Historic POC
February 3, 2015 7:58 AM   Subscribe

How to Make History by Tweeting an Old Photo. Spurred by discussions online about the whitewashing of history in TV shows, Mikki Kendall (@karnythia) started the hastag #HistoricPOC on both Twitter and Tumblr. Quantz and Mic have articles with some curated highlights. See also the Black History Album, Vintage Black Beauty, and Of Another Fashion Tumblrs.
posted by kmz (22 comments total) 26 users marked this as a favorite
 
This is the 2nd FPP today that has me doing the happy dance and has guided me to a treasure trove of material to explore on my own and also share with my kids. Hot damn! Thanks, kmz!
posted by lord_wolf at 8:12 AM on February 3, 2015 [1 favorite]


YES!

THIS!

Because of how history is taught, we tend to think of it as discrete events, even though it is all interconnected.

IS SO FSCKING TRUE!
posted by MartinWisse at 9:36 AM on February 3, 2015


Some interesting images there (and some, like the supposed "Pearl harbor firefighters" that are recycling old myths) but not many of them seem to address the original issue ("whitewashing of history in TV shows"). I mean, the argument over Agent Carter is not whether or not there were black people and other POC in the 1940s/50s, it's whether or not they would have been likely to be employed as agents in an outfit like the "Strategic Scientific Reserve." In other words, it's an argument about the degree of integration there was at the time. Photographs of black girl guides or what have you don't really seem to address that. What we would need is a photograph of, say, the OSS offices showing a reasonable sprinkling of POC, or the early CIA or what have you.

I wonder what the percentage of diverse hires in the CIA in, say, 1950 was?
posted by yoink at 9:41 AM on February 3, 2015 [2 favorites]


This picture of firefighters in Pearl Harbor (not dec 7) is awesome.
posted by deludingmyself at 9:41 AM on February 3, 2015


^and has some additional history as a prop photo, jinx! It definitely felt even more staged than Rosenthal's Iwo Jima pic, but I still love it.
posted by deludingmyself at 9:44 AM on February 3, 2015


That whole article is a truth bomb of course and the point it makes about the importance of showing black history as more than just mute oppression, of challenging that continuing white re-imagination of history and entertainment as something that happened to white people, is a great one.

The status quo view of American history is that of white people, with black Americans only shown in their roles of victims and only at discrete times (slavery, civil rights, erm) when the struggle for emancipation temporarily becomes part of American history because it cannot be ignored. Seeing black people outside that role is rare and it seems that black history, black contributions to American history outside that struggle is constantly being rediscovered and then re-forgotten, so that every generation of black artists|scientists|politicians is the first to break through and matter.
posted by MartinWisse at 9:45 AM on February 3, 2015


Here's a more extensive article going into the history of the Hawaiian firefighters photo.
posted by larrybob at 9:49 AM on February 3, 2015


I was reading this through at lunch and my current favorite rabbit hole is this piece about African American soldiers serving in the Philippines during the Philippine-American War (which was all of 20 years after Reconstruction) which starts off as a bog standard historical survey and then goes off into an fascinating space where Black soldiers, disillusioned by segregation, defect and join the Filipinos resisting their American occupiers. It's kind of awesome if you appreciate treason done for a moral purpose.
posted by bl1nk at 9:53 AM on February 3, 2015 [1 favorite]


I love this particular photo of Jazz Greats Dizzy Gillespie and Charlie Parker, particularly because of the guy off to the right looking upstaged by those two legends. That's John Coltrane.

I'm just a caveman, so I don't tweet. But if I did, this would be my #historicPOC
posted by mcstayinskool at 9:54 AM on February 3, 2015


Ali | Pelé <<< People of a certain age know exactly what I mean when I type those two words.
posted by NoMich at 10:29 AM on February 3, 2015


Also shout out to Medieval POC.
posted by Potomac Avenue at 10:50 AM on February 3, 2015 [1 favorite]


I mean, the argument over Agent Carter is not whether or not there were black people and other POC in the 1940s/50s, it's whether or not they would have been likely to be employed as agents in an outfit like the "Strategic Scientific Reserve." In other words, it's an argument about the degree of integration there was at the time. Photographs of black girl guides or what have you don't really seem to address that. What we would need is a photograph of, say, the OSS offices showing a reasonable sprinkling of POC, or the early CIA or what have you.

There's not really as much diversity as you would perhaps expect to see elsewhere though. I agree that the SSR is mostly white dudes for more or less historically sound reasons, but why such an otherwise whitewashed New York? I think the Tumblr discussion about Agent Carter's lack of diversity does expect rather too much of an eight-episode miniseries (that hasn't even finished airing yet) that is at its heart about Peggy Carter, but the criticism of lack of diversity in historical shows is apt. Also, this is a show based on comic books. I mean, Captain America managed to form himself an integrated unit during World War II and no one really bats an eye at that.

Basically, even if your show isn't "about" POC, there's value in having background diversity because that's true to life and to history. Using unexamined segregation as the basis for keeping your historical show lily-white is kind of shitty and perpetuates the kind of white-washed, incomplete history that walls off black history to the month of February and forgets about it the rest of the year.
posted by yasaman at 11:09 AM on February 3, 2015 [3 favorites]


The article itself points out: "But, in reality, President Roosevelt desegregated Federal employment by executive order in 1941," as a reason why Agent Carter shouldn't have been all-white. And as others pointed out, New York in particular was far from an all-white enclave.

