tag:theconversation.com,2011:/global/topics/hamilton-28334/articlesHamilton – The Conversation2024-01-18T22:34:05Ztag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2208072024-01-18T22:34:05Z2024-01-18T22:34:05ZHamilton council passes a bylaw to end renovictions, helping to address housing affordability<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/570181/original/file-20240118-29-lbden9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C32%2C5463%2C3606&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Landlords in Hamilton will soon need to apply for a permit for renovations, a move aimed at ending renovictions.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">(Shutterstock)</span></span></figcaption></figure><iframe style="width: 100%; height: 100px; border: none; position: relative; z-index: 1;" allowtransparency="" allow="clipboard-read; clipboard-write" src="https://narrations.ad-auris.com/widget/the-conversation-canada/hamilton-council-passes-a-bylaw-to-end-renovictions-helping-to-address-housing-affordability" width="100%" height="400"></iframe>
<p>The City of Hamilton took bold action to end <a href="https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/hamilton/renoviction-bylaw-1.7086701">renovictions</a>, a practice where tenants are evicted from their homes due to renovations. The city’s <a href="https://pub-hamilton.escribemeetings.com/Meeting.aspx?Id=bfaf56c0-ab0a-4aa8-ae1a-487c82f0f38a&Agenda=Agenda&lang=English">General Issues Committee</a> (comprised of the mayor and all councillors) voted unanimously on Jan. 17 to adopt <a href="https://www.chch.com/hamilton-city-council-passes-anti-renoviction-by-law/">Ontario’s first anti-renoviction bylaw</a>. </p>
<p>Renovictions are one of the leading causes of the <a href="https://www.theglobeandmail.com/real-estate/vancouver/article-even-as-housing-plans-progress-truly-affordable-housing-is-being-lost/">erosion of existing affordable housing</a>. In some cases, renovation work is so extensive that it requires a landlord to have vacant possession of the unit. </p>
<p>However, in many other instances, evictions are done in “<a href="https://renovictionsto.com/RenovictionsTO-RenovictionsReport-Final.pdf">bad faith</a>,” and modest improvements are used as a pretext to remove sitting tenants and dramatically raise the rent for new ones.</p>
<h2>Licenses and permits</h2>
<p>Hamilton City Council will need to ratify the Renovations Licence and Relocation Bylaw at its meeting on Jan. 24. When it comes into effect, it will require any landlord issuing an <a href="https://www.toolsfortenantrights.com/n13-2">N13 eviction notice</a> to obtain a licence from the city, which will cost $715. In order to get that licence, they will need to first obtain a building permit and provide proof from a qualified expert, such as an engineer, that vacant possession is required in order to carry out the renovation work. </p>
<p>In other words, evicting tenants for basic repairs, or to perform a few cosmetic upgrades will no longer be permitted.</p>
<p>If this is approved, the bylaw clearly stipulates that landlords either provide alternative accommodation in another unit, or financial compensation to the tenant for the duration of the renovation. This compensation is a top up between what the tenant was paying in rent and the average market rent of a similar unit.</p>
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<h2>Addressing an existing loophole</h2>
<p>I cannot stress enough how different this is from the current situation facing Ontario tenants. <a href="https://www.ola.org/en/legislative-business/bills/parliament-43/session-1/bill-97">Under existing rules</a>, while tenants have the right to return to their renovated unit once the work has been completed, this rarely happens in practice. </p>
<p>The overarching reason for this is that landlords have no responsibility to their former tenants once the eviction is done. The onus of responsibility to exercise the right to return is squarely and solely placed in the hands of tenants. The relationship between landlord and tenant is severed, and it’s up to the tenant to re-establish it if they want to return home.</p>
<p>That’s the major loophole in the current rules. Combined with a lack of rent control on <a href="https://www.acto.ca/vacancy-decontrol-what-is-it-and-why-does-it-matter/">vacant units</a> (meaning a landlord can charge whatever they want when a new tenant moves in), this creates a huge financial incentive to evict long-term tenants, placing a severe burden on them. Evicting long-term tenants in favour of higher-paying new tenants under the guise of renovictions <a href="https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/hamilton/hamilton-tenants-affordable-units-1.6796324">erodes much of our existing housing stock that is affordable</a>.</p>
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<a href="https://theconversation.com/4-affordable-housing-strategies-that-are-working-in-canada-215137">4 affordable housing strategies that are working in Canada</a>
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<p>Hamilton’s bylaw aims at addressing this in two ways. First, if there are actual instances when the scale of renovations requires tenants to leave, it provides clear pathways and expectations to ensure that they can return once the work is completed. </p>
<p>Second, for those bad faith landlords who want to use renovation merely as a cover to force tenants out of their homes, these new rules provide enough of a disincentive and discouragement to severely curtail and possibly even eliminate the cruel and unjust practice of renovictions.</p>
<p>The bylaw achieves these objectives by binding landlord and tenant together throughout the entire process. It clearly stipulates that the onus of responsibility to exercise the right to return to their former unit is most definitely a shared one between the landlord who owns the home, and the tenant who lives in it and considers it their home.</p>
<p>This is what other successful anti-renoviction and tenant protection policies do, including in <a href="https://www.newwestcity.ca/housing/renovictions-tenant-protection-and-resources">New Westminster, B.C.</a>, which was the first city in Canada to meaningfully address renovictions and <a href="https://www.burnaby.ca/our-city/programs-and-policies/housing/tenant-assistance">Burnaby, B.C.</a>, which arguably has the best tenant protection rules in Canada.</p>
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<span class="caption">New Westminster repealed its anti-renoviction municipal bylaw because it became redundant after the provincial government amended the Residential Tenancy Act.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">(Shutterstock)</span></span>
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<h2>Action for change</h2>
<p>It is important to stress that these bylaws don’t emerge out of thin air. They develop through a combination of council members and mayors who champion these causes, staff who conduct research and draft out bylaws as well as advocates, tenants and activists who campaign and organize for a better, fairer and more equitable city. </p>
<p>Several Hamilton councillors have long supported cracking down on renovictions; however, much of the credit for this new bylaw needs to go to <a href="https://acorncanada.org/locations/hamilton-acorn/">ACORN Hamilton</a>, a tenant advocacy and organizing group that has campaigned for years. At their request, I was a delegate at the General Issues Committee meeting in my capacity as a housing expert.</p>
<p>At several council and <a href="https://theconversation.com/cities-must-take-immediate-action-against-renovictions-to-address-housing-crisis-204170">committee meetings</a> over the <a href="https://www.thespec.com/news/hamilton-region/hamilton-city-staff-sorry-about-botched-renovictions-report/article_33aaef91-930b-581f-aa28-62ffa5e7de04.html">past year</a>, tenants and ACORN members shared their own personal experiences of renoviction and its impacts.</p>
<h2>Actual impacts</h2>
<p>Lived experiences often do not show up in statistics. Because of this, it is often <a href="https://doi.org/10.1016/j.geoforum.2021.06.013">hidden from mainstream planning, policy and political debates</a>. And when it’s invisible, it is easy to conclude that renovictions are not a big problem. </p>
<p>My own research, conducted with the <a href="https://www.spno.ca/">Social Planning Network of Ontario</a>, has shown that formal evictions enforced by the courts (and therefore visible within conventional statistics) constitute a <a href="https://www.spno.ca/news/media-releases/144-new-research-report-on-tenant-displacement-across-ontario">tiny fraction of displacement experienced by tenants</a>. </p>
<p>Some <a href="https://www.therecord.com/news/waterloo-region/displaced-renovictions-harassment-pushing-more-vulnerable-tenants-out-of-kitchener-s-inner-suburbs/article_51e68be8-154d-5056-bd74-7d5e74ec5064.html">common tactics used by landlords</a> to force tenants out include offering tenants a few thousand dollars to leave, coercion, intimidation, harassment or ignoring repair requests.</p>
<p>Tenant organizing and advocacy not only fights back against unfair landlords, it provides the necessary push to compel councils to act. Without ACORN’s tireless efforts, Hamilton councillors may not have unanimously adopted Ontario’s first anti-renoviction bylaw.</p>
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<figcaption><span class="caption">CTV News looks at how the province of Ontario is attempting to address renovictions.</span></figcaption>
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<h2>Future housing needs</h2>
<p>In Ontario, this is just the start of action to end renovictions. <a href="https://www.therecord.com/opinion/columnists/waterloo-region-should-consider-legal-protection-for-tenants-against-renovicting-landlords/article_ba8eb223-3b2a-572c-accd-7315e8708dc4.html">Communities across the province</a> are watching closely and developing their own bylaws. </p>
<p>British Columbia provides further inspiration. New Westminster repealed its municipal bylaw in 2021, not because it wasn’t effective (it basically ended renoviction), but because it became redundant after the provincial government <a href="https://www.bclaws.gov.bc.ca/civix/document/id/complete/statreg/00_02078_01#section49.2">amended the Residential Tenancy Act</a>.</p>
<p>This is the kind of future tenants need in Ontario. There is a growing realization that <a href="https://www.thestar.com/opinion/contributors/the-province-is-setting-a-housing-affordability-trap-for-toronto/article_823f8447-250a-53a4-8b02-2cff8aac11bc.html">we cannot simply build our way out of a housing crisis</a>. We need to build the right kind of supply and proactively work to protect tenants and existing affordable housing. Cracking down on cruel and unjust evictions is an essential way to achieve that.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/220807/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Brian Doucet receives funding from SSHRC and the Canada Research Chairs program. Some of his research is conducted in partnership with the Hamilton Community Foundation, Social Development Centre Waterloo Region and Social Planning Network of Ontario. He has co-written reports on housing and mobility for local governments in Ontario. On Jan. 17, 2024 he delegated in support of Hamilton's renoviction bylaw at the city's General Issues Committee.</span></em></p>Hamilton city council’s vote to pass an anti-renoviction bylaw is an important step in addressing housing affordability in Ontario.Brian Doucet, Canada Research Chair in Urban Change and Social Inclusion, School of Planning, University of WaterlooLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2187172023-12-05T19:24:24Z2023-12-05T19:24:24ZNapoleon director Ridley Scott is calling on us historians to ‘get a life’ – and he has a point. Art is about more than historical facts<p>The release of Napoleon unleashed a torrent of objections to <a href="https://theconversation.com/did-napoleon-really-fire-at-the-pyramids-a-historian-explains-the-truth-behind-the-legends-of-ridley-scotts-biopic-217951">historical errors</a> in the movie. </p>
<p>Social media platforms were inundated with outrage – particularly from military historians – objecting from everything from details on uniforms to military formations. </p>
<p>These heated responses highlighted a more fundamental question: how should historians respond to creative works about history? Do historians have a public responsibility to apply their specialist knowledge to contest spurious claims about the past? Or should they simply respect creative licence, and let moviegoers have their fun? </p>
<p>Historical accuracy matters. But more important for historians should be whether creative works pass the test of authenticity: whether a creative work “rings true” to the historical context as a whole. </p>
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<a href="https://theconversation.com/did-napoleon-really-fire-at-the-pyramids-a-historian-explains-the-truth-behind-the-legends-of-ridley-scotts-biopic-217951">Did Napoleon really fire at the pyramids? A historian explains the truth behind the legends of Ridley Scott's biopic</a>
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<h2>Historical inaccuracies</h2>
<p>Whatever the cinematic opulence of Ridley Scott’s battle scenes and of the coronation of Napoleon and Josephine in 1804, historians have railed against a plethora of shortcomings and silences.</p>
<p>Careful makeup could not disguise 49-year-old Joaquin Phoenix as the 24-year-old lieutenant who first came to notice at the battle of Toulon in 1793. The portly, middle-aged Robespierre (Sam Troughton) bears no resemblance to the young revolutionary in appearance or style. Napoleon was not at the execution of Marie-Antoinette, nor did he order his troops to open fire on the Pyramids when in Egypt. </p>
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<p>There are many more serious objections one could make – notably of silences about Napoleon’s failure to suppress guerilla resistance in Spain and his disastrous attempt to reimpose slavery in French colonies in the Caribbean after its abolition in 1794. </p>
<p>But historical inaccuracies are nothing new. Similar, if less strident, objections may be made about all historical recreations on film or in theatre.</p>
<p>In the celebrated Australian movie The Dish (2000), Rob Sitch and his team located the first reception of news of the Apollo 11 moon landing and Neil Armstrong’s famous words about his “one small step” at the iconic Parkes Observatory rather than, as in reality, at the NASA stations at Honeysuckle Creek near Canberra and in California. Cinematic attraction trumped accuracy. </p>
<p>The 1982 film Breaker Morant is <a href="https://theconversation.com/pardon-me-but-breaker-morant-was-guilty-5025">still receiving criticism</a> for its lionising of Morant. The pivotal Battle of Stirling Bridge scene in Braveheart <a href="https://www.buzzfeed.com/bendzialdowski/inaccurate-films">didn’t include a bridge</a> in the film. Hospitals <a href="https://www.warhistoryonline.com/featured/endless-historical-errors-made-pearl-harbor-movie.html">weren’t a target</a> during the attack on Pearl Harbor.</p>
<p>Far more controversial was the scintillating musical Hamilton (2015) created by Lin-Manuel Miranda, based on the prize-winning 2004 biography of Alexander Hamilton by Ron Chernow. </p>
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<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/563222/original/file-20231204-29-p27cgk.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Production image of Hamlet." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/563222/original/file-20231204-29-p27cgk.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/563222/original/file-20231204-29-p27cgk.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=338&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/563222/original/file-20231204-29-p27cgk.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=338&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/563222/original/file-20231204-29-p27cgk.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=338&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/563222/original/file-20231204-29-p27cgk.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=424&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/563222/original/file-20231204-29-p27cgk.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=424&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/563222/original/file-20231204-29-p27cgk.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=424&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<span class="caption">Hamilton cast people of colour as the Founding Fathers.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Disney</span></span>
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<p>Miranda explicitly recognised the musical was his interpretation of the founding of the United States from today’s perspective, deliberately cast non-white actors as the Founding Fathers and drew on musical styles ranging from R&B to soul and hip hop. </p>
<p>Despite his candour, <a href="https://screenrant.com/hamilton-historical-inaccuracies-wrong-true-story/">historians rushed</a> to point out errors, exaggerations and elisions. Hamilton’s contributions to the battlefield during the American War of Independence are exaggerated for effect. The Schuyler sisters articulate feminist ideas far from those they would have had at the time. While Miranda makes much of Hamilton’s opposition to slavery, Hamilton was personally involved in purchasing slaves and his wife came from a wealthy slave-owning family. </p>
<p>But artists create works within different genres to that of professional history. They are not creating documentaries that can be evaluated according to the historical conventions of the careful use of available evidence, and respect for ambiguity and uncertainty. These need to be considered, first and foremost, as creative works. </p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/what-alexander-hamiltons-deep-connections-to-slavery-reveal-about-the-need-for-reparations-today-151459">What Alexander Hamilton's deep connections to slavery reveal about the need for reparations today</a>
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<h2>A place for historians</h2>
<p>As <a href="https://variety.com/2023/film/news/ridley-scott-napoleon-historical-fact-checkers-1235781258/">Scott snapped</a>, the fact-checkers should “get a life!” and join the crowds enjoying his interpretation. </p>
<p>Instead of nitpicking the historical details of entertainment, perhaps historians should celebrate the fact that a long historical drama has been an immediate box office success, <a href="https://www.nme.com/en_au/news/film/napoleon-conquers-french-box-office-despite-vicious-reviews-3549901">including in France</a> – home to some of the film’s most vocal critics. </p>
<p>People who attend Napoleon, or any historically-based work of art, are more likely to be curious to know more rather than be gullible about its historical accuracy. </p>
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<span class="caption">Jacques-Louis David’s 1810 portrait highlighted the Napoleonic law code on his desk.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.nga.gov/collection/art-object-page.46114.html">National Gallery of Art</a></span>
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<p>Of course, historians should not fall silent on failings of historical accuracy, but the central issue for historians should be authenticity. That is, a creative work should be evaluated by historians not so much on whether specific details are accurate but on whether the producer’s imagination captures the essence of the historical moment. </p>
<p>“Poetic licence” permits selectivity and exaggeration in the interests of evoking a deeper meaning. (Of course, that cannot excuse deliberate distortion unless, as in Miranda’s case, it is openly acknowledged.)</p>
<p>The real weakness of Napoleon is Scott’s failure to ground the Emperor’s motivations in the principles underpinning his 1804 legal code – which he saw as his greatest legacy. Scott’s focus on Napoleon’s brutality and megalomania means the explanation for his behaviour boils down to a mixture of murderous territorial greed and a pathetic need to impress Josephine, instead of a more complex impulse to also impose revolutionary reforms. </p>
<p>In their public comments, historians might focus more on the level of contextual veracity in creative works and leave their long lists of errors of detail to professional journals. The problem with the Napoleon movie is not so much its errors of detail as its lack of authenticity about what we know of the man and his world view.</p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/napoleon-bonaparte-features-in-60-000-books-and-more-than-100-films-does-ridley-scotts-stand-up-212782">Napoleon Bonaparte features in 60,000 books and more than 100 films – does Ridley Scott's stand up?</a>
