Reading While Black

Monica and Roslyn’s tete-a-tete over at Bam’s blog got my motor running. My brain pieced together bits and pieces of what I wanted to say, but it wasn’t until I read the post that it formed into a somewhat coherent ramble. I’m a pretty big Hitchcock fan, and after indulging in an impromptu marathon of his films, in particularly Marnie, I was struck by a scene wherein Marnie (Tippi Hedren) and Mark (Sean Connery) walk into a restaurant for a cup of coffee. It had never hit me before now, but I was silenced and thoughtful by the fact that in 1964 (when the movie was released), a black man and woman couldn’t have just waltzed into the place, sat down and expected a meal served by a cheerful waitress. Even when watching Casablanca for the first time (not a Hitchcock film, I know, it was rented with his films), I realized that in all of the suspenseful espionage romances like Casablanca or Notorious, there are no black people. And in fact, to this day, black people are never featured as stars of WWII-set romantic movies.

In history we’re taught very little of the contributions of minorities to historical events outside of a few touches on the “Indian Wars” of the 1870s, the footnote that is Crispus Attucks, and the Civil Rights Movement (and a few even mention Cesar Chavez!!). Because of this, most people–blacks included–think that pre-1960s, life for the black American was all bad. There isn’t anyone telling little black kids that we were cowboys, that we fought in major wars, that heck, there were African-American cryptologists working for the CIA in WWII!! And you wonder why black people tend to lack the type of soaring imagination and sense of wonder their white counterparts indulge in spades. The absence of blacks in mainstream history, among other minorities, not only spits in the faces of their many, many tremendous achievements for this country, but basically tells blacks and other minorities that we’re just footnotes in history, that we played no role in shaping the US, that we had no voices.

On the flip side, when minority-American history is spoken of, it’s always the negative, the product of White Guilt. Okay…slavery was bad, raping Native Americans of their land was bad, forcing the Chinese to work railroads and then wanting them to get out once the job was done was bad–but what about the fact that there were educated and wealthy blacks living in the North before the Civil War and after it? Why don’t aren’t black senators and representatives of the Restoration era in our history books? Why are those black cryptologists not even a footnote in history(I only stumbled upon it while Googling “african-americans wwii”)? Why, in Hollywood, is the history of blacks in films only focused on one or two things (Hattie McDaniel and Dorothy Dandridge)?

Edited: post at Racialicious goes hand in hand with the subject of this post.