The problem is that we base our portrayals of the past on the official versions of the past that we've been taught. And the past was very diverse, but the official white chroniclers tended to edit those bits out. So our pictures are faulty and incomplete. We know a lot less about what the past really looked like than we think we do.

I like Agent Carter so I'm not thinking the very white casting/setting is anything but clueless rather than malicious, but then, if you don't call Hollywood on cluelessness, they keep doing it, so even when you like a show you have to say "Well, yeah, that part could be better."

So this is a valuable and lovely project and I am all for it. More historical POCs, please.
posted by emjaybee at 11:22 AM on February 3, 2015


The article itself points out: "But, in reality, President Roosevelt desegregated Federal employment by executive order in 1941," as a reason why Agent Carter shouldn't have been all-white. And as others pointed out, New York in particular was far from an all-white enclave.

Right. My point is that the photos people are putting up tend not to address this point. That is, they're not showing "photo of NYC city street in 1954 with racially diverse pedestrians" or "photo of CIA [or Dept of Agriculture or Dept of Internal Affairs or whatever] offices showing racially diverse workforce." They're showing either "famous black musicians/sportspeople" (the black history that actually isn't usually forgotten) or "obscure black people doing ordinary things" but in a world that isn't visibly diverse.

I'm not saying that the critique of Agent Carter is wrong, I'm saying that these photos don't seem to address the thing that's being critiqued.

If Agent Carter features an episode in which there's a black jazz singer, I don't think anyone will hail it as breaking stunning new ground in the demolition of racial stereotypes. Nor, again, if they visit Harlem and we see lots of black people hanging out leading ordinary lives that are geographically segregated from white lives.

And when I asked about racial integration in the CIA (say) the question was entirely real. I have no idea how many POC I would expect to see if I got in a time machine and wandered into the CIA offices in 1950. Does anyone?
posted by yoink at 11:34 AM on February 3, 2015 [1 favorite]


It doesn't really matter how many black CIA agents there were -- my guess would be few to none -- rather that Agent Carter, not being a serious historical series anyway, could be slightly more modern in its casting.

Dr Who is a good example of a series that's set in the past a lot but doesn't make it an excuse to keep its cast white. It just ignores all that stuff.
posted by MartinWisse at 11:40 AM on February 3, 2015


To borrow an argument from Medieval POC (which is awesome, by the way): If you're going to invent a fantasy world with SUPER HEROES, why draw the line of "unrealistic" at the number of minorities present in a work place? Why is it more acceptable to have aliens than to have black people?

Also, the FBI had African American agents as early as 1919.

Also, I assume the creators of Agent Carter didn't really mean anything by it, they're just being lazy.
posted by ghostiger at 11:45 AM on February 3, 2015 [4 favorites]


It doesn't really matter how many black CIA agents there were -- my guess would be few to none -- rather that Agent Carter, not being a serious historical series anyway, could be slightly more modern in its casting.

So when this FPP started, it was "Agent Carter is failing to accurately represent the history of people of color in America." Now it's become "Agent Carter should represent the history of people of color in America less accurately because it's not serious anyway."
posted by ThatFuzzyBastard at 1:51 PM on February 3, 2015 [1 favorite]


I don't think there's a contradiction between saying "Real history was sometimes much more diverse than a shallow or eurocentric view of history might lead one to expect" and also saying "All right, here's a show where a woman is shown as having, not an impossible degree of success, but certainly an atypical degree of success - so who else might have had an atypical-but-not-impossible degree of success in FakeTVHistoryLand?"
posted by Jeanne at 4:59 PM on February 3, 2015 [3 favorites]


It doesn't really matter how many black CIA agents there were -- my guess would be few to none -- rather that Agent Carter, not being a serious historical series anyway, could be slightly more modern in its casting.

Dr Who is a good example of a series that's set in the past a lot but doesn't make it an excuse to keep its cast white. It just ignores all that stuff.


I agree entirely. But as ThatFuzzyBastard points out, that's not the argument the FPP was making. I really like the way Doctor Who says "the hell with historical accuracy, if we want to Queen Elizabeth I to have black courtiers, so be it." That's great. But it has nothing to do with an argument from historical accuracy.
posted by yoink at 9:19 PM on February 3, 2015 [1 favorite]


This is an amazing find.

I went to see Selma with my mother, and she told me some horrific stories about her father (he was an asshole). And we got into a discussion about family history and family history whitewashing. Definitely forwarding her this.
posted by DigDoug at 6:44 AM on February 4, 2015


Yeah, the linked article seems to think it'll blow our mind that people of color existed before 1963. Or perhaps that we'll share their amazement that black people didn't spend all their time marching? Either way, the FPP's expectation that this will be a shock is cute.
posted by ThatFuzzyBastard at 7:36 AM on February 4, 2015


Sadly, we're not all as enlightened as you are, TFB.
posted by kmz at 9:40 AM on February 4, 2015


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