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<img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/218717/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Peter McPhee does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Napoleon has unleashed a torrent of objections to the film’s historical errors. More important for historians should be whether creative works pass the test of authenticity.Peter McPhee, Emeritus professor, The University of MelbourneLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2046062023-11-15T13:22:50Z2023-11-15T13:22:50ZFrom ancient Greece to Broadway, music has played a critical role in theater<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/557575/original/file-20231104-17-el5el8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=747%2C286%2C4559%2C3246&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">The remnants of a Greek theater in Sicily.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/photo/panoramic-sights-of-the-beautiful-greek-theater-of-royalty-free-image/1345579639?phrase=++aulos+player+greek+theater&adppopup=true">Fausto Riolo/Getty Images</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Though anxiety about the fate of live theater performances still lingers, Broadway is celebrating its <a href="https://playbill.com/article/whats-currently-playing-on-broadway">third season</a> since <a href="https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/lifestyle/arts/broadway-reopening-pandemic-new-york-city-1235046751/">reopening after the COVID-19 pandemic</a>, with a lineup dominated once again <a href="https://www.broadwayworld.com/shows/broadway-musicals.php">by musicals</a>. </p>
<p>The new season includes long-running hits like “<a href="https://hamiltonmusical.com/new-york/">Hamilton</a>,” revivals of classics like “<a href="https://merrilyonbroadway.com/">Merrily We Roll Along</a>,” new musical adaptations of nonmusical works like “<a href="https://daysofwineandrosesbroadway.com/">Days of Wine and Roses</a>,” and even “<a href="https://www.theshed.org/program/301-here-we-are">Here We Are</a>,” the last musical by <a href="https://www.sondheimsociety.com/">Stephen Sondheim</a>. </p>
<p>Despite its centrality to today’s theater, musicals are often thought of as second class to what is considered legitimate theater, such as William Shakespeare’s “<a href="https://www.folger.edu/explore/shakespeares-works/hamlet/">Hamlet</a>” or Arthur Miller’s “<a href="https://salesmanonbroadway.com/">Death of a Salesman</a>.” In both of those works, music plays little or no role. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="The names of different musicals are illuminated by neon signs." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/557877/original/file-20231106-28-ia4o28.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/557877/original/file-20231106-28-ia4o28.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/557877/original/file-20231106-28-ia4o28.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/557877/original/file-20231106-28-ia4o28.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/557877/original/file-20231106-28-ia4o28.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=565&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/557877/original/file-20231106-28-ia4o28.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=565&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/557877/original/file-20231106-28-ia4o28.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=565&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Broadway musical theater billboards in Times Square in New York City.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/photo/broadway-theater-billboards-new-york-royalty-free-image/583765685?phrase=broadway+night&adppopup=true">Ozgur Donmaz/Getty Images</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>But musicals have been the dominant form of theater across cultures and throughout most of history, including in ancient Greece, the birthplace of theater.</p>
<h2>Music, words and songs</h2>
<p><a href="https://brill.com/view/journals/grms/10/2/article-p306_4.xml">My research</a> focuses on the tragedies and comedies of ancient Greece and Rome. Though no scores from these original plays exist, a remarkable number of clues about the sound of ancient theater can be found in the surviving texts of the plays and other sources.</p>
<p>Evidence reveals that the plays of ancient Greece and Rome were decidedly musical affairs. </p>
<p>For example, in a conspicuous place during the performance stood an elaborately dressed player of the “aulos,” a loud and strident woodwind instrument consisting of two pipes played simultaneously. Both actors and choruses sang during their performances <a href="https://www.emousike.com/athenaeuspaean">to the accompaniment of this instrument</a>.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="In this illustration, a man is using two long pipes as a musical instrument." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/557852/original/file-20231106-25-unw1fz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/557852/original/file-20231106-25-unw1fz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=750&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/557852/original/file-20231106-25-unw1fz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=750&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/557852/original/file-20231106-25-unw1fz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=750&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/557852/original/file-20231106-25-unw1fz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=943&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/557852/original/file-20231106-25-unw1fz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=943&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/557852/original/file-20231106-25-unw1fz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=943&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">An illustration of a man playing the ‘aulos,’ or double pipe, in ancient Greece.</span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Just as in modern musicals, the important components of what made the plays work were the actors’ use of words both spoken and sung.</p>
<h2>Oedipus’ woeful song</h2>
<p>Consider Sophocles’ “<a href="https://classics.mit.edu/Sophocles/oedipus.html">Oedipus the King</a>,” thought by many to be the quintessential Greek tragedy, and often taught and performed as a drama without music. The plot and message of the tragedy are profound and disturbing. </p>
<p>Though Oedipus rises to the heights of human success and becomes an admired ruler of the city of Thebes, he is unaware that he had murdered his father and married his mother. When he learns the truth, he blinds himself and begs to be driven from the city.</p>
<p>Music does much of the work in making this powerful play effective. </p>
<p>Clues in the text of “Oedipus the King” suggest that when it was first performed in about 430 B.C., just under a fifth of the verses were sung or chanted to the accompaniment of the aulos. </p>
<p>Most of the play’s passages accompanied by music are <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dc97mwbbMds">sung by the chorus</a>. Far from mere interludes, the chorus’s songs expressed key themes in both their words and their music.</p>
<p>When the chorus first enters, for example, they sing stately prayers like the one in which they address the oracle of Apollo:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Sweet voiced oracle, Zeus-sent, tell me, what is your message?</p>
</blockquote>
<p>But later in the song, their rhythm becomes less self-assured when they turn from prayer to despair at the plague that afflicts their city:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>O dear, I’m bearing countless toils!</p>
</blockquote>
<p>In conspicuous contrast to the chorus’s emotional songs, Oedipus does not sing through most of the play in his attempt to maintain control in the face of ever more threatening revelations. </p>
<p>The contrast becomes most pointed when the chorus, singing, defends Oedipus’ brother-in-law against a charge that he is plotting to gain the throne:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Don’t strike down in dishonor, on an unclear charge, a dear one who has sworn an oath.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Then Oedipus replies, speaking and not singing:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Know well that when you seek this you are seeking death or exile from this land for me.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Oedipus later yields to the chorus’s wish, but his refusal to participate in their musical performance reflects both his reluctance and his determination to remain in charge. </p>
<figure class="align-right ">
<img alt="A marble sculpture of the head of a bearded white man." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/557542/original/file-20231103-22-37nlbl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/557542/original/file-20231103-22-37nlbl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=784&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/557542/original/file-20231103-22-37nlbl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=784&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/557542/original/file-20231103-22-37nlbl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=784&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/557542/original/file-20231103-22-37nlbl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=985&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/557542/original/file-20231103-22-37nlbl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=985&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/557542/original/file-20231103-22-37nlbl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=985&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">A marble bust of the playwright Sophocles.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/bust-of-sophocles-athenian-playwright-roman-sculpture-in-news-photo/159829159?adppopup=true">DeAgostini/Getty Images</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>But when Oedipus has met disaster and enters from his palace after blinding himself, he sings in his distress, and he calls attention to the change in his performance mode by addressing his now uncontrolled voice:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Oh, Oh, how miserable I am. Where on earth am I going? Where does my voice fly out uncontrollably? Oh, my fortune, where have you leapt to?</p>
</blockquote>
<p>In contrast to the earlier scenes, it is now the chorus who speaks, distancing themselves from their fallen king:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>To someplace dreadful, unbearable to listen to or to see.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Recent productions of Greek drama have followed the textual clues to music provided in the texts, with chorus and actors alternating unaccompanied spoken performance with sung verses, accompanied by the aulos or other instruments.</p>
<p>Notable are performances in ancient Greek at <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gM4sYJ7hdqg">Columbia/Barnard</a> and in English translation at the <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-MVyAZbRaK0">University of Vermont</a>. These performances indicate how much Greek theater has in common with modern musical theater on Broadway and around the world today.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/204606/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Timothy J. Moore does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>The use of music in theater goes back to ancient Greece, and its popularity has grown to the modern-day productions of ‘Hamilton.’Timothy J. Moore, John and Penelope Biggs Distinguished Professor of Classics, Arts & Sciences at Washington University in St. LouisLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1913162022-10-05T16:41:16Z2022-10-05T16:41:16ZLong-term renters evicted during housing boom face homelessness<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/487896/original/file-20221003-22-rmdkvn.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C101%2C8470%2C5287&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Elderly long-term renters are facing the very real risk of homelessness as skyrocketing rents encourage landlords to sell. </span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">(Shutterstock)</span></span></figcaption></figure><iframe style="width: 100%; height: 100px; border: none; position: relative; z-index: 1;" allowtransparency="" allow="clipboard-read; clipboard-write" src="https://narrations.ad-auris.com/widget/the-conversation-canada/long-term-renters-evicted-during-housing-boom-face-homelessness" width="100%" height="400"></iframe>
<p>Andy would rather remain as anonymous as possible because, “it’s kind of embarrassing people knowing how little you have.” He has been living in his home for 21 years. It is a postwar house in the Greater Hamilton, Ont. area with a covered front porch, postage stamp lawn and plaster that has begun to crack. His cat, who “isn’t as friendly as she looks,” likes to sleep in his TV chair in the front room. Andy is single and on a fixed income. And his landlord is selling the house. </p>
<p>I spoke to Andy when I went to view the property with my husband. We recently qualified for a small mortgage and are looking for a fixer-upper. I’m a PhD candidate at the University of Guelph studying non-profit housing advocacy and he is an architectural technologist. </p>
<p>That’s how I ended up meeting the elderly gentleman with the neatly combed white hair. Andy is only one example of an under-discussed but very real problem within Canada’s housing crisis. </p>
<p>As property values <a href="https://cmhc.ent.sirsidynix.net/client/en_US/CMHCLibrary/search/detailnonmodal/ent:$002f$002fSD_ILS$002f0$002fSD_ILS:109959/one?qu=median+house+price&te=ILS&lm=CMHC_DOCUMENTS">hit historic highs</a> in cities across Canada, long-term renters find themselves in an increasingly precarious position.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/487900/original/file-20221003-12-cg6luf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="An elderly woman sits at a table looking out of a window. There is a green plant on the windowsill." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/487900/original/file-20221003-12-cg6luf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/487900/original/file-20221003-12-cg6luf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/487900/original/file-20221003-12-cg6luf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/487900/original/file-20221003-12-cg6luf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/487900/original/file-20221003-12-cg6luf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/487900/original/file-20221003-12-cg6luf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/487900/original/file-20221003-12-cg6luf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Rising rents mean many elderly tenants cannot afford to continue living in their homes.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">(Shutterstock)</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Skyrocketing rents</h2>
<p>As real estate prices rise, the temptation for landlords to sell is high. Even the market correction we are currently experiencing pales in comparison with the rise over the last few years. The average price of a home in Canada this August (heavily influenced by the Toronto and Vancouver markets) was <a href="https://stats.crea.ca/en-CA/">$637,673</a>. That is down 3.9 per cent from the same month last year, but still much higher than the <a href="https://stats.crea.ca/en-CA/">average of $504,409</a> five years ago.</p>
<p>The average monthly rent for a two-bedroom apartment in Hamilton, the closest city to where Andy lives, is <a href="https://www.cmhc-schl.gc.ca/en/professionals/housing-markets-data-and-research/housing-data/data-tables/rental-market/rental-market-report-data-tables">$1,362</a>. Twenty-one years ago, it was <a href="https://cmhc.ent.sirsidynix.net/client/en_US/CMHCLibrary/search/results?qu=average+rent+1992-2016&te=ILS">$740</a>. Because Andy has been in his apartment for so long, he pays $525 in rent. That is around 25 per cent of his income, which is below $2000 a month. </p>
<p>Renters in Ontario are grandfathered in at their original rent, plus the yearly legally allowed increase, which since 2000, has <a href="https://www.ontario.ca/page/residential-rent-increases">ranged from 1.5 to 2.9 per cent</a> of the rent. However, landlords can still raise rent at their discretion between tenants — a result of Mike Harris’ government <a href="https://www.thestar.com/news/gta/2019/05/16/sublets-on-the-rise-as-wanderlust-renters-are-holding-onto-their-apartment-for-dear-life.html">scrapping vacancy rent control in 1997</a>, the same year the federal government disinvested from social housing. Vacancy rent control is when there are <a href="https://www.torontotenants.org/it_s_time_for_vacancy_rent_control">limits on how much a landlord can raise rents in between tenants</a> and when a property changes hands. </p>
<h2>Real risks of homelessness</h2>
<p>But selling property out from under long-time renters, some of them elderly and on fixed incomes, can have devastating consequences. Waitlists for rent-geared-to-income housing in Ontario are long — in Toronto, a staggering <a href="https://www.toronto.ca/city-government/data-research-maps/research-reports/housing-and-homelessness-research-and-reports/social-housing-waiting-list-reports/">80,532 people are on the active waitlist</a>. </p>
<p>Waitlists for subsidized housing <a href="https://settlement.org/ontario/housing/subsidized-housing/subsidized-housing/how-long-do-i-have-to-wait-for-subsidized-housing/">can be up to 10 years long</a>. Andy says that where he lives, “I’m on a list to be on the list — a year, maybe?” So a person cannot be guaranteed a rent-geared-to-income placement before they are expected to vacate their home. There are also the more intangible things that make a home one’s own. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/487904/original/file-20221003-26-v9kupr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="An elderly couple stand in front of a house holding hands." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/487904/original/file-20221003-26-v9kupr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/487904/original/file-20221003-26-v9kupr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/487904/original/file-20221003-26-v9kupr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/487904/original/file-20221003-26-v9kupr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/487904/original/file-20221003-26-v9kupr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/487904/original/file-20221003-26-v9kupr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/487904/original/file-20221003-26-v9kupr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Landlords selling property out from under long-term renters, some of them elderly and on fixed incomes, can have devastating consequences.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">(Shutterstock)</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Andy owns his own kitchen appliances and likes to cook. “If they stuff me in a little apartment, I’ll have to give up my dream stove. I call it my dream stove cause it has gas and a grill and everything… It’s the little things, you know, that bother you the most.”</p>
<p>The government should not assume that family and friends can pick up the slack of a flagging social housing system. If their landlord decides to sell and they’re a single, long-term renter from a working-class family, whose friends are also working class, everyone they know might be in a similar situation. If the house sells and people are not at the top of the rent-geared-to-income waitlist, a person could face homelessness.</p>
<h2>What is to be done?</h2>
<p>My first suggestion would be to modify the affordability standards in the <a href="https://www.cmhc-schl.gc.ca/en/professionals/project-funding-and-mortgage-financing/funding-programs/all-funding-programs/rental-construction-financing-initiative">Rental Construction Financing Initiative</a>, which forms a large part of the National Housing Strategy investment. Currently, a large portion of these funds go to for-profit developers who promise to abide by the <a href="https://www.cmhc-schl.gc.ca/en/professionals/project-funding-and-mortgage-financing/funding-programs/all-funding-programs/rental-construction-financing-initiative">NHS’s affordability standards</a>. </p>
<p>However, the standards define affordability as up to 30 per cent of the median income of all families in the area (including homeowners and wealthy families). In some areas, by the NHS’s standard, affordability can be counted as high as <a href="https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/nova-scotia/rental-construction-financing-cmhc-loans-average-affordable-rent-1.6173487">$1500 a month</a>. Furthermore, units must be kept at this “affordable” level for only 10 years. </p>
<p>Affordability should be calculated in a way that focuses on the median of lower-income households only. If funds allocated to build affordable housing are based on that metric, it might help build up a more affordable stock.</p>
<p>Robust investment in permanent housing that is affordable for lower-income households would help curb the immediate crisis affecting Andy and so many others. This would go a long way towards stabilizing the rental market so that if people need to change residences, they won’t be left out in the cold.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/191316/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Edith Wilson is a Canadian Housing Evidence Collaborative Emerging Scholar. She also volunteers with the Hamilton Community Land Trust. </span></em></p>As property values skyrocket, long-term renters — many of whom are elderly — face the very real risk of homelessness.Edith Wilson, PhD Candidate, Department of Sociology, University of GuelphLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1611602021-05-30T11:17:44Z2021-05-30T11:17:44ZThe high cost of advocating for Palestine<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/402248/original/file-20210524-23-2ckd69.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=17%2C0%2C5797%2C2999&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Those speaking out for Palestinian human rights continue to be sidelined and silenced in Canadian institutions. </span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">THE CANADIAN PRESS/Justin Tang </span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Thousands of people across <a href="https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/demonstrations-canada-israel-palestinian-conflict-1.6028550">Canada</a>, and <a href="https://www.aljazeera.com/gallery/2021/5/23/in-pictures-palestinian-solidarity-protests-around-the-world">around the world</a>, have recently taken to the streets to protest the <a href="https://www.cbc.ca/news/world/israel-airstrikes-gaza-rockets-1.6030713">latest Israeli military action against Palestinians</a>. </p>
<p>My research examines how Muslim Canadians often face <a href="https://csalateral.org/issue/8-2/webs-of-relationships-pedagogies-citizenship-muslims-canada-el-sherif/">severe consequences for protesting prevalent social understandings in Canada</a>. National conversations and encounters with state institutions <a href="https://doi.org/10.1080/03626784.2017.1409590">educate them about their “place.”</a></p>
<p>My most recent example of this is anecdotal and comes from a personal experience. In Hamilton, I attended a <a href="https://www.thespec.com/news/hamilton-region/2021/05/17/a-dozen-ticketed-as-nearly-1000-attend-pro-palestinian-rally-in-hamilton.html">pro-Palestine rally</a> with some friends. By our count, police issued tickets to at least eight Muslim women wearing hijabs out of a total of 12 tickets issued. </p>
<p>My close friend, who wears a hijab, had arrived at the protest earlier than me with her two school-aged kids. Although they wore masks and stood socially distanced from the small crowd of protesters, two officers approached her and spoke to her aggressively about her violation of the <a href="https://news.ontario.ca/en/release/1000124/ontario-extending-stay-at-home-order-until-june-2">Ontario stay-at-home order</a>. According to her, one of them said: “I can ticket you or arrest you.” They issued her two tickets, each over $800.</p>
<p>At that time, people were just beginning to congregate at the protest but Hamilton’s streets were full of people.</p>
<p>Ticketing these eight women who wear the hijab is racial profiling. This targeting is typical of patterns I have found in my research. As a researcher on Muslim Canadian citizenship, I examine what happens <a href="https://csalateral.org/issue/8-2/webs-of-relationships-pedagogies-citizenship-muslims-canada-el-sherif/">when Muslim Canadians challenge Canada’s social order</a>.</p>
<p>Muslim Canadians who wear a hijab are seen to have less of a right to protest. They are called out more viciously, censured more severely and generally told to be grateful to the country that welcomed them — even if they are born and raised in Canada.</p>
<p>When it comes to Palestine, Muslim and Arab Canadians are expected to be silent. This connects to a wider pattern of systematically silencing anyone who advocates for Palestine. People with no ethnic connection to the region are targeted as well. </p>
<h2>Progessive Except for Palestine</h2>
<p>Last summer, the University of Toronto’s Faculty of Law attracted international attention after it <a href="https://www.newyorker.com/news/our-columnists/did-a-university-of-toronto-donor-block-the-hiring-of-a-scholar-for-her-writing-on-palestine">rescinded its offer of employment to Valentina Azarova</a>, a Germany-based human rights lawyer and scholar. The university stated that this was due to issues arranging a visa and work authorization. However, several others, <a href="https://www.thestar.com/news/gta/2021/05/19/amnesty-international-suspends-ties-with-university-of-toronto-law-program.html">including human rights organizations</a>, believe the offer was rescinded over Azarova’s Palestinian human rights work. An <a href="https://thevarsity.ca/2021/04/04/ihrp-controversy-report-concludes-external-pressure-did-not-influence-hiring-decision/">investigation into the incident</a> has since absolved the University of Toronto. However, numerous voices have challenged the integrity of those findings. </p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/criticizing-israel-is-not-antisemitic-its-academic-freedom-148864">Criticizing Israel is not antisemitic — it's academic freedom</a>
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<p>Vincent Wong, a lawyer, research associate and PhD student at the University of Toronto law school, was one of the hiring committee members and had a front-row seat to the entire process. <a href="https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2020/9/20/anti-palestinian-racism-appointment-row-at-toronto-university">He resigned from his job in protest</a>. In an incisive analysis in OpinioJuris, an international law blog, Wong <a href="http://opiniojuris.org/2021/04/06/what-the-ihrp-hiring-scandal-tells-us-about-intersectional-privilege-in-canadian-legal-institutions/">characterized the de-hiring and subsequent investigation as layers upon layers of white male privilege</a>.</p>
<p>In April, the Canadian Association of University Teachers (CAUT), an association of over 70,000 members, voted unanimously to <a href="https://censureuoft.ca/about/">censure the University of Toronto</a> for their racism and disregard for Azarova’s rights.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/402941/original/file-20210526-21-18btm0t.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="A sign for the University of Toronto in front of a footpath." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/402941/original/file-20210526-21-18btm0t.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/402941/original/file-20210526-21-18btm0t.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/402941/original/file-20210526-21-18btm0t.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/402941/original/file-20210526-21-18btm0t.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/402941/original/file-20210526-21-18btm0t.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=502&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/402941/original/file-20210526-21-18btm0t.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=502&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/402941/original/file-20210526-21-18btm0t.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=502&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<span class="caption">An investigation into the revocation of Valentina Azarova’s job offer absolved the University of Toronto. However, numerous voices have challenged the integrity of those findings.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">(Shutterstock)</span></span>
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<p>This is not an isolated incident. Across Canada, the atmosphere is menacing for those who would speak up for justice in Palestine.</p>
<p>Last week, <a href="https://theintercept.com/2021/05/20/israel-palestine-canadian-journalists-letter/">Canadian journalists</a> who signed a letter criticizing the lack of Palestinian voices in the media were reprimanded by their newsrooms. Long-time CBC journalist Pacinthe Mattar detailed her experiences in an article for <em>The Walrus.</em> She explains how <a href="https://thewalrus.ca/objectivity-is-a-privilege-afforded-to-white-journalists/">her reporting a story on Palestine was likely used to block</a> her promotion.</p>
<p>This global phenomena of being chilled into not talking about Palestine, no matter how progressive one may be, has a name: <a href="https://thenewpress.com/books/except-for-palestine">Progressive Except for Palestine</a>. It refers to how many people take principled stands against injustice, but draw the line at Palestine. In this menacing climate, many <a href="https://www.independent.co.uk/news/people/roger-waters-pink-floyd-israel-boycott-ban-palestine-a6884971.html">people self-censor</a>. </p>
<h2>New law bars criticism of Israel</h2>
<p>In October 2020, the Ontario legislature <a href="https://theconversation.com/new-human-rights-order-risks-restricting-criticism-of-israel-149796">adopted a controversial definition of antisemitism into law</a>. The law conflates criticism of Israel with antisemitism. Discussions of justice for Palestinians <a href="https://www.bloomsbury.com/us/israel-palestine-and-the-politics-of-race-9781780765327">have always been taboo in the West</a>. Now, they carry the risk of significant legal consequences. </p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/new-human-rights-order-risks-restricting-criticism-of-israel-149796">New human rights order risks restricting criticism of Israel</a>
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<p>A large group of Jewish Canadian academics released <a href="https://jewishfaculty.ca/">a statement</a> decrying the increasing pressure to adopt this narrow definition of antisemitism that shuts down solidarity with Palestinians. This definition, <a href="https://theconversation.com/jewish-scholars-defend-the-right-to-academic-freedom-on-israel-palestine-157674">some of the signatories pointed out</a>, bullies those advocating for Palestinian rights. </p>
<h2>Global land rights</h2>
<p>Immigrants to Canada, such as my friend from the protest, <a href="https://theconversation.com/this-canada-day-we-need-a-new-citizenship-oath-119288">take a colonial oath of allegiance to the Queen.</a> Part of that contract is freedom of expression under the Charter of Rights and Freedoms. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/402939/original/file-20210526-21-ff7lyq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="A man wearing a Keffiyeh around his neck stands above a crowd waving a Palestinian flag. Police officers stand in the background." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/402939/original/file-20210526-21-ff7lyq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/402939/original/file-20210526-21-ff7lyq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=447&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/402939/original/file-20210526-21-ff7lyq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=447&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/402939/original/file-20210526-21-ff7lyq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=447&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/402939/original/file-20210526-21-ff7lyq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=561&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/402939/original/file-20210526-21-ff7lyq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=561&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/402939/original/file-20210526-21-ff7lyq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=561&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<span class="caption">A man waves the Palestinian flag at a rally in Montréal. Global anti-racism protest movements have brought attention to land injustices and human rights violations around the world.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">THE CANADIAN PRESS/Graham Hughes</span></span>
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<p>Every day, her children and countless other children across Canada, say Indigenous land acknowledgements. <a href="https://theconversation.com/six-nations-land-defenders-in-caledonia-reveal-hypocrisy-of-canadas-land-acknowledgements-145158">These land acknowledgements compel us</a> to recognize how land and human rights injustices are woven together. This attention to how land and human rights are entangled should be both local and global.</p>
<p>Injustices towards the Palestinian struggle do not stop at the borders of Gaza or the boundaries of East Jerusalem. They are here, in Canada, towards people like the Muslim women at the protests, academics, journalists and countless others who speak up about the injustices happening in Palestine. </p>
<p>Thanks to Black Lives Matter and last summer’s anti-racism uprisings, the stage for racial justice has seismically changed. In recent years, Indigenous activism, especially the <a href="https://idlenomore.ca/about-the-movement/">Idle No More</a> movement, means more Canadians are aware of how human rights violations are inseparable from land injustices. </p>
<p>When will Canadians stop punishing those who call for justice for Palestine?</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/161160/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Lucy El-Sherif has received funding from the Ontario Graduate Scholarship. </span></em></p>Injustices towards the Palestinians’ struggle don’t stop at the borders of Gaza or the boundaries of East Jerusalem. Across Canada, the atmosphere is menacing for those who speak up for justice.Lucy El-Sherif, PhD candidate, Ontario Institute for Studies in Education, University of TorontoLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1514592021-03-15T12:55:42Z2021-03-15T12:55:42ZWhat Alexander Hamilton’s deep connections to slavery reveal about the need for reparations today<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/388869/original/file-20210310-14-dhalie.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=5%2C11%2C3828%2C2144&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Alexander Hamilton publicly opposed slavery, but research reveals he was also complicit in it.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://dmedmedia.disney.com/disney-plus/hamilton/images?">Disney Media & Entertainment Distribution</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Alexander Hamilton has received a resurgence of interest in recent years on the back of the smash <a href="https://hamiltonmusical.com/new-york/home/">Broadway musical</a> bearing his name.</p>
<p>But alongside tales of his role in the Revolutionary War and in forging the early United States, the spotlight has also fallen on a less savory aspect of his life: his apparent complicity in the institution of slavery. Despite being a founding member of the New York Manumission Society, which sought gradual emancipation of New York’s enslaved population, Hamilton benefited from slavery – both personally and by association.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/388900/original/file-20210310-17-1lrlr2x.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="A U.S. $10 bill" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/388900/original/file-20210310-17-1lrlr2x.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/388900/original/file-20210310-17-1lrlr2x.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=269&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/388900/original/file-20210310-17-1lrlr2x.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=269&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/388900/original/file-20210310-17-1lrlr2x.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=269&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/388900/original/file-20210310-17-1lrlr2x.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=339&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/388900/original/file-20210310-17-1lrlr2x.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=339&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/388900/original/file-20210310-17-1lrlr2x.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=339&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<span class="caption">Anti-slavery, but not anti-wealth from slavery.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/front-and-back-side-of-the-new-ten-dollar-bill-news-photo/144085127?adppopup=true">Joe Sohm/Visions of America/Universal Images Group via Getty Images</a></span>
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<p>As a <a href="https://www.nicolemaskiell.com/">historian of early America and Northern slavery</a>, I study how Colonial-era figures like Hamilton fit into America’s long history of enslavement, and <a href="https://www.cornellpress.cornell.edu/big-history/">how slavery fueled networks of power</a> that have lasted through the ages.</p>
<h2>A life entwined with slavery</h2>
<p>By Hamilton’s time in pre-revolutionary America, wealthy Northerners like him not only benefited from and propagated slavery, but enjoyed centuries of generational wealth built on the labor and lives of enslaved people. </p>
<p>Hamilton’s father-in-law had among the <a href="https://www.timesunion.com/tuplus-local/article/Churchill-Remove-slave-owner-Philip-Schuyler-s-8333274.php">largest slaveholdings in the North</a>. His <a href="http://www.schenectadyhistory.org/families/hmgfm/schuyler-1.html">mother-in-law</a> was the daughter of <a href="http://www.nysl.nysed.gov/mssc/vrm/h3succession.htm">Johannes Van Rensselaer</a> and <a href="https://www.friendsofclermont.org/the-livingstons">Angelica Livingston</a>, both members of two of the largest slaveholding families in the North.</p>
<p>Hamilton’s early years in the Caribbean were also marked by slavery. He was born on the British West Indies island of Nevis in the 1750s into a <a href="https://www.history.com/news/alexander-hamilton-slavery-facts">household that held slaves</a>. By age 11, he was working as a <a href="https://columbiaandslavery.columbia.edu/content/ambition-bondage-inquiry-alexander-hamilton-and-slavery">clerk</a> for Beekman & Cruger, a firm based in New York that traded enslaved people and other commodities – like food products and wood for shipbuilding – that fed the slave economies. </p>
<p>After Hamilton moved to New York in 1773, he remained closely tied to slaveholding elites. His sister-in-law’s <a href="https://parks.ny.gov/historic-sites/schuylermansion">house, where he was married</a>, was served and maintained by enslaved people. The <a href="https://digitalcollections.nypl.org/items/510d47da-23ac-a3d9-e040-e00a18064a99">house where he died</a>, belonging to his close friend William Bayard Jr., was also <a href="https://www.familysearch.org/ark:/61903/3:1:33S7-9RZN-NKJ?i=69&cc=1804228">staffed by enslaved people</a>. </p>
<h2>Views on reparations</h2>
<p>Today’s debate about <a href="https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2021/02/17/slavery-reparations-house-committee-debates-commission-study/6768395002/">reparations for slavery</a> dates back to Hamilton’s era. Except in the past, reparations were <a href="https://wwwnet-dos.state.nj.us/DOS_ArchivesDBPortal/RevWarDamages.aspx">actively sought out</a> by the <a href="https://theconversation.com/there-was-a-time-reparations-were-actually-paid-out-just-not-to-formerly-enslaved-people-152522">owners of enslaved people</a>.</p>
<p>Some Loyalists – those who opposed the American Revolution – received <a href="https://sites.google.com/site/niagarasettlers/revolutionary-war-claims/revolutionary-war-claims-1">compensation from England</a> for losses during the war.</p>
<p>The <a href="https://www.bac-lac.gc.ca/eng/discover/military-heritage/loyalists/book-of-negroes/Pages/introduction.aspx">“Book of Negroes”</a> was a register of over 3,000 escaped enslaved people who were evacuated from New York by the British as part of wartime commitments of freedom for service. It was compiled by British Commander Sir Guy Carleton as a safeguard against compensation claims by former slaveholders for the loss of what they considered their property. </p>
<p>Northern elite slaveholders sought and sometimes received reparations for <a href="https://www.google.com/books/edition/Documents_Relating_to_the_Foreign_Relati/5a4TAAAAYAAJ?hl=en&gbpv=1&dq=schuyler+reparations+revolution&pg=PA973&printsec=frontcover">losses they experienced during the Revolutionary War</a>. Reparations ranged from restitution for the loss of enslaved people who escaped and gained freedom behind British lines to compensation for the expense of maintaining property (which included enslaved people) that were <a href="https://iiif.lib.harvard.edu/manifests/view/drs:50257767$2i">commandeered by Revolutionary forces</a>. </p>
<p><a href="https://www.nypl.org/blog/2016/09/19/loyalist-property-confiscation">Hamilton himself represented</a> at least 44 Loyalists in lawsuits related to seizure or use of <a href="https://www.raabcollection.com/american-history-autographs/hamilton-trespass-act">property, which sometimes included enslaved people</a>, during the war. However, he objected to the <a href="https://founders.archives.gov/documents/Hamilton/01-18-02-0317">return of runaways to their former enslavers</a>. </p>
<p>Those on the Patriot side – who supported the Revolution – also received restitution for enslaved people they lost during the war. The Rhode Island General Assembly <a href="https://www.sos.ri.gov/assets/downloads/documents/Black-Regiment.pdf">passed an act</a> in 1778 that said since enslaved people were “deemed the Property of their Owners … Compensation ought to be made to the Owners for the Loss of their Service.”</p>
<h2>What is owed?</h2>
<p>But what of compensation to the descendants of formerly enslaved people for their ancestors’ free labor? </p>
<p>Since the mid-20th century, in Western Europe and the U.S., reparations to oppressed people have taken <a href="https://www.un.org/ruleoflaw/files/BASICP%7E1.PDF">several forms</a>: on an individual basis, within an institution or across an entire country. They’ve taken monetary and nonmonetary approaches, and pertained either to <a href="https://guides.library.umass.edu/reparations">slavery alone or to slavery and its aftereffects.</a></p>
<p>Some of these modern reparations have historical precedent as well, such as when Britain <a href="https://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/pathways/blackhistory/work_community/transcripts/peters_harris.htm">compensated some Black Loyalists in the 1780s</a> for unpaid labor provided during the war. </p>
<p>There is also the American Civil War’s Field Order No. 15 issued by Union Gen. William Sherman in 1865. It is popularly remembered as promising “<a href="https://www.georgiaencyclopedia.org/articles/history-archaeology/shermans-field-order-no-15">40 acres and a mule</a>” to formerly enslaved people freed along the coast of Georgia – though it was <a href="https://www.pbs.org/wnet/african-americans-many-rivers-to-cross/history/the-truth-behind-40-acres-and-a-mule/">quickly overturned and did not originally include a mule</a>.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/388897/original/file-20210310-15-ct79wt.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Protesters hold signs calling for reparations for U.S. slavery" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/388897/original/file-20210310-15-ct79wt.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/388897/original/file-20210310-15-ct79wt.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/388897/original/file-20210310-15-ct79wt.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/388897/original/file-20210310-15-ct79wt.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/388897/original/file-20210310-15-ct79wt.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=502&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/388897/original/file-20210310-15-ct79wt.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=502&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/388897/original/file-20210310-15-ct79wt.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=502&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Georgetown University students demand a reparations fund in 2019 to atone for the school’s ties to slavery.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/students-at-georgetown-university-protested-for-the-school-news-photo/1179276294?adppopup=true">Michael Robinson Chavez/The Washington Post via Getty Images</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>In recent years, universities and other institutions with ties to slavery have <a href="https://www.wm.edu/sites/lemonproject/">undertaken initiatives</a> to uncover past atrocities, or <a href="https://gather.ptsem.edu/princeton-theological-seminary-announces-plan-to-repent-for-ties-to-slavery/">established scholarships</a> for descendants of enslaved people and other underrepresented groups. </p>
<p>Some cities, including <a href="https://www.cityofevanston.org/government/city-council/reparations">Evanston, Illinois</a>, and <a href="https://www.theroot.com/a-liberal-north-carolina-town-has-unanimously-voted-to-1844389058">Asheville</a> and <a href="https://durhamnc.gov/4092/Racial-Equity-Inclusion-Division">Durham</a> in North Carolina, are establishing their own approaches to reparations, and are working to define guidelines for the use and distribution of funds. </p>
<h2>Reparations through representation</h2>
<p>While <a href="https://guides.library.umass.edu/reparations">numerous organizations and government bodies</a> debate how reparations should take place in the modern era, “Hamilton” the musical provided real <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/stage/2016/jun/07/broadway-race-diversity-hamilton-theater-stage">opportunities for actors of color</a> to advance in a historically underrepresented field.</p>
<p>Yet the show is not without its critics, specifically as it relates to the exclusion of <a href="https://www.simonandschuster.com/books/The-Haunting-of-Lin-Manuel-Miranda/Ishmael-Reed/9781576879245">historical people of color</a> who populated the world of Alexander Hamilton. These include noted spies <a href="https://www.battlefields.org/learn/biographies/hercules-mulligan">Cato</a> and <a href="https://www.biography.com/political-figure/james-armistead">James Fayette</a>, Black brigade fighter <a href="https://www.blackpast.org/african-american-history/people-african-american-history/colonel-tye-1753-1780/">Col. Tye</a> and antislavery activist William Hamilton, <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/23181809?seq=1">purported to have been Alexander’s son</a> with a free Black woman.</p>
<p>[<em>Over 100,000 readers rely on The Conversation’s newsletter to understand the world.</em> <a href="https://theconversation.com/us/newsletters/the-daily-3?utm_source=TCUS&utm_medium=inline-link&utm_campaign=newsletter-text&utm_content=100Ksignup">Sign up today</a>.]</p>
<p>Historical and contemporary representation in popular tales like “Hamilton” is increasingly being used as a step toward correcting the imbalances from slavery’s legacy. And the key questions posed within the musical’s “<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_gnypiKNaJE">Who Lives, Who Dies, Who Tells Your Story</a>” number are some of the same questions being asked within the reparations movement today. </p>
<p><em>This article was updated to clarify the nature of compensation sought and received by Loyalists and to ensure James Fayette is noted by his chosen name.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/151459/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Nicole S. Maskiell does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Even Colonial-era abolitionists like Alexander Hamilton enjoyed centuries of generational wealth built from slavery.Nicole S. Maskiell, Assistant Professor of History Peter and Bonnie McCausland Fellow of History, University of South CarolinaLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1426162020-08-06T15:56:38Z2020-08-06T15:56:38Z‘Hamilton’ ignores the statesman’s strategy to fund genocidal warfare against Indigenous Peoples<p>The recent release of the musical <em>Hamilton</em> by the Disney+ channel on July 3 received favourable reviews <a href="https://nowtoronto.com/movies/hamilton-disney-plus-review">across Canada</a> <a href="https://variety.com/2020/film/reviews/hamilton-review-lin-manuel-miranda-disney-plus-1234694098/">and the United States</a>. </p>
<p><a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2020/06/30/movies/hamilton-review-disney-plus.html">Critics have lauded</a> the musical for its <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/stage/2017/dec/01/hamilton-mashed-up-musical-theatre-and-hiphop-lin-manuel-miranda">innovative mash-up of</a><br>
“<a href="https://www.mirvish.com/shows/hamilton">hip hop, jazz, blues, rap, R&B, and Broadway</a>,” and for how the show jubilantly demonstrates <a href="http://www.slate.com/blogs/browbeat/2015/09/24/hamilton_s_hip_hop_references_all_the_rap_and_r_b_allusions_in_lin_manuel.html">hip hop’s</a> entwinement with <a href="https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2015/02/09/hamiltons">American traditional ideals</a> of self-invention and freedom.</p>
<p>The musical has also been praised <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/stage/2017/dec/20/colourblind-casting-hamilton-west-end-debut">for casting</a> mostly “<a href="https://www.indiewire.com/2020/07/hamilton-cast-casting-directors-diversity-1234571127">Black and brown faces” in roles of the American Founding Fathers</a>, a move that underscored how <a href="https://obamawhitehouse.archives.gov/the-press-office/2016/03/14/remarks-president-hamilton-white-house">political ideals in the United States belong to and are creatively advanced by all Americans</a>. </p>
<p>What is especially interesting in the summer of 2020 is that <em>Hamilton</em> was presented at a time of intense political divisiveness and protest in the U.S. The streaming of <em>Hamilton</em> also gained dramatic significance in the context of the recent <a href="https://www.npr.org/2020/05/29/865685777/why-u-s-needs-black-lives-matter-movement-today">Black Lives Matter protests</a> in face of racist police violence.</p>
<p><a href="https://www.theatlantic.com/culture/archive/2020/07/disney-plus-hamilton-2020/613834/">Many have</a> <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2020/06/30/movies/hamilton-review-disney-plus.html">interpreted the July 3 release</a>, one day before American Independence Day, as intended to remind patriotic Americans of their ability to unite and work towards a fairer government and society.</p>
<p><div data-react-class="Tweet" data-react-props="{"tweetId":"1284199802213822464"}"></div></p>
<h2>Puzzled historians</h2>
<p>Ever since the musical was originally staged in 2015, many <a href="https://www.rutgersuniversitypress.org/historians-on-hamilton/9780813590295">professional historians</a> were surprised that a musical about <a href="https://www.britannica.com/biography/Alexander-Hamilton-United-States-statesman">statesman and Founding Father Alexander Hamilton</a>, mostly known for having his portrait on the 10-dollar bill, would be such a commercial and critical success.</p>
<p>Given <em>Hamilton’s</em> interest in challenging traditional narratives, demonstrated both by show’s largely Black and racialized cast and brilliant appropriation of diverse musical and theatrical traditions, <a href="https://online.ucpress.edu/tph/article/38/1/89/90687/Review-Essay-Race-Conscious-Casting-and-the">some historians</a> of the American Revolution have been puzzled that the show didn’t <a href="https://theconversation.com/hamilton-the-diverse-musical-with-representation-problems-141473">explicitly address how the white historical figures were connected to the history of slavery and anti-Black racism</a>.</p>
<p>Although the show’s creator and star, Lin-Manuel Miranda, portrayed Hamilton as a man dedicated to the abolition of slavery, historians like <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2020/07/06/movies/hamilton-musical-history-facts.html">Annette Gordon-Reed</a> have argued that Hamilton was only moderately concerned about eradicating the institution of slavery in the U.S. </p>
<p>For Hamilton, ensuring the survival of the U.S. as a nation-state trumped any other concerns, <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2020/07/06/movies/hamilton-musical-history-facts.html?searchResultPosition=3">including slavery</a>. This meant making awkward compromises with the Southern slave-holding states.</p>
<h2>Indigenous Peoples and lands</h2>
<p>Neither the musical nor most historians have addressed how Hamilton’s political ideas affected Indigenous Peoples. Hamilton was not as directly involved in diplomatic negotiations with Indigenous nations, unlike <a href="https://books.google.ca/books?id=YyJLDwAAQBAJ&printsec=frontcover&source=gbs_ge_summary_r&cad=0#v=onepage&q&f=false">President George Washington</a>. </p>
<p>However, Indigenous Peoples cannot be separated from the story of the founding of the U.S. This claim is most recently put forth in a study suggesting <a href="https://uncpress.org/book/9781469621203/why-you-cant-teach-united-states-history-without-american-indians">Indigenous history is central to all U.S. history</a>. This is particularly true for the first decade following the end of the American War of Independence.</p>
<figure class="align-right ">
<img alt="Mohawk leader Joseph Brant" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/348708/original/file-20200721-37-1gvh2l4.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/348708/original/file-20200721-37-1gvh2l4.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=800&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/348708/original/file-20200721-37-1gvh2l4.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=800&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/348708/original/file-20200721-37-1gvh2l4.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=800&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/348708/original/file-20200721-37-1gvh2l4.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1005&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/348708/original/file-20200721-37-1gvh2l4.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1005&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/348708/original/file-20200721-37-1gvh2l4.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1005&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">1830s lithograph of Mohawk leader Joseph Brant, based on the last 1806 based on oil portrait by Ezra Ames.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Joseph_Brant.jpeg">(Wikimedia Commons)</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/">CC BY</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>After Britain had surrendered its claims to North America, with the exception of Canada, to the U.S. in 1783, a number of powerful Indigenous nations still occupied lands west of the Appalachians. These nations included the Cherokees and the Creeks in the Southeast as well as a confederacy of nations consisting of Shawnees, Wyandots, Lenapes (Delawares), Ojibwes, Ottawas and others in the Ohio region, known as the “<a href="https://yalebooks.yale.edu/book/9780300218121/surviving-genocide">United Indian Nations</a>.” </p>
<p><a href="https://www.thecanadianencyclopedia.ca/en/article/joseph-brant">Joseph Brant (Thayendanegea)</a>, the Mohawk leader who had been closely aligned with Britain since before the American Revolution, was one of the initiators of the United Indian Nations in <a href="https://yalebooks.yale.edu/book/9780300218121/surviving-genocide">September 1783</a>. There was a constant fear among U.S. politicians that these Indigenous nations would align with Britain and Spain against the United States.</p>
<h2>Federal military force</h2>
<p>As historians <a href="https://scholarship.law.duke.edu/dlj/vol63/iss5/1/">Gregory Lablavsky</a> and <a href="https://yalebooks.yale.edu/book/9780300218121/surviving-genocide">Jeffrey Ostler</a> have shown, <a href="https://avalon.law.yale.edu/18th_century/fed24.asp">Hamilton advocated</a> for a federal military force that would be able to confront “the savage tribes on our Western frontier [who] ought to be regarded as our natural enemies” during the constitutional ratification debate in 1788. </p>
<p>According to <a href="https://avalon.law.yale.edu/18th_century/fed24.asp">Hamilton</a>, the Indigenous nations in the west would support the Spanish in Florida and the British in the Great Lakes region “because they have most to fear from us and most to hope from them.” </p>
<p>In Hamilton’s opinion, a strong national army was necessary to deal with the European and Indigenous threats to the new nation. Once the U.S. constitution was ratified in 1788 with its emphasis on a strong central government, Hamilton became the first Secretary of the Treasury in 1789. </p>
<h2>Leveraged taxes for genocidal warfare</h2>
<p>In that role, Hamilton ensured that the American government had an army at its disposal that could be deployed to wage genocidal warfare against Indigenous nations. </p>
<figure class="align-right ">
<img alt="Portrait of Alexander Hamilton" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/349227/original/file-20200723-37-lgcobx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/349227/original/file-20200723-37-lgcobx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=711&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/349227/original/file-20200723-37-lgcobx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=711&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/349227/original/file-20200723-37-lgcobx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=711&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/349227/original/file-20200723-37-lgcobx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=894&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/349227/original/file-20200723-37-lgcobx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=894&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/349227/original/file-20200723-37-lgcobx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=894&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Portrait of Alexander Hamilton portrait, about 1805, by John Trumbull.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Alexander_Hamilton_portrait_by_John_Trumbull_1806.jpg">(Wikimedia/Smithsonian Art Inventory Catalog, IAP 08930129)</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/">CC BY</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>In June 1790, Brig.-Gen. Josiah Harmar, the commander in charge of the U.S. military efforts against the United Indian Nations in the Ohio region, received instructions from Secretary of War Henry Knox to go on the offensive “to extirpate, utterly, if possible, the said Banditti.” <a href="https://www.oupcanada.com/catalog/9780190056698.html">This was a demeaning reference</a> to the Indigenous warriors who were defending their lands and families. </p>
<p>The verb extirpate was used in the 18th century as synonymous with “exterminate.” </p>
<p>Although the Indigenous confederacy was able to hold back the U.S. army for several years, the American military wore down the confederacy by 1794 by <a href="https://www.cambridge.org/core/books/first-way-of-war/735E9A9683A9D35ED59F863B71344DFF">repeatedly destroying Indigenous villages and cornfields</a>. The actions of the army forced Indigenous Peoples to surrender the fertile Ohio Valley to the U.S. in 1795.</p>
<p>Joseph Brant and his followers, mostly Mohawks and other members of the Haudenosaunee or Six Nations confederacy, escaped American expansion by resettling on the Grand River in Upper Canada. However, Brant and the Haudenosaunee soon became embroiled in complex negotiations with British officials over the meaning of <a href="http://www.sixnations.ca/LandsResources/HaldProc.htm">the Haldimand Proclamation</a> of October 1784 that originally created the huge tract of land for the Six Nations along <a href="https://uofmpress.ca/books/detail/the-clay-we-are-made-of">the Grand River</a>. </p>
<p>The Shawnees, Wyandots and Delawares continued to defend their lands against the United States until the end of the War of 1812. After 1815, many members of the United Indian Nations migrated to Missouri and Kansas to escape American expansion. During the 1830s, the remaining Indigenous Peoples in Ohio and Indiana were <a href="https://yalebooks.yale.edu/book/9780300218121/surviving-genocide">forcibly removed</a> by the U.S. government to reserves in Indian Territory (now Oklahoma and Kansas). Their descendants still live there today. </p>
<h2>Fateful consequences</h2>
<p>Clearly, Hamilton’s ideas of a federal army and an expanding nation had fateful consequences for the Indigenous Peoples who lived in what is now Ohio and Indiana. </p>
<p>Just like the musical could have dealt more fully with slavery, the inclusion of Indigenous perspectives would have forced audiences to grapple with the implications of Hamilton’s policies. </p>
<p>For all its brilliant creativity, the musical missed out on the unique opportunity to inform the public about the impact of the new American nation upon the Indigenous nations of North America. Perhaps one day a new musical will be written about the origins of the U.S. that explicitly incorporates Indigenous perspectives and actors.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/142616/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Mark Meuwese does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Alexander Hamilton’s commitment to a well-funded national army and his support for territorial expansion had grave repercussions for the Indigenous Nations west of the Appalachians.Mark Meuwese, Professor of History, University of WinnipegLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1414732020-06-29T15:26:55Z2020-06-29T15:26:55ZHamilton – the diverse musical with representation problems<p>“The world turned upside down”, proclaim the cast of Lin-Manuel Miranda’s Hamilton (2016) after an epic retelling of <a href="https://www.history.com/topics/american-revolution/siege-of-yorktown">siege of Yorktown</a>, which led to the British surrender and the end of the American Revolutionary War. </p>
<p>In this song (“<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8odeMTS-sLg">Yorktown</a>”), Miranda’s lyrics speak to huge societal change with standalone quotes such as “immigrants, we get the job done” and “we’ll never be free until we end slavery”. These catchy lines highlight the <a href="https://the-toast.net/2015/10/01/race-immigration-and-hamilton/">pro-migrant and anti-colonial themes</a> in the musical. They also amplify Hamilton’s most noted selling point: <a href="https://dcmetrotheaterarts.com/2018/07/30/hamilton-is-encouragement-for-true-inclusion-in-theatre/">new representation</a> of people of colour in American history.</p>
<p>In February 2020, Disney announced that it had <a href="https://news.sky.com/story/hamilton-gets-cinema-release-date-after-major-deal-with-disney-11926274">purchased a recording</a> of the original Broadway cast for approximately £60m. This is believed to be the <a href="https://deadline.com/2020/02/disney-paid-75-million-hamilton-movie-deal-lin-manuel-miranda-largest-film-acquisition-ever-1202849929/#:%7E:text=Disney%20Paid%20%2475%20Million%20For%20Worldwide%20Movie%20Rights%20To%20Lin,Biggest%20Film%20Acquisition%20Deal%20Ever%3F">highest film acquisition</a> cost of all time. The studio is now releasing the film, recorded across three performances, on Disney+, Disney’s streaming service, to coincide with the Independence Day holiday on July 4. </p>
<p>As the Black Lives Matter movement gathers strength following the death of George Floyd, this may feel like a timely and topical return to a work that has emotional resonance and revolutionary sentiments. Yet, while Hamilton has been widely praised for its <a href="https://www.latimes.com/entertainment/arts/la-ca-cm-authenticity-in-casting-20170713-htmlstory.html">colour-conscious casting</a>, the show isn’t the model of anti-racist theatre it may seem. Within it lie issues relating to the erasure of Black and Indigenous people, marginalisation of female characters and revisionist histories of its characters’ involvement in slavery. </p>
<h2>A cast and crew of activists</h2>
<p>The cast and crew of Hamilton have a <a href="https://www.primetimer.com/features/hamiltons-streaming-debut-is-an-accidental-gift-to-an-american-uprising">track record</a> of supporting anti-racist and related activist causes. One notable example is when the US vice president. Mike Pence. attended the Broadway musical in 2016 and was called out by actor Brandon Victor Dixon (who plays Aaron Burr) who said:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>We are the diverse Americans who are alarmed and anxious that your new administration will not protect us, our planet, our children, our parents.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>The single <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6_35a7sn6ds">“Immigrants (We Get the Job Done)”</a>, originally released on the Hamilton Mixtape (recordings of the musical’s songs performed by various artists), <a href="https://www.theatermania.com/los-angeles-theater/news/immigrants-we-get-the-job-done-vma_82217.html">shared the 2017 Grammy Award</a> for Best Fight Against the System. Miranda and Hamilton’s musical director, Alex Lacamoire, <a href="https://www.rollingstone.com/music/music-news/lin-manuel-miranda-ben-platt-release-new-song-for-march-for-our-lives-127037/">helped produce the song “Found/Tonight”</a>, which is a mash-up of the song “You Will Be Found” from another hit musical Dear Evan Hansen and “The Story of Tonight” from Hamilton. Proceeds from the song were donated to the <a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-43138544">March For Our Lives protests</a> following the Parkland school shooting in Florida in early 2018. </p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/6_35a7sn6ds?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
</figure>
<p>These and numerous other examples have connected Hamilton with the act of campaigning for marginalised voices. However, the musical is not without its issues. </p>
<p>The academic and gay rights activist <a href="https://theconversation.com/watching-hamilton-today-musical-drama-can-be-radical-just-dont-believe-all-the-hype-139322">Dennis Altman</a> has highlighted how Hamilton builds on the beloved American Dream, where “anyone can find success”. It’s a romantic vision of how societies are supposed to function that complements the idea of overcoming systemic prejudices, including racism and sexism. But a close look at Hamilton shows how marginalised communities continue to be hidden or limited. </p>
<p>The musical ignores numerous examples of slave ownership. It <a href="https://www.bu.edu/writingprogram/journal/past-issues/issue-9/umehira/">fails to include</a> “real-life” Black characters, including enslaved people, who are erased in lines such as <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MswwLs1e2qc">“no one else was in the room where it happened”</a>. It also omits representation of indigenous Americans altogether. While no one would expect a single show to tackle every issue in existence, the contradiction between celebrating diverse casting without representing people of colour is apparent. </p>
<h2>All men are created equal</h2>
<p>There is also a clear difference in freedom of expression and representation for the women in Hamilton, who sing in only 14 of the 46 songs. Not only do they feature less, but they are also defined by their romantic connection to Hamilton: his wife Eliza, her older sister Angelica who is his true love and his mistress, Maria Reynolds. Eliza and Angelica’s sister is jokingly known as “And Peggy”, as she has no real connection with Hamilton and plays a small role in the story. This is also almost her only line in the whole production.</p>
<p>The relationship between Hamilton and his mistress is also problematic. Issues of consent in their affair are apparent. When Maria appears in Hamilton’s office she asks for help because her husband is abusive, Hamilton lends her some money, walks her home and ends up in her bed. This is framed by Hamilton saying she looks helpless and the potential for sex is irresistible. </p>
<p>Sadly, this gender imbalance is reflected in the film’s marketing. New <a href="https://dlnewstoday.com/2020/06/new-movie-posters-for-hamilton-shared-ahead-of-disney-release/">posters</a> for the Disney+ release represent Angelica, Eliza “and Peggy” in balletic, doll-like poses while the male characters are presented punching, leaping, and dancing. Meanwhile, Maria is not represented. </p>
<p>As Hamilton the film becomes widely available to stream, fans and critics are excited to voice their fandom and their frustrations. These conversations show how Hamilton challenges us to think about who is permitted to perform on our stages and what stories we are told. This musical allows us to conceptualise the power of retelling history while also showing that stories about Black and Indigenous Americans, and especially women, are still not given space in this process.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/141473/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Hannah Robbins does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>It may have a diverse cast but it erases the Black and Indigenous people who were there in the room and relegates women to the sidelines.Hannah Robbins, Assistant Professor in Popular Music, University of NottinghamLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1405272020-06-14T12:27:46Z2020-06-14T12:27:46ZWhy reparations and apologies to African Canadians are necessary<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/341576/original/file-20200612-153832-73yqie.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C282%2C1421%2C547&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Women in front of YWCA’s Ontario House, 698 Ontario Street, ca. 1912
</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/lac-bac/33999353020">Library Archives Canada/flickr</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>In 2017, a three-member United Nations expert panel recommended the Government of Canada “issue an apology and consider providing reparations to African Canadians for enslavement and historical injustices.”</p>
<p>The panel had spent the previous year discussing Canada’s history of racism. They filed their findings in <a href="https://ansa.novascotia.ca/sites/default/files/files/report-of-the-working-group-of-experts-on-people-of-african-descent-on-its-mission-to-canada.pdf">a report to the UN Human Rights Council on people of African descent in Canada</a>. The report discussed African Canadians and issues such as the criminal justice system, health, education and housing.</p>
<p>On June 2, reporters asked Prime Minister Justin Trudeau whether he would act on the panel’s recommendation. <a href="https://www.theglobeandmail.com/politics/article-trudeau-wont-say-whether-canada-will-apologize-for-history-of-slavery/">He evaded the question</a>.</p>
<h2>Slavery in Canada</h2>
<p>Slavery was legal in Canada until 1834, when Britain abolished slavery in all its territories. Canada did not have a slave-based plantation economy, but <a href="https://www.thecanadianencyclopedia.ca/en/article/black-enslavement">many people owned slaves</a>. These people included government and military officials, Loyalists, bishops, priests and nuns and tradesmen such as hotel keepers.</p>
<p>Even so, some argue that Canada should not pay reparations to all African Canadians. They might argue that most African Canadians are not descended from people enslaved in Canada. </p>
<p>Some African Canadians descended from people who escaped slavery in the United States by coming to Canada. Many are, or are descended from, immigrants to Canada from the Caribbean, Africa and elsewhere. <a href="https://www.thecanadianencyclopedia.ca/en/article/immigration-policy">And most of these Canadian residents arrived after 1962, when Canada removed its racist restrictions on immigration</a>.</p>
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<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/ancestry-ad-gets-it-wrong-canada-was-never-slave-free-116051">Ancestry ad gets it wrong: Canada was never slave-free</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<p>But even if they are not descended from people enslaved in Canada, most African Canadians have suffered — and many still do suffer — from the historical injustices the expert panel addressed in 2017. </p>
<p>Canada’s Prime Minister should apologize for both slavery and historic and contemporary injustices endured by African Canadians.</p>
<h2>Financial reparations</h2>
<p>Financial reparations are more difficult than apologies. Many people think that financial reparation means giving every individual in a certain group a certain amount of money. Japanese Canadians who were interned during the Second World War received an apology from Prime Minister Brian Mulroney in 1988, <a href="https://humanrights.ca/story/japanese-canadian-internment-and-the-struggle-for-redress">along with a payment of $21,000 to each living survivor</a>.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/341046/original/file-20200611-114109-12x2ld9.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/341046/original/file-20200611-114109-12x2ld9.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=434&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/341046/original/file-20200611-114109-12x2ld9.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=434&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/341046/original/file-20200611-114109-12x2ld9.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=434&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/341046/original/file-20200611-114109-12x2ld9.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=546&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/341046/original/file-20200611-114109-12x2ld9.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=546&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/341046/original/file-20200611-114109-12x2ld9.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=546&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">People being shipped to Japan are escorted to the immigration building in Vancouver circa 1946. In addition to internment camps, many Japanese Canadians were sent to Japan during the Second World War.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">(Hukazawa Ezaki/Nikkei National Museum)</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The Japanese Canadian redress was comparatively easy to implement because the internment had been relatively recent. Some victims were still alive and the number was relatively small. </p>
<p>By contrast, enslavement ended 186 years ago: no victims are still alive and many of the descendants of enslaved individuals might not be identifiable now. </p>
<p>But racial discrimination was not formally and uniformly prohibited in Canada until <a href="https://laws-lois.justice.gc.ca/eng/acts/C-12.3/FullText.html">the Canadian Bill of Rights was proclaimed in 1960</a>. </p>
<p>Reparations for discrimination before and after 1960 need not take the form of a financial payment to every individual African Canadian. But reparations for specific groups of victims of past and present harms are a viable option.</p>
<h2>African Canadians and reparations</h2>
<p>The 2017 U.N. expert panel notes the high rate at which children are removed from African Canadian families. Reparations might be paid to members of this group, just as it’s been paid to Indigenous victims of the “sixties scoop,” <a href="https://www.newswire.ca/news-releases/sixties-scoop-survivors-decade-long-journey-for-justice-culminates-in-historic-pan-canadian-agreement-649748633.html">when Indigenous children were removed from their families and placed in Canadian foster care or adopted by white families</a>.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/341350/original/file-20200611-80778-15p8d8z.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/341350/original/file-20200611-80778-15p8d8z.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/341350/original/file-20200611-80778-15p8d8z.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=157&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/341350/original/file-20200611-80778-15p8d8z.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=157&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/341350/original/file-20200611-80778-15p8d8z.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=157&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/341350/original/file-20200611-80778-15p8d8z.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=197&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/341350/original/file-20200611-80778-15p8d8z.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=197&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/341350/original/file-20200611-80778-15p8d8z.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=197&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">A group of mostly Black Canadians with Premier Ernest C. Drury pose on the steps of the Ontario Legislature in Toronto to create a plaque in memory of the members of the No. 2 Construction Battalion, an all-Black non-combat battalion that served in the First World War.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_Canadians#/media/File:Black_Canadians_at_Queens_Park.jpg">(City of Toronto Archives)</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The federal and provincial governments could also establish funds for reparations to African Canadian victims of ongoing maltreatment in prisons and jails. Recognition of the systemic nature of this maltreatment would mean that individuals would not have to prove their particular case for reparation in each instance.</p>
<p>Federal and provincial governments could establish funds for African Canadian communities affected by environmental racism. The expert panel noted that “environmentally hazardous activities are disproportionately situated near neighbourhoods where many people of African descent live.”</p>
<h2>Racist housing laws</h2>
<p>Even municipal leaders could apologize for the actions of their predecessors.</p>
<p>The neighbourhood of Westdale in Hamilton, Ont., was built in the 1920s under a “protective covenant.” As historian John C. Weaver explains in his 1982 book, <em><a href="https://muse.jhu.edu/article/571781/pdf">Hamilton: An Illustrated History</a></em>, this covenant forbade sales to members of many different ethnic, religious and racial groups, among which “Negroes,” was the first group listed. The courts did not prohibit this segregation until after the Second World War. </p>
<iframe src="https://www.nfb.ca/film/remember_africville/embed/player/" width="100%" height="315" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen="true" webkitallowfullscreen="true" mozallowfullscreen="true"></iframe>
<p><a href="https://www.nfb.ca/film/remember_africville/" target="_blank"><em>Remember Africville</em></a>, the National Film Board of Canada</p>
<p>Discrimination in housing means that African Canadians of the early 20th century had less opportunity to acquire wealth than white Canadians. This disparity in wealth may well carry down through generations. </p>
<p>Today, African Canadians as a group may inherit less from their immediate ancestors than white Canadians.</p>
<p>If the municipal government at the time permitted this institutionalized racism in Hamilton, then its Mayor could apologize for it now. So could any existing private organization such as banks, mortgage companies or real estate agencies that were involved in upholding racist protective covenants during the first half of last century. </p>
<p>They might consider what reparations they could pay for example, by donating to scholarship funds for local African Canadian students.</p>
<p>All levels of government as well as all public and private institutions should examine their consciences and their pasts. Faith communities, school boards, universities, health services and private businesses may all be implicated in systemic racism against African Canadians. </p>
<p>All could consider formal apologies and collective financial reparations.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/140527/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Rhoda E. Howard-Hassmann receives funding from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada for her scholarly work that she published between 2003 and 2015 on reparations to Africa and political apologies. </span></em></p>Reparations to African Canadians for enslavement and historical injustices need not be financial payments to every individual African Canadian. Instead funds for specific groups are a viable option.Rhoda E. Howard-Hassmann, Professor Emeritus, Department of Political Science, Wilfrid Laurier UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1309692020-02-05T19:50:18Z2020-02-05T19:50:18Z‘Hamilton,’ the musical now in Canada, tells the story of America’s founding passions<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/313383/original/file-20200203-41532-1awqtu2.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=95%2C225%2C1688%2C1013&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Joseph Morales and company in 'Hamilton,' the musical that opens to sold out shows in Toronto this month. The show highlights early ambition in America. </span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">(Hamilton national tour/Joan Marcus)</span></span></figcaption></figure><p><em>Hamilton</em>, the musical, is coming to Canada.</p>
<p>Four years after taking Broadway by storm, Lin-Manuel Miranda’s portrayal of the life and times of Alexander Hamilton, one of the most colourful founding fathers, opens this month to <a href="https://www.cbc.ca/radio/q/blog/hamilton-15-fascinating-facts-about-the-biggest-musical-of-all-time-1.5341556">sold out shows</a> in Toronto. </p>
<p><em>Hamilton</em>’s main draws are its fabulous music and astonishing plot. Born a nobody on the British-ruled island of Nevis, Hamilton became a romantic polymath who fought wars and duels, wrote treatises and doctrines and helped turn 13 rebellious colonies into a rising empire. Inspired by <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2004/04/25/books/creating-capitalism.html">Ron Chernow’s 2004 biography</a>, Miranda’s masterpiece features a hip-hop soundtrack, a <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2016/04/11/theater/hamilton-and-history-are-they-in-sync.html">multiracial cast</a> and powerful arguments, in theatrical form, for a more inclusive America. </p>
<p>More subtly, the play also explores ambition, a traditionally maligned passion in British North America that became a distinctive national ethic in the early United States.</p>
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<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/Ek_W60QolQk?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
<figcaption><span class="caption">A scene from ‘Hamilton,’ the musical.</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Ascent from poverty</h2>
<p>From the first scene to the last, <em>Hamilton</em> relates an incredible case of social mobility: “How does a bastard, orphan, son of a whore and a Scotsman … grow up to be a hero and a scholar [and a] Founding Father?” The curtain parts as a teenaged Hamilton leaves his Caribbean birthplace and lands in New York City in 1772, determined to rise up in this “new land,” where “you can be a new man.” His destiny and that of the 13 colonies merge. </p>
<p>“Hey yo, I’m just like my country,” he boasts, “I’m young, scrappy and hungry!” Both the man and the nation must throw off British rule to realize their mighty potential.</p>
<p>In the play — and in history — the young Hamilton’s skills with the sword and pen catch the eye of George Washington, the statuesque leader of the Continental Army. As Washington’s right-hand man, Hamilton helps keep the American Revolution alive after the British chase the outgunned rebels out of New York in late 1776.</p>
<p><em>Hamilton</em> brilliantly captures the boundless energy of its main character. We watch Hamilton woo the daughter of a wealthy landlord, lobby the Continental Congress for more money, and outshine the other officers around Washington. “<a href="https://www.lyrics.com/lyric/32212220/Hamilton%3A+An+American+Musical+%5BOriginal+Broadway+Cast+Recording%5D/Non-Stop">The Man is NON-STOP!</a>”</p>
<p>With independence won, Washington entrusts his favourite officer with the new Treasury Department — and sides with Hamilton against Thomas Jefferson and most Americans, who don’t understand that with the revolution over and done with, the new country must act a bit more like the self-interested, hyper-capitalist empire it just defeated. In the play’s version of the chaotic 1790s, only Hamilton is smart enough to create a national bank and financial system while keeping the U.S. out of the French Revolution. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/313380/original/file-20200203-41532-kjw4o9.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/313380/original/file-20200203-41532-kjw4o9.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=436&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/313380/original/file-20200203-41532-kjw4o9.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=436&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/313380/original/file-20200203-41532-kjw4o9.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=436&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/313380/original/file-20200203-41532-kjw4o9.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=548&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/313380/original/file-20200203-41532-kjw4o9.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=548&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/313380/original/file-20200203-41532-kjw4o9.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=548&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Shoba Narayan, Ta'Rea-Campbell and Nyla Sostre in the national tour of ‘Hamilton,’ the musical.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">(Hamlton/Joan Marcus)</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Miranda’s opus inevitably adopts many of the arguments of its title character. At times it turns Hamilton, a <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2016/06/11/opinion/what-hamilton-forgets-about-alexander-hamilton.html">deeply elitist man</a> who wanted to insulate economic and foreign policy from ordinary people, into a progressive visionary. </p>
<p>Nonetheless, the play is accurate in its read of Hamilton’s motivations. On stage as in real life, the man from Nevis doesn’t seek money or office. He doesn’t need creature comforts or cheap thrills. What he wants, more than anything is for the world to know his name. He’s defined and perhaps consumed by ambition, the desperate desire to be noticed by strangers and posterity. </p>
<h2>Dangerous passion</h2>
<figure class="align-right ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/313386/original/file-20200203-41485-f6r2bl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/313386/original/file-20200203-41485-f6r2bl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=711&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/313386/original/file-20200203-41485-f6r2bl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=711&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/313386/original/file-20200203-41485-f6r2bl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=711&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/313386/original/file-20200203-41485-f6r2bl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=894&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/313386/original/file-20200203-41485-f6r2bl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=894&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/313386/original/file-20200203-41485-f6r2bl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=894&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Portrait of Alexander Hamilton by John Trumbull, circa 1805.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://siris-artinventories.si.edu/ipac20/ipac.jsp?&menu=search&aspect=Keyword&term=IAP+08930129&index=.NW">(Smithsonian Art Museum)</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The American patriots believed that republics required <a href="https://uncpress.org/book/9780807847237/the-creation-of-the-american-republic-1776-1787/">selfless and civic-minded citizens</a> who were always on guard against those who lusted for power. The people had to “know ambition under every disguise it may assume,” <a href="https://uncpress.org/book/9780807845882/notes-on-the-state-of-virginia/">Jefferson warned</a> in 1781. Otherwise, their republic would fall into corruption and tyranny. </p>
<p>In a society built on family labour, ambition often seemed useless as well as dangerous. Farm parents needed dutiful children, not ambitious dreamers.</p>
<p>Indeed, colonial Americans denounced ambition as a “fire” that threatened to destroy social ties and moral duties. They knew it as a <a href="https://yalebooks.yale.edu/book/9780300182804/ambition-history">radically selfish passion</a>, a dark blend of pride, envy and rage. </p>
<p>By abolishing monarchy and aristocracy, however, revolutionary leaders also invited go-getters to reach for the sky. They celebrated their revolution as a grand theatre on which previously obscure people could do remarkable things. </p>
<p>In other words, they deliberately stoked ambition even as they worried about its destructive energies.</p>
<p>Ultimately, Americans like Hamilton solved this cultural riddle by <a href="https://www.upenn.edu/pennpress/book/14459.html">turning ambition into a national virtue</a> — something that was good and moral so long as it was in service to the United States, the only country (in theory) where merit found its reward. For young men, at least, the burning desire to rise up became not only a right but also a duty, something that would carry the nation as well as themselves to greatness.</p>
<h2>American dreams</h2>
<p>In this sense, <em>Hamilton</em> reflects the cultural moment in which the play is set. It is a celebration of a new and lasting marriage between individual and national ambition in American culture. It is a paean to patriotic ambition, set against the amoral careerism of the anti-hero, Aaron Burr, whom Hamilton ultimately confronts on the duelling ground. </p>
<p>“Alexander Hamilton!” the chorus exults in the opening number. “When America sings for you, will they know what you overcame?” Hamilton replies on his deathbed: “America, you great unfinished symphony, you sent for me.”</p>
<p>And yet Miranda’s play is also honest about ambition’s costs. Hamilton’s relentless pursuit of fame draws him away from his dutiful wife, Eliza, who can only wonder why she and the children aren’t enough. His inability to respect other people’s views — he assumes they can’t keep up with him — alienates him from his peers. He’s too busy to love anyone but himself, his country and their shared destiny.</p>
<p>In all these ways, <em>Hamilton</em> captures the national tendency to see history as a grand drama, in which the exceptionally driven and talented make things happen, for better and worse. </p>
<p>By its very nature, of course, this way of looking at ambition and history marginalizes the everyday concerns of most people, whose duties inevitably outweigh their dreams. That’s yet another irony for a country that has long seen itself as the only real democracy.</p>
<figure>
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<figcaption><span class="caption">The cast of ‘Hamilton’ performs a selection of songs at the Obama White House.</span></figcaption>
</figure><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/130969/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>J.M. Opal receives funding from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada.</span></em></p>Lin-Manuel Miranda’s blockbuster portrayal of Alexander Hamilton, one of the most colourful founding fathers, opens this month in Toronto.Jason Opal, Associate Professor of History and Chair, History and Classical Studies, McGill UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1167772019-08-22T21:04:54Z2019-08-22T21:04:54ZWealth and poverty gap: Using tech to uncover the roots of urban inequality<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/282561/original/file-20190703-126382-11ifwev.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C0%2C3748%2C2472&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Urban research conducted in Hamilton, Ont. inspired a new technology-driven approach to studying urban inequality.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Shutterstock</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Inequality in cities has not been eradicated by technological advances, and by some measures, our <a href="https://doi.org/10.1177%2F0018726708094911">digital tools and their economic effects increase inequality</a>. Technological advances and tools may, however, further our understanding of inequality. </p>
<p>Since 2011, I have been formally involved in research and teaching in urban planning at the University of Waterloo. My PhD studies included original socio-spatial analytic research that highlighted the possibility that <a href="https://www.nibib.nih.gov/science-education/science-topics/computational-modeling">computational modelling</a> could help us understand urban inequality. </p>
<h2>Lessons from Hamilton</h2>
<p>Careful research into tax, land ownership and city clerk records by historian Michael B. Katz in the mid-1970s unearthed a pattern. His research into mid-19th century Hamilton, Ont., revealed that a relatively small segment of wealthy citizens <a href="https://www.fulcrum.org/concern/monographs/z316q1679">occupied social and structural realities far different than the large (and largely poor) balance of citizens</a>.</p>
<p>Katz advanced our understanding of urban poverty by noting the structural, rather than just personal, nature of inequality. Prior to Katz, poverty was often understood as a character or motivational flaw. </p>
<p>For the past two years, a sub-group of computer scientists, systems dynamics researchers and urban planning scholars have met annually at the <a href="https://computationalsocialscience.org/">Computational Social Sciences Society of the Americas</a> in Santa Fe, N.M., to examine the structural and dynamic roots of inequality. The conference sub-group aimed to reduce complexity while retaining the inequality dynamics we called social primitives. They were not anthropological primitives but are artificial, digitally designed dynamics for clarifying inequality origins.</p>
<h2>Structural inequities</h2>
<p>Urban poverty is not simply an individual character flaw: inequality clearly includes structural dynamics, which means that wealth is not simply a matter of superior individual characteristics. Katz noted that wealth may be as much a consequence of where you fit into the bigger structures of the city or the social class you happened to be born into. </p>
<p>Structural dynamics means that something beyond the individual played a role in generating and sustaining the inequality. Careful interrogation of the dynamics of income inequality present in Hamilton in the 1850s provided insight for developing a greatly simplified digital model. </p>
<p>Hamilton had a small, wealthy population that was relatively stable during the 1850s, a period of time where the much poorer balance of the population experienced little economic gain. Most of the wealthy population noted in 1851 was still there a decade later. For the poor, records indicate that as many as two-thirds who where there in 1851 had moved on a decade later.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/288844/original/file-20190821-170927-1wyb9uu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/288844/original/file-20190821-170927-1wyb9uu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/288844/original/file-20190821-170927-1wyb9uu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=366&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/288844/original/file-20190821-170927-1wyb9uu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=366&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/288844/original/file-20190821-170927-1wyb9uu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=366&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/288844/original/file-20190821-170927-1wyb9uu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=459&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/288844/original/file-20190821-170927-1wyb9uu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=459&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/288844/original/file-20190821-170927-1wyb9uu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=459&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">An 1845 print showing a view of Hamilton from the vantage point of the Niagara Escarpment.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Black Mount Collection, Hamilton Public Library</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Wealth and stability</h2>
<p>A notable driver in the historical record was the persistence of a wealthy segment of society — typically 10 per cent or fewer residents. Their social, work and recreational circles gave them access to resources in the form of land ownership, ability to borrow money for investments and ownership of production. Those advantages, in particular land ownership, did not seem to be available to the balance of the city who remained in a persistently fragile economic state. </p>
<p>Our exploration of Katz’s research and insights suggested that a key advantage of the wealthy was access to a range of social resources in the form of institutions that provided the money, trust and investment opportunities.</p>
<p>In our earlier published work on a model of primitive forms of cooperation, we developed our ideas about the wealth pattern in Hamilton by formulating a core question: What is the minimal set of rules required to model the emergence of inequality in wealth distribution? </p>
<p>We developed a model in the <a href="https://www.r-project.org/">programming language R</a> that comprised a two-dimensional landscape whereby agents had to oversee areas of resources — in this case, sugar — randomly assigned to each plot. Agents were added to the landscape randomly and their survival was based on making sure that their sugar levels maintained above a certain threshold. If two agents ended up beside each other and both had extra resources collected from the landscape, they could share those extra resources when needed.</p>
<p>We defined two agents or more working together to be proto-institutions. These proto-institutions represented the advantage of the wealthy in the Hamilton context. The inequality of agents was measured and compared — those who were members of proto-institutions and those who were not.</p>
<p>We began as simple as possible in order to try and observe the early, nuclear emergence of inequality. When agents do not have membership in a proto-institution, they are completely dependant on what the landscape provides at each cycle. When agents are part of an proto-institution, they have a means of banking extra sugar, benefiting from other member agents extra sugar and can survive cycles of low landscape sugar. </p>
<p>The computational model generates data over hundreds or thousands of cycles with a wide range of variable settings. Our early results suggest that the proto-institutions advance overall stability and wealth but also increase agent inequality.</p>
<p>Our focus on the simplest possible form of institutional emergence allows us to reduce the number of confounding variables while testing our hypothesis about institutions and income inequality. Our model, while not a replication of 1850s Hamilton, was informed by the historical realities identified by Katz. </p>
<h2>Change experiments</h2>
<p>The knowledge gained from our agent-based model may provide clues about where to look for current inequality drivers in urban settings. An effective model could clarify how many and what kinds of institutional types are required to narrow the inequality gap. We may, for example, hypothesize that informal developments in urban settings have fewer formal institutional structures. These missing pieces of social infrastructure may contribute to persistent poverty. </p>
<p>These <em>in silico</em> experiments — conducted in artificial labs — support ongoing research to deepen understanding about inequality and help identify which interventions are likely to be most beneficial.</p>
<p>[ <em>Like what you’ve read? Want more?</em> <a href="https://theconversation.com/ca/newsletters?utm_source=TCCA&utm_medium=inline-link&utm_campaign=newsletter-text&utm_content=likethis">Sign up for The Conversation’s daily newsletter</a>. ]</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/116777/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Milton Friesen is affiliated with Cardus and the University of Waterloo.</span></em></p>Developing computer models can help us to study the structural causes of urban inequality.Milton Friesen, Ph.D. (Candidate) School of Planning, Faculty of Environment, University of WaterlooLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1205642019-07-24T22:23:03Z2019-07-24T22:23:03ZBike sharing isn’t just for rich hipsters – ‘super users’ have lower incomes<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/285117/original/file-20190722-11355-dubpj6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=49%2C8%2C5472%2C3628&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">As bike sharing and other forms of micromobility become more common in global transportation systems, who benefits? </span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Ben Mater/unsplash</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Bike and scooter sharing <a href="https://www.cbinsights.com/research/report/micromobility-revolution/">is booming in cities all around the world</a>. In the United States, the number of trips through either bike or scooter sharing — modes of transportation called “micromobility” — <a href="https://nacto.org/shared-micromobility-2018/">more than doubled over one year, from 35 million trips in 2017 to 84 million in 2018</a>. </p>
<p>As <a href="https://www.wired.co.uk/article/why-electric-motor-scooters-are-leading-electric-vehicle-revolution-in-asia">micromobility</a> becomes more commonplace in global transportation systems, it’s important to ask “Who benefits?” </p>
<p>Researchers have scrutinized both the location of bike-share programs and who actually uses them. Several studies have found that these programs are typically located in wealthier, more well-off neighbourhoods. </p>
<p>A 2019 report on Citi Bike in New York City found that the <a href="http://upgo.lab.mcgill.ca/2019/07/10/bridging-the-boroughs-paper/">bike-share program reached every high-income neighbourhood (areas populated by people with greater than $200,000 median income)</a> but only three in 10 low-income neighbourhoods (areas where people had less than $20,000 median income). </p>
<p>In our 2018 study of bike share station locations in Vancouver, Hamilton, Toronto, Ottawa-Gatineau and Montréal, we found that in <a href="https://doi.org/10.1177/0361198118783107">all these cities except Hamilton, advantaged areas had better access to bike-share stations than disadvantaged areas</a>. </p>
<p>Other work has shown that even when bike-share stations are located in traditionally underserved areas, bike-share members are <a href="https://pdxscholar.library.pdx.edu/trec_reports/138/">typically wealthier, whiter and more educated than the average resident</a> in the area. </p>
<p>However, living close to a bike share program or having a membership does not necessarily translate into using bike-share more frequently. For example, higher-income populations with greater disposable income may readily purchase memberships, but then not use the bike share program because they have other ways to get around the city.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/285118/original/file-20190722-11323-aevsuc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/285118/original/file-20190722-11323-aevsuc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/285118/original/file-20190722-11323-aevsuc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/285118/original/file-20190722-11323-aevsuc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/285118/original/file-20190722-11323-aevsuc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/285118/original/file-20190722-11323-aevsuc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/285118/original/file-20190722-11323-aevsuc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Living close to a bike share or having a membership does not necessarily translate into using bike-share programs more frequently.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">(Shutterstock)</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>‘Super users’ of bikes</h2>
<p>We analyzed data from Vancouver’s public bike-sharing program, <a href="https://www.mobibikes.ca/">Mobi by Shaw Go</a>, and noticed that about 10 per cent of members made 50 per cent of all member trips. With this, we set out to uncover who these “super users” were to understand which members are realizing the benefits. </p>
<p>We surveyed over 1,200 members of Vancouver’s public bike-share program and linked their anonymous survey responses with their system data. This allowed us to examine the demographic and transportation profiles of bike-share members based on their actual usage. </p>
<p>Most notably, we found that although bike-share members overall had higher incomes than the Vancouver population, <a href="https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2211335519301202">super users (defined as people who make 20 or more bike-share trips per month) tended to have lower incomes as compared to those who used it less often</a>.
Super users were two and a half times as likely to be in the lowest income category (with an annual household income below $35,000) as compared to the highest (over $150,000). </p>
<p>This finding highlights that bike sharing may be serving the needs of those with lower incomes better than previously thought, and could provide impetus for programs to expand to neighbourhoods with lower incomes. </p>
<p>We also found that super users were more likely to be younger men, and people who lived or worked inside the bike-share service area. Super users emerged as people with fewer transportation options: they were less likely to own a personal bicycle or belong to a car-share program, as compared to the typical member. </p>
<p>Our findings point to the importance of capturing the frequency of use when seeking to understand how equitable micromobility is for city populations. There may still be a long way to go to ensure everyone in cities can access bike sharing and other forms of micromobility, but our study suggests that those who rely most on bike sharing may in fact be the members with lower incomes.</p>
<h2>Trip data not enough</h2>
<p>The emergence of micromobility over the past decade has meant that new data sources are available to capture how people get around their cities. </p>
<p>The <a href="https://nacto.org/home/shared-active-transportation-guidelines/">National Association of City Transportation Officials (NACTO) guidelines advise cities to require operators to make anonymized trip data available</a>. As a result, system data for bike-share programs and other types of micromobility is often much easier to come by than it was just a few years ago. </p>
<p>The trip data that is publicly available typically includes information about when and where trips start and end. However, on its own this data provides limited insight into who is using these services. </p>
<p>As we learned in our study, combining trip data with anonymized data collected via traditional research methods — such as surveys, focus groups and interviews — can offer deeper insights into how equitable these programs are. </p>
<p>[ <em>Like what you’ve read? Want more?</em> <a href="https://theconversation.com/ca/newsletters?utm_source=TCCA&utm_medium=inline-link&utm_campaign=newsletter-text&utm_content=likethis">Sign up for The Conversation’s daily newsletter</a>. ]</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/120564/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Kate Hosford received funding from the Simon Fraser University Key Big Data Initiative for research on Vancouver's public bike share system data. </span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Meghan Winters receives funding from the Canadian Institutes of Health Research, the City of Vancouver, MITACS, and the Michael Smith Foundation for Health Research for research related to public bike share. </span></em></p>Combining big data sources about bike-share trips with anonymized data from traditional survey research can best capture who is using bike-share programs.Kate Hosford, PhD Candidate, Faculty of Health Sciences, Simon Fraser UniversityMeghan Winters, Associate Professor, Faculty of Health Sciences, Simon Fraser UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/946902018-04-11T11:17:58Z2018-04-11T11:17:58ZHamilton’s Oliviers success shows appeal of its message to Brexit Britain<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/214247/original/file-20180411-577-1bqm7wp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Matthew Murphy/Hamilton PR</span></span></figcaption></figure><blockquote>
<p>The ship is in the harbour now<br>
See if you can spot him<br>
Another immigrant<br>
Comin’ up from the bottom.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>To no one’s surprise, the American musical theatre phenomenon Hamilton dominated this year’s <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-arts-43656648">Oliviers</a>, picking up seven awards. This was in line with its success in the <a href="http://www.latimes.com/entertainment/arts/culture/la-et-cm-tony-awards-live-updates-20160612-htmlstory.html">2016 Tonys</a>, where it collected 11 awards. </p>
<p>The show came to the Victoria Palace Theatre in London in November 2017, weighted with the expectation that it would replicate the success of its New York run – and measured by both <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/stage/2017/dec/10/hamilton-west-west-end-war-with-ticket-touts-prices-soar">box office performance</a> and <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/stage/2017/dec/22/hamilton-first-night-reviews-sell-everything-you-have-to-get-a-ticket">critical adulation</a>, that expectation has been met.</p>
<p>But the success of this show for English audiences was never inevitable. The premise of Hamilton was always an unlikely one. A rap musical based on the life of the first US secretary of the treasury hardly seemed like the basis of a musical that would become the hottest ticket in town. <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/stage/lin-manuel-miranda">Lin-Manual Miranda’s</a> brilliance as creator of the show was not only based on his lyrical exuberance and musical styling, but on his ability to find dramatic material in political meetings and budget negotiations. In Hamilton these matter as much as love stories and duels.</p>
<h2>Beating up the Brits</h2>
<p>But if this was unlikely material to woo an American audience, then how much more unlikely was it that British audiences would succumb to the charms of material so rooted in the minutiae of the history of the founding of America? And there is another challenge to this show as it makes its way across the Atlantic. While US audiences might be able to celebrate the story of the founding of their nation, British audiences must see themselves cast as the villains of the piece.</p>
<p>Hamilton’s adversary may be the vice-president, Aaron Burr – with whom he had a long-running feud and who was to eventually <a href="https://constitutioncenter.org/blog/burr-vs-hamilton-behind-the-ultimate-political-feud">kill him in a duel</a> – but the chief struggle of Hamilton and his fellow revolutionaries is against the colonial oppressor: Britain. This is personified in the form of George III, who is presented as a comic caricature, stiffly wrapped in royal dress and impractical crown, petulantly objecting to America’s pleas for greater self-determination: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>Oceans rise, empires fall/ We have seen each other through it all/ And when push comes to shove/ I will send a fully armed battalion,/ to remind you of my love.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>As cinema audiences embrace narratives of Britain defying the odds (Dunkirk, Darkest Hour), the musical stage seems instead to have turned to a story which celebrates plucky Americans beating the British.</p>
<h2>The melting pot</h2>
<p>But the real brilliance of Hamilton always lay in its attitude to diversity. Casting is not of the colour blind variety that <a href="https://www.thestage.co.uk/news/2018/rsc-accuses-daily-mail-critic-racist-attitude-review/">disappoints the Daily Mail’s theatre critic</a>. On the contrary, this show delights in its casting of non-white actors, and in its celebration of the melting pot: “Look how far I come/ Immigrants. We get the job done.” </p>
<p>Alexander Hamilton is, for Miranda, not a patrician founding father, but a pushy young man fighting to establish himself in a foreign culture (“In New York you can be a new man”).</p>
<p>This message of diversity is the one that was embraced by the Obamas – Michelle Obama <a href="http://www.laweekly.com/arts/hamilton-is-everything-michelle-obama-said-it-was-8550363">referred to Hamilton</a> as “simply, the best piece of art in any form that I have ever seen in my life”. And it put the New York cast at odds with the Trump administration when, on the verge of taking office, Mike Pence saw the show. At the curtain call, Brandon Victor Dixon, who played Burr, <a href="https://theconversation.com/booing-mike-pence-at-hamilton-echoes-theatrical-politics-of-the-founding-fathers-69168">addressed the vice-president elect</a>.</p>
<blockquote>
<p>We, sir — we — are the diverse America who are alarmed and anxious that your new administration will not protect us, our planet, our children, our parents, or defend us and uphold our inalienable rights. We truly hope that this show has inspired you to uphold our American values and to work on behalf of all of us.</p>
</blockquote>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/booing-mike-pence-at-hamilton-echoes-theatrical-politics-of-the-founding-fathers-69168">Booing Mike Pence at Hamilton echoes theatrical politics of the founding fathers</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<p>As this was delivered the audience booed Pence. The next day Hamilton was granted the ultimate cultural accolade: a Twitter assault from Donald Trump. </p>
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<h2>Celebrating diversity</h2>
<p>In Trump’s America, the message of Hamilton took on a new urgency for liberal audiences. And it is in this context that the show opens in Britain. Nigel Farage <a href="https://twitter.com/nigel_farage/status/889971797386514434?lang=en">co-opted Christopher Nolan’s Dunkirk</a> as – presumably – a message about British independence and the untrustworthiness of those from the Continent. But it would be hard for anyone to read Hamilton as anything other than a plea for tolerance of otherness and a celebration of racial diversity. </p>
<p>Except for the Daily Mail. <a href="http://www.dailymail.co.uk/tvshowbiz/article-5204009/QUENTIN-LETTS-gives-verdict-Hamilton-West-End-hit.html">Step forward Quentin Letts</a>: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>As the first-ever secretary to the treasury he established the banking and credit system required by the emerging federation of states. That aspect of the story has a topical edge given Brexit. Hamilton was also a firm believer in his nation’s sovereignty. Would he have been a Leaver or a Remainer in 21st-century Britain? Hard to say.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Audiences would disagree. The line: “Immigrants, they get the job done”, is regularly met by spontaneous applause by British audiences. This is a show that feels timely and urgent.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/94690/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Nigel Ward does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>The multi-award winning musical is as relevant to audiences in the UK as in the US.Nigel Ward, Deputy Head of Department and Course Leader for Perfoming Arts, Anglia Ruskin UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/879022017-12-04T10:36:49Z2017-12-04T10:36:49ZWhy Hamilton reminds us of the roots of British musical theatre in political activism<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/197545/original/file-20171204-4083-1a4gfzj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Barack Obama meets the cast of Hamilton.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Pete Souza, chief official White House photographer</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Such has been the demand for tickets to the London season of the multi-award-winning Broadway <a href="http://www.hamiltonthemusical.co.uk">hip-hop sensation Hamilton</a> that the show’s run has been extended and a <a href="https://www.standard.co.uk/goingout/theatre/hamilton-a-10-ticket-lottery-has-just-been-announced-a3707866.html">lottery has been announced</a> for the remaining seats. One wonders whether Boris Johnson, David Davis, Nigel Farage of any of the other leading advocates of Brexit will be among theatregoers thronging to the show over the next few months? Or maybe they’ll remember the experience of the US Vice-President-elect, Mike Pence, who was memorably <a href="https://theconversation.com/booing-mike-pence-at-hamilton-echoes-theatrical-politics-of-the-founding-fathers-69168">booed by audiences</a> when he attended a show shortly after the 2016 US election. </p>
<p>At the final curtain, Brandon Victor Dixon (who plays the show’s villain, Aaron Burr) stepped forward to deliver a message to Pence, in which he celebrated the diversity and rights of all Americans.</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Vice President-elect Pence, welcome. Thank you for joining us at Hamilton – An American Musical. We, sir, are the diverse America who are alarmed and anxious that your new administration will not protect us, our planet, our children, our parents, or defend us and uphold our inalienable rights, sir. But we hope this show has inspired you to uphold our American values, and work on behalf of ALL of us.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>It was a pointed message for a government <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2017/nov/30/trump-twitter-far-right-racism-hate">seen by many as racist</a>, <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/fact-checker/wp/2017/11/22/president-trump-and-accusations-of-sexual-misconduct-the-complete-list/?utm_term=.3724a86942e3">misogynist</a> and <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/immigration/how-trump-is-building-a-border-wall-no-one-can-see/2017/11/21/83d3b746-cba0-11e7-b0cf-7689a9f2d84e_story.html?utm_term=.dae71af833e6">prejudiced against immigrants</a>. </p>
<p>The repeat <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2017/aug/14/charlottesville-confederate-monuments-racism-us-history">eruption of race riots</a> in the US in recent years made Hamilton a more topical show than perhaps even its writer, Lin-Manuel Miranda, had foreseen. The spectre of Brexit now promises to have the same effect for London audiences – so will Johnson et al have the foresight to avoid Pence’s PR mistake in attending the show?</p>
<h2>Satire</h2>
<p>The stage musical has a long tradition of political activism reaching right back to the very first musical on the London stage, The <a href="https://blog.oup.com/2014/01/john-gay-beggars-opera-audio-guide/">Beggar’s Opera</a>, which was just as politically provocative – and just as popular. The show opened at Lincoln Inn’s Fields in January 1728. Written by the satirist and poet, John Gay, a friend and collaborator of Alexander Pope and Jonathan Swift, it immediately became one of the most important creative outputs in the history of the British stage.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/197546/original/file-20171204-4072-1oz23i0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/197546/original/file-20171204-4072-1oz23i0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=404&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/197546/original/file-20171204-4072-1oz23i0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=404&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/197546/original/file-20171204-4072-1oz23i0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=404&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/197546/original/file-20171204-4072-1oz23i0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=508&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/197546/original/file-20171204-4072-1oz23i0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=508&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/197546/original/file-20171204-4072-1oz23i0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=508&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Rich’s Glory or his Triumphant Entry into Covent Garden.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Anonymous (previously attributed to William Hogarth</span>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/">CC BY-NC-SA</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The Beggar’s Opera was an overnight sensation and unprecedented success, with the longest first run of any production to that day. The financial takings were so great, that the theatre’s owner, John Rich, was able to build a new <a href="http://www.roh.org.uk/about/history">Theatre Royal in Covent Garden</a> (now The Royal Opera House). A surviving print satirises the opening of the Theatre Royal, with John Gay carried, triumphantly, on a porter’s back into the theatre. </p>
<p>The musical’s female lead, Lavinia Fenton, became a star overnight, and her fame only increased when she ran away with the Duke of Bolton. William Hogarth commemorated both the musical and Fenton’s illicit relationship in a single painting: Lucy Lockitt (Fenton), dressed in virginal white, looks beyond her onstage lover, MacHeath, to meet Bolton’s gaze, sitting in a box at the far right of the stage.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/197547/original/file-20171204-4072-hi3e70.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/197547/original/file-20171204-4072-hi3e70.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=458&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/197547/original/file-20171204-4072-hi3e70.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=458&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/197547/original/file-20171204-4072-hi3e70.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=458&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/197547/original/file-20171204-4072-hi3e70.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=576&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/197547/original/file-20171204-4072-hi3e70.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=576&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/197547/original/file-20171204-4072-hi3e70.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=576&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Beggar’s Opera: drama on and off stage.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">William Hogarth, Tate Gallery</span>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/">CC BY-NC-ND</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The success of The Beggar’s Opera was due, in part, to its gritty setting in Newgate Prison – and a cast of characters that included criminals, prostitutes and corrupt prison officials. But it was also down to its political message. This was a hugely provocative work: the musical took satirical aim at the whole of British society, showing the hypocrisy and corruption that filtered down from the highest levels of power to the poorest on the streets. It suggested that Newgate Prison was a mirror for the nation, with the poorest condemned for committing the same crimes excused in the wealthy.</p>
<h2>Censorship</h2>
<p>Contemporaries quickly recognised the musical’s implicit criticism of the then-prime minister, <a href="https://www.gov.uk/government/history/past-prime-ministers/robert-walpole">Robert Walpole</a>. Two weeks after opening, an <a href="https://scholarsbank.uoregon.edu/xmlui/bitstream/handle/1794/733/beggarsopera.pdf;sequence=1">article in The Craftsman</a> explicitly outlined the allusion to a prime minister seen by many as a corrupt and underhand force:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>The very Title of this Piece and the principal Character, which is that of an Highwayman, sufficiently discover the mischievous Design of it; since by this Character every Body will understand One, who makes it his Business arbitrarily to levy and collect Money on the People for his own Use, and of which he always dreads to give an Account – Is not this squinting with a vengeance, and wounding Persons in Authority through the Sides of a common Malefactor? </p>
</blockquote>
<p>Gay wrote a sequel, Polly (1729) – and this time the satire of Walpole was more overt, so much so that the prime minister took steps to <a href="https://warwick.ac.uk/fac/arts/english/currentstudents/undergraduate/modules/fulllist/third/en330/syllabus/2._gay_beggars_opera.pdf">ban it from the stage</a>. This was to be one of several steps which culminated in the passing of the <a href="http://www.math.grin.edu/%7Esimpsone/Teaching/Romantics/eliza.html">1737 Stage Licensing Act</a>. The Act enabled Walpole to curb the political voice of theatre, making it law that all productions had to submit to the controlling eyes of the government censor prior to performance. </p>
<p>In effect, the stage lost its freedom to speak out in ways that overtly challenged those in power. The most provocative dramatists of the time, including the <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/books/2013/oct/21/100-best-novels-tom-jones">writer Henry Fielding</a>, abandoned the theatre and focused their energies into a newly developing literary form: the English novel. The Act would not be fully repealed until 1968.</p>
<h2>Playing politics</h2>
<p>The staging of Hamilton against the backdrop of Brexit feels like a landmark moment for the British stage, bringing – as it does – echoes of the very first musical, a work equally provocative, political and successful. Hamilton is unashamedly political – in this way, it should remind us of debates about the very purpose of theatre. Donald Trump responded to the booing of Pence with a tweet, claiming:</p>
<p><div data-react-class="Tweet" data-react-props="{"tweetId":"799974635274194947"}"></div></p>
<p>Trump was right to state that theatre is a special place. Yet he failed to recognise that what makes theatre so special is the fact that it is not a safe space. In its many forms, the stage is a challenging, creative and productive platform, used to ask difficult questions about morality and society – and about humanity itself. </p>
<p>Shakespeare was not playing it safe when he wrote works such as Titus Andronicus, King Lear and Macbeth, nor was Gay playing it safe when he wrote The Beggar’s Opera and Polly. Let us hope that Hamilton continues this tradition on the British stage, with West End audiences leaving the theatre asking challenging questions of us all – and especially of those in power.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/87902/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Claudine van Hensbergen has received funding from: Arts Council England; Arts and Humanities Research Council; British Academy; Chawton House Library; School of Advanced Study, University of London; University of Oxford. She is an Associate Fellow of the Higher Education Academy and a member of the University and College Union.</span></em></p>The award-winning US musical made headlines when a cast member delivered a political message to the US vice-president from the stage.Claudine van Hensbergen, Senior Lecturer in 18th Century English Literature, Northumbria University, NewcastleLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/694672016-12-12T03:40:59Z2016-12-12T03:40:59ZCelebrity voices are powerful, but does the First Amendment let them say anything they want?<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/149477/original/image-20161209-31391-6kl964.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Taking a knee during the national anthem isn't risk-free in the NFL.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://www.apimages.com/metadata/Index/Protesting-Dolphins-Football/4a2a88bed8f449cfab9062479a24dab6/1/0">AP Photo/Stephen Brashear, File</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>When NFL player <a href="https://theconversation.com/the-oppressive-seeds-of-the-colin-kaepernick-backlash-66358">Colin Kaepernick</a> refuses to stand for the national anthem, or the cast of the Broadway musical “Hamilton” confronts the vice president-elect, or the Dixie Chicks <a href="http://www.dailykos.com/story/2013/3/11/1193171/-Ten-Years-Ago-This-Week-the-Dixie-Chicks-Found-Free-Speech-Comes-at-a-High-Price">speak out against war</a>, talk quickly turns to freedom of speech. Most Americans assume they have a constitutional guarantee to express themselves as they wish, on whatever topics they wish. But how protected by the First Amendment are public figures when they engage in political protest?</p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/orXogk3euMA?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
<figcaption><span class="caption">Recently, celebrities have become increasingly vocal regarding the collective Movement for Black Lives, for instance.</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Coming out publicly, whether for or against some disputed position, can have real consequences for the movement and the celebrity. However helpful a high-profile endorsement may be at shifting the public conversation, taking these public positions – particularly unpopular ones – may not be as protected as we assume. As a professor who studies the intersection of law and culture, I believe Americans may need to revisit their understanding of U.S. history and the First Amendment. </p>
<h2>Harnessing the power of celebrity</h2>
<p>Far from being just product endorsers, celebrities <a href="http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s10551-009-0090-4">can and do use their voices</a> to influence policy and politics. For example, <a href="http://www.stat.columbia.edu/%7Egelman/stuff_for_blog/celebrityendorsements_garthwaitemoore.pdf">some researchers believe</a> Oprah Winfrey’s early endorsement of Barack Obama helped him obtain the votes he needed to become the 2008 Democratic nominee for president.</p>
<p>This phenomenon, however, is not new. </p>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/149474/original/image-20161209-31352-1uldoe0.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/149474/original/image-20161209-31352-1uldoe0.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/149474/original/image-20161209-31352-1uldoe0.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=846&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/149474/original/image-20161209-31352-1uldoe0.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=846&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/149474/original/image-20161209-31352-1uldoe0.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=846&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/149474/original/image-20161209-31352-1uldoe0.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1063&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/149474/original/image-20161209-31352-1uldoe0.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1063&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/149474/original/image-20161209-31352-1uldoe0.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1063&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Gilbert du Motier Marquis de Lafayette, early celeb.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Gilbert_du_Motier_Marquis_de_Lafayette.PNG">Joseph-Désiré Court</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Since the birth of the nation, celebrities have used their voices – and had their voices used – to advance important causes. In 1780, George Washington enlisted the help of Marquis de Lafayette, a French aristocrat dubbed by some “<a href="https://newrepublic.com/article/123170/marquis-de-lafayette-americas-first-celebrity">America’s first celebrity</a>,” to ask French officials for more support for the Continental Army. Lafayette was so popular that when he traveled to America some years later, the press <a href="http://www.jstor.org/stable/4233634">reported on each day and detail</a> of his yearlong visit.</p>
<p>Social movements also have harnessed the power of celebrity influence throughout American history. In the early 1900s, after the National Woman Suffrage Association was founded to pursue the right of women to vote, <a href="http://www.historynet.com/womens-suffrage-movement">the group used celebrities</a> to raise awareness of the cause. Popular actresses like Mary Shaw, Lillian Russell and Fola La Follette, for example, <a href="https://books.google.com/books?id=QO79UClRsDMC&pg=PA7&lpg=PA7&dq=national+woman+suffrage+movement+actress&source=bl&ots=EKlau1ccmV&sig=bERJBYmVA4vtMwKoZZhoQ5RorZU&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwi-3rvW6OXQAhULjlQKHZOjAZoQ6AEINTAE#v=onepage&q=national%20woman%20suffrage%20movement%20actress&f=false">brought attention</a> to the movement, combining their work with political activism to push the women’s suffrage message.</p>
<h2>Celeb actions can move the needle</h2>
<p>The civil rights movement of the 1960s benefited from celebrities’ actions. For instance, after Sammy Davis Jr., a black comedian, refused to perform in segregated venues, many clubs in Las Vegas and Miami became integrated. Others – including Ossie Davis and Ruby Dee, Dick Gregory, Harry Belafonte, Jackie Robinson and Muhammad Ali – were <a href="https://news.vcu.edu/article/Hollywood_celebrities_unsung_role_in_the_civil_rights_movement">instrumental in the success</a> of the movement and passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. These actors planned and attended rallies, performed in and organized fundraising efforts and worked to open opportunities for other black people in the entertainment industry.</p>
<p>By the 1980s, you could watch Charlton Heston and Paul Newman <a href="https://books.google.com/books?id=7Q3QE-n8q4UC&pg=PA154&lpg=PA154&dq=Charlton+Heston+and+Paul+Newman+nuclear&source=bl&ots=-eRL7vFhFg&sig=rb4q3wEvuYDCpF9ztOnT3mSkfgs&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjTx9SN9OXQAhVKw1QKHaa9BDkQ6AEIRjAL#v=onepage&q=Charlton%20Heston%20and%20Paul%20Newman%20nuclear&f=false">debate</a> national defense policy and a potential nuclear weapons freeze on television. Meryl Streep <a href="http://www.pbs.org/tradesecrets/docs/alarscarenegin.html">spoke before Congress</a> against the use of pesticides in foods. Ed Asner and Charlton Heston <a href="https://books.google.com/books?id=-OHQCwAAQBAJ&pg=PA299&lpg=PA299&dq=Nicaraguan+contras+ed+asner+heston&source=bl&ots=dwjrso1QRO&sig=yj8m0oS3JrWqTKiL7_4PyqZ4-hY&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjAmYfD9eXQAhUhrFQKHfbcD94Q6AEIIzAB#v=onepage&q=Nicaraguan%20contras%20ed%20asner%20heston&f=false">publicly feuded about</a> their differing opinions of the Reagan administration’s support of right-wing Nicaraguan militant groups.</p>
<p>Whatever you think of how well thought out their opinions are (or aren’t), celebrities have the ability to draw attention to social issues in a way others do not. Their large platforms through film, music, sports and other media provide significant amplification for the initiatives they support.</p>
<p>There is, in particular, a measurable connection between <a href="https://doi.org/10.1017/S0021849904040206">celebrity opinions and young people</a>. Most marketing research shows that celebrity endorsements <a href="http://dx.doi.org/10.1086/209029">can improve the likelihood</a> that young consumers will choose the endorsed product.</p>
<h2>Antagonism toward celebrity activism</h2>
<p>Celebrities have been important partners, strategists, fundraisers and spokespeople for social movements and politicians since the earliest days of modern America. Recently, however, celebrities speaking out about policy and politics have received some harsh responses. </p>
<p>Kaepernick, in particular, has received <a href="http://www.esquire.com/news-politics/news/a48246/tomi-lahren-kaepernick-facebook/">scathing criticism</a>. Fans of his team <a href="http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3762239/You-never-play-NFL-Canada-49ers-fans-burn-Kaepernick-jerseys-national-anthem-114million-sport-star-refused-stand-protest-black-oppression.html">have burned his jersey in effigy</a>. Mike Evans, another NFL player, drew so much criticism for sitting in protest of Donald Trump’s election to the presidency that he was <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/early-lead/wp/2016/11/15/nfl-player-who-knelt-in-protest-of-donald-trumps-election-pledges-to-stand-for-anthem-again/?utm_term=.7c6cdf41259a">forced to apologize</a> and say he would never do it again. <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2016/11/19/us/mike-pence-hamilton.html?_r=0">#BoycottHamilton trended on Twitter</a> after the cast of the Broadway show Hamilton addressed Mike Pence. </p>
<p><div data-react-class="Tweet" data-react-props="{"tweetId":"799828567941120000"}"></div></p>
<p>President-elect Donald Trump jumped into the fray, tweeting that he does not support the public expression of sentiments like those of the “Hamilton” cast. </p>
<p><div data-react-class="Tweet" data-react-props="{"tweetId":"799972624713420804"}"></div></p>
<p><div data-react-class="Tweet" data-react-props="{"tweetId":"799974635274194947"}"></div></p>
<h2>Unprotected speech</h2>
<p>All of this raises significant questions about speech, protests and the law. Often celebrities, commentators and pundits talk about being able to say whatever they want thanks to their right to freedom of speech. But this idea is based on common misconceptions about what the U.S. Constitution actually says.</p>
<p>What is allowed under the law starts with the text of the <a href="https://www.law.cornell.edu/wex/first_amendment">First Amendment</a>, which provides that:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>“Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.”</p>
</blockquote>
<p>The language essentially allows for freedom of expression without government interference. The right to free speech includes protests and distasteful speech that one might find offensive or racist.</p>
<p>But, the First Amendment as written applies only to actions by Congress, and by extension the federal government. Over time, it’s <a href="http://faculty.smu.edu/jkobylka/supremecourt/Nationalization_BoRs.pdf">also come to apply to</a> state and local governments. It’s basically a <a href="https://fas.org/sgp/crs/misc/95-815.pdf">restriction</a> on how the government can limit citizens’ speech. </p>
<p>The First Amendment does not, however, apply to nongovernment entities. So private companies – professional sports organizations or theater companies, for instance – <a href="http://scholarlycommons.law.hofstra.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1135&context=hlr">can actually restrict speech</a> without violating the First Amendment, because in most cases, it doesn’t apply to them (unless the restriction is illegal for other reasons). This is why the NFL <a href="http://www.michiganreview.com/the-nfl-vs-freedom-of-expression/">could ban</a> DeAngelo Williams from wearing pink during a game in honor of his mother, who had died from breast cancer, and fine him thousands of dollars when he later defied the rules and did it anyway.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/149476/original/image-20161209-31370-1jq2fx9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/149476/original/image-20161209-31370-1jq2fx9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/149476/original/image-20161209-31370-1jq2fx9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=384&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/149476/original/image-20161209-31370-1jq2fx9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=384&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/149476/original/image-20161209-31370-1jq2fx9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=384&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/149476/original/image-20161209-31370-1jq2fx9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=483&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/149476/original/image-20161209-31370-1jq2fx9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=483&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/149476/original/image-20161209-31370-1jq2fx9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=483&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">DeAngelo Williams is outspoken in supporting breast cancer research. The NFL can limit when he can display his position.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://www.apimages.com/metadata/Index/Seahawks-Panthers-Football/2777653831ae429aa42a301b9d7b3b01/16/0">AP Photo/Nell Redmond</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>How does all of this affect celebrities? In a nutshell, if a celebrity is an employee of, or has some kind of contract with, a nongovernment entity, his speech actually can be restricted in many ways. Remember, it’s not against the law for a nongovernment employer to limit what employees can say in many cases. While there are other more limited protections <a href="http://www.americanbar.org/publications/insights_on_law_andsociety/15/winter-2015/chill-around-the-water-cooler.html">based on state and federal law</a> that protect employee speech, they are incomplete and probably wouldn’t apply to most celebrity speech. Any questions about what a public figure can or cannot express, therefore, will start with the language of any contracts she has signed – not the First Amendment. </p>
<p>For better or worse, celebrities can make significant impacts on policy, politics and culture, and have been doing so for centuries. But speaking out can put them at risk. Celebrities can be fined by their employers, like DeAngelo Williams, have their careers derailed, like the <a href="http://www.savingcountrymusic.com/destroying-the-dixie-chicks-ten-years-after/">Dixie Chicks</a>, or <a href="http://edition.cnn.com/2016/09/21/sport/colin-kaepernick-death-threats/">receive death threats</a>, like Colin Kaepernick. Even so, their involvement can provide an influential platform in promoting and creating societal change.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/69467/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Shontavia Johnson provides consulting services for Johnson International Group LLC, an organization that provides business assistance to entrepreneurs and entertainers. </span></em></p>Americans enjoy a right to free speech, and some public figures really exercise that right. The Constitution might not protect them the way they think it does, though.Shontavia Johnson, Professor of Intellectual Property Law, Drake UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/691682016-11-23T08:45:25Z2016-11-23T08:45:25ZBooing Mike Pence at Hamilton echoes theatrical politics of the founding fathers<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/147033/original/image-20161122-10973-1vonr78.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Obama_greets_the_cast_and_crew_of_Hamilton_musical,_2015.jpg">The cast meet Obama in 2015 / Pete Souza</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Last week, vice president-elect Mike Pence <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2016/nov/19/mike-pence-booed-at-hamilton-performance-then-hears-diversity-plea">was booed by the audience</a> when he attended a performance of hip-hop musical Hamilton, in New York. </p>
<p>It goes almost without saying that Hamilton is the hottest ticket in contemporary American musicals. Since moving to Broadway in August 2015, this story about the life of American Founding Father Alexander Hamilton has been the subject of a staggering range of plaudits: 11 Tony Awards, a Grammy for the cast recording, the 2016 Pulitzer Prize for Drama, and a MacArthur Genius Grant. But it is the passionate nature of its fan culture that has become the most dominant feature of the show’s run.</p>
<p>Aware of the musical’s reputation as an almost sacred work of art for American liberals, and to calm potential violence, Brandon Victor Dixon (who plays the villain of the piece, Aaron Burr) called after Pence as he was leaving the show. After Pence stopped, turned, and listened, Dixon read out a message written by the cast and crew:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>There is nothing to boo here, ladies and gentlemen, we are sharing a story of love. Mike Pence, we welcome you here. We are the diverse Americans who are alarmed and anxious that your new administration will not protect us, our planet, our children, our parents, or defend us and uphold our inalienable rights … we hope that this show has inspired you to uphold our American values and work on behalf of all of us.</p>
</blockquote>
<p><div data-react-class="Tweet" data-react-props="{"tweetId":"799828567941120000"}"></div></p>
<p>Trump himself then chimed in on Twitter, <a href="https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/799974635274194947">saying</a>: “The Theater must always be a safe and special place. The cast of Hamilton was very rude last night to a very good man, Mike Pence. Apologize!” Predictably, social media exploded and the news media followed suit.</p>
<h2>Trump the fop</h2>
<p>The affair has a distinctly 18th century quality; a parody of the culture of display that has come to shape our modern politics. </p>
<p>A deeply controversial VP-elect (whose conservative platform seeks to roll back some of American women and minorities’ most hard-won rights) is challenged at a play that is highly significant to American liberals. Possibly feeling shamed by the event – or perhaps attempting to fill column inches with some other story than the <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2016/nov/19/trump-university-settlement-twitter">$25m settlement</a> of his fraud lawsuits – Trump then demands on social media that the cast “Apologize!” for being “rude”, showing him to have a surprisingly genteel sense of theatrical decorum and making him seem more like the offended fop in a regency drama than the leader of the free world.</p>
<p><div data-react-class="Tweet" data-react-props="{"tweetId":"799974635274194947"}"></div></p>
<p>To add to the ironies, Hamilton is about the battle for control over liberal and conservative versions of US history. Washington sings:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>We have no control<br>
Who lives who dies<br>
Who tells our story. </p>
</blockquote>
<p>With a diverse cast, it recounts an immigrant’s achievements in the face of mounting pressure from a group of scheming, white-supremacist populists opposed to his abolitionism, Caribbean origins, big state agenda and liberal financial policy. </p>
<p>The booing of Pence, and Dixon’s attempt to calm it, was a theatrical moment that revealed underlying tensions in an increasingly divided America. The debate throws up ideas of the politics of culture in the US that has distinct parallels with Alexander Hamilton’s own time. Without Dixon’s call for calm, who knows what might have happened. The precedent of Hamilton’s own time is not positive. As Hamilton himself says in the musical: “Look at where we are/ Look at where we started.”</p>
<h2>Hamilton’s first fans</h2>
<p>During the Revolutionary War, the Continental Congress banned theatre-going for being a dangerously cosmopolitan and decadent diversion from the goal of nation-building. But from the 1780s, theatres in the US started to open up again. Meanwhile, factions began to appear in politics that increasingly organised themselves around their choice of entertainment at high-profile cultural institutions. </p>
<p>The right to appear in public, and lay claim to authority over the new American culture, was one of the most aggressive political battles of the era. 18th century politics do not map directly onto the 21st century’s distinctions between liberals and conservatives. But parallels do exist. The Democratic-Republicans were formed to defend white, male suffrage and Southern slavery through appeals to populism, while Hamilton’s Federalist Party generally supported big government, free market capitalism, cosmopolitan relations with Britain, and a professional civil service. </p>
<p>For history’s first Hamilton fans – the Federalists of New York City – the Tontine Coffeehouse and the John Street Theatre were the most important organisations in which to display their elite cultural choices, while the Democratic-Republicans typically patronised the more rowdy theatres and bars around Tammany Hall.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/147021/original/image-20161122-10994-19khl47.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/147021/original/image-20161122-10994-19khl47.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=389&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/147021/original/image-20161122-10994-19khl47.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=389&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/147021/original/image-20161122-10994-19khl47.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=389&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/147021/original/image-20161122-10994-19khl47.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=489&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/147021/original/image-20161122-10994-19khl47.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=489&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/147021/original/image-20161122-10994-19khl47.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=489&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Tontine Coffee House, Francis Guy, 1797.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Wikimedia Commons</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>In the 1790s, the new Democratic-Republican Party, empowered by Thomas Jefferson’s ascendancy, began a campaign to invade and disrupt institutions that Federalists had reserved for themselves. They would occupy seats at the illustrious John Street Theatre to heckle the players or challenge noted Federalists to fistfights outside the Tontine Coffeehouse.</p>
<figure class="align-right ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/147022/original/image-20161122-10981-1kdkjdi.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/147022/original/image-20161122-10981-1kdkjdi.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=342&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/147022/original/image-20161122-10981-1kdkjdi.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=342&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/147022/original/image-20161122-10981-1kdkjdi.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=342&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/147022/original/image-20161122-10981-1kdkjdi.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=429&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/147022/original/image-20161122-10981-1kdkjdi.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=429&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/147022/original/image-20161122-10981-1kdkjdi.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=429&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Interior of the Park Theatre, Manhattan, New York City.</span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The battle for supremacy between political parties in the US, as <a href="http://www.cambridge.org/gb/academic/subjects/arts-theatre-culture/american-theatre/early-american-theatre-revolution-thomas-jefferson-hands-people?format=HB&isbn=9780521825085">Heather Nathans</a> and <a href="http://www.hup.harvard.edu/catalog.php?isbn=9780674390775">Lawrence Levine</a> have both shown, was intrinsically connected with the development of US cultural hierarchies. Regretting the presence of the hated Democratic-Republicans, Federalists began to seek subscriptions to build a new playhouse on Park Row in the north of the city. That theatre would eventually become The Park, the first major playhouse to continuously support American-authored dramatic productions. Democratic-Republicans, instead, embraced the “low-brow” – eventually favouring the minstrel shows and melodramas of the Bowery.</p>
<p>Like the new #HamFans, Hamiltonian Federalists were remarkably precious about their cultural spaces not being made available to Democratic-Republicans, or those that sought to challenge their most strongly-held convictions. It is no surprise that it was in the highly fraught context of an American theatre that Philip Hamilton (Alexander’s son) challenged the Democratic-Republican George Eaker to the duel in which he eventually died – poignantly depicted in Hamilton the musical. Whenever Democratic-Republicans and Federalists occupied the same spaces at the same time in the early republic the results could be frightening.</p>
<p>So, Americans showing their hatred for the other side in the theatre is not a new phenomenon. It is one of their longest-standing political and cultural traditions. Whether or not Pence and the Hamilton audience knew it, they were acting out an 18th century story that would not have surprised the founding fathers.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/69168/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Michael Collins receives funding from Arts and Humanities Research Council. He works for The University of Kent.</span></em></p>Fraught politics have often been played out in America’s theatres.Michael Collins, Lecturer in American Literature, University of KentLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/607732016-06-13T09:58:04Z2016-06-13T09:58:04ZWere this year’s Tony Awards only a superficial nod to diversity?<p>As predicted, the star of the 2016 Tony Awards was “Hamilton,” which took home 11 trophies.</p>
<p>Compared with the 2016 Academy Awards, the 2016 Tony Awards were far more reflective of our multiracial society. <a href="http://www.detroitnews.com/story/entertainment/theater/2016/06/07/broadway-diversity-things-really-changed/85574004/">Out of 40 acting nominees in plays and musicals</a>, 14 – 35 percent – were people of color. And that didn’t include several nonwhite nominees for many behind-the-scenes awards.</p>
<p>In the days leading up to the awards show, the hashtag <a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/broadway-diversity-2015-16_us_5727c500e4b016f378934417">#TonysSoDiverse</a> was even trending on Twitter (a play on the hashtag <a href="http://www.latimes.com/entertainment/la-et-oscars-so-white-reaction-htmlstory.html">#OscarsSoWhite</a>, which trended in the weeks leading up to the 2016 Oscars).</p>
<p>Indeed, Broadway appears to be much more progressive than Hollywood. But is it?</p>
<p>Broadway and Hollywood are linked: The adaptation of plays and films on stage and screen connects them just as much as the actors, writers, directors, designers and producers who work in both areas. And despite attention being brought to the issue in recent years, they continue to be guided by color-coded economics – the race-based business practices that I discuss in my book “<a href="https://books.google.com/books?id=SviJAwAAQBAJ&printsec=frontcover&dq=Shaping+the+Future+of+African+American+Film&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwiWxPSc5KPNAