be black fly fishers or as we see around New York recently yeah there are black birders they're black people all over the place and you can't substitute one from the other just because they're black yes indeed my next question is their own ethnicity yeah and so the questions that are coming in around that are around is it better to just use ethnicity instead of race would that help solve some of these pernicious and ongoing patterns short answer is no it's been tried and I'm always amazed at how people hold on to what they think of as a sort of scientific fact of the meaning of ethnicity and a meaning of race and if you look it up in the reigning dictionary assumes the second meaning of races ethnicity and the second meaning of ethnicity is raised these these terms have no clear-cut borders boundaries they're not like congressional districts that you can see where the edge is no you can't see where the edges ethnicity or in race I do know also that masses of Americans have trouble forming their their mouths around the word black and find it easier to form their mouths around ethnicity okay if that works for you I don't think the wording is the crucial part so for instance I was talking recently with I think the Washington Post about capital B black sure now the journalists think this is going to make a big difference it may make a difference I think it will make a difference to use a capital D on black yes it will make a difference but it's the signifier not the signified it is not going to work a revolution in how Americans treat one another and get along with one another to put a capital B on black is the right thing to do but it is not the solution to racism or white supremacy so I have a question in here which is about sort of the ways in which right we have as you describe the racial categorizations and then write the the systems that are aligned with those economic sector systems and the question that is someone supposing a couple people opposing different ways is it possible to disinvest in these categories right so to disinvest right in these racial categories will that then help get rid of the economic systems or is it vice versa and again the quick answer is no if you want to change the economic system you change the economic system words don't have that power words can affect particular exchanges I use the metaphor of grains of sand because one grain of sand is pretty small and won't make a big difference to the way but that's how you got a sand dune is through grains of sand so if you want to make if you want to make a sand dune then you need a lot of grains of sand or you use a bulldozer which will move things more quickly and they were there a series of other questions and this sort of relates to maybe can see here's the rule for a bulldozer but it has to do with these statues right and so you you talked a little bit about that earlier but there are lots of questions about commemorations public action cetera so maybe you could just expound a little bit like we have people are asking about different statues but maybe I don't expound on the this idea of taking down stat you talked a little bit about up for but talk a little bit more about that I am NOT a reliable person on taking down statues I take them all down I'm really an iconic West and but I let's be a little more responsible now all right I am I'm more tolerant probably than I should be about taking stuff down because I know we're in a moment of high emotion and you can't talk sense to people you can't say oh wait wait sit down form a committee and decide if that's the right thing to do when people are in the street and and they're people like john c calhoun he's got to come down there borderline people so in the bay area the demonstrators took down Ulysses s Korea well that was not a good thing to do maybe they'll put him back but the idea of asking questions about history and the representation of history the commemoration of history I support that I applaud that I really really do for the last 20 years I've made attention to German history because the Germans they do something called forgave goons hike without the Gong which is coming to terms with the past which Americans are starting to do in a kind of roaring way but it's happening all around us so Princeton decided to revisit their carefully considered decision not to move the name of which I build something of which I will so school a little forget inside bevelle Teague and Woodrow Wilson kiss so this this this this brings me to this this this next question which again people are asking is sort of this historical moment in which we're now situated right and as you said we're seeing it as you used to roar and we're seeing right now lots of protests so a lot of the questions are around you know what's the difference between before and now is it is it George Floyd is it Brianna Taylor you know what's the difference between that and Trayvon Martin and you what what how have we moved so and and if you have some reflections on what why and what that looked like yeah the the system of ignoring black sacrifice was being loosened back aways Trayvon Martin Tamir rice even back to him until none of those that we know of has gone uncontested so we've had activity we've had thinking we've had scholarship we've had art around these atrocities we had a coronavirus which took us all out and then we had just a heartbreaking series of just unconscionable murders one right after the other caught visually so that together with the other loosening that was going on around us in the form of the Trump time Trump site the time of Trump all of that loosened us up and Goddess ready to be really really ready to take to the streets and we did my husband and I were in two up here in the north country one in Keene Valley and one in Saranac Lake so I have two final questions that looks like one is really it's about blackness so there are a number of questions about blackness and people being that we have ingested some of these things right some of the things in terms of white hierarchy bracelet racist behaviors etc so can you talk a little bit about how you see that shifting over time in terms of rights with these other shifts do you see just happening there as well yeah blackness has changed over time we can card it most easily I suppose by the different names from colored to Negro to afro-american to black to african-american and back to black and part of that let me just stop with from african-american to black it's a capital B black I used black American in my title for creating black Americans because I was well aware of the changing ethnic composition of black Americans so for instance in my family I have women who were born in African countries and who are now part of my family and I remember one of the last classes I taught at Princeton was in African American Studies and we were going around talking about names and so the kids whose grandparents and great-grandparents were from the South called themselves African Americans and then there were kids who either were born or their parents were born saying in Nigeria so you know what do you call yourself or some african african americans okay but i think the term black is more capacious than african-american because we have already made african american basically southern or with roots in the south and for me black includes people who have immigrant parents or who are themselves immigrants but that's just me and other people have other ways of defining black and blackness and because we have no well congressional district called black there is no way to enforce what I think on somebody else who what they think on me when my graduate students would try to generalize and use black as a political or as a historical motive I would say no no no no I mean we were talking about millions of people even moon talk about the 19th century we're talking about millions of people and they did not walk in lockstep all right this is my last official question and I'll close with one but the one remarks but the last question here is about kovin 18 and so people are there are a lot of questions obviously about the pandemic and so and it's particularly because of these racial divides and so I think a lot of the comments and questions are about how do you see this impacting right sort of we've seen some of these things if they storm what do you see as the impact currently Oh given your role as historian and scholar it breaks my heart it breaks my heart because black and brown Americans are bearing the brunt as essential workers and as people who have not had access to high-quality here at hair health care and as people who were hassled to death I mean I always think of our levels of high blood pressure as part of being as part of what we pay for billing living in a racist society so for those reasons it seems to me I mean for me that explains along with the jobs that black and brown people do explains why black and brown people have suffered disproportionately what really annoys me is when heedless white people say I'm not gonna wear a mask I'm not gonna take precautions it's not gonna get me well it may not get you but it it will get the person the nurse who takes care of you the home health care workers the people who are not paid a log it will get them so often we hear wearing a mask is not so much about protecting yourself its respect for others and the question of who takes care as against who pays the price this is something that annoys me greatly thank you for that thank you for reminding us of the importance of our work of the workers out there we started by saying some things about that but thank you gathering back there and so I'm ending this with so one of the things you said earlier besides get to know someone else who might have you know when we talked about the action plan etc is I have to say I really appreciate you underscoring the libraries I you know spend a lot of time in libraries it's been a lot of time with reference library and yeah and I think that is just so crucial and and this underscores some points that were made it during our black blackness protest and panel racism panel as well as our Juneteenth panel but many of the panelists said yeah the thing to do is to read write to educate yourself so my question to you is are there any suggestion suggested readings that you have for our audience because some people have asked that question so I just wanted to ask if you have any things that top of top of mind that you might suggest for folks besides all of your books don't be we have them and so we're later today I'm gonna when I close I talk a little bit more about what we're doing there but yeah yeah the books that that you listed at the very beginning about racial justice about incarceration those are really important books I would read them for research but I don't read them for pleasure and what I'm doing now I am writing really really hard and so I'm not reading very much but when I read I read for pleasure and I sit in it and listen to audiobooks so i would i don't have suggestions of books that people should read for education i would say read in the field that interests you but you mentioned one of my favorite writers at the beginning whose tre jones so I would suggest anything tre writes as a source of reading pleasure it is reading pleasure and we are gonna bring her we are the process effect making that happen and so we will we'll be following up on that but thank you dr. painter thank you so much for this conversation thank you to our audience I cannot thank you enough I feel that this is we've covered so much we've covered so much about your work which is so and for those of you on this call the participants after this we will be releasing notes to everyone who's participated and who registered so you will be able to get access to to the text that we mentioned before to the reading guides and the questions some of the questions that were answered and some of the themes so we're putting all that together you'll have get that later today with links yes this talk was recorded and some of you asked that question as were the other Juneteenth blackness protests and racism so those are all on our website and you can get access to those as well and so you can see in the chat was just will be sharing a video of the video of this later again I want to just thank dr. painter I I have admired your work for so long and and I had we you know we had the pleasure of sitting on a panel a few years ago and of course as as dr. painter mentioned I am the proud owner of several pieces of our artwork and so when we come back for our discussion later with dr. painter we'll be talking about art and look forward to that in the fall so thank you everyone everyone take good care and remember everyone take care of the essential workers - thanks so much be well everyone bye

Channel: NYU Global Inclusion

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Id: HYRWuJmHah8

Length: 80min 13sec (4813 seconds)

Published: Tue Jul 14 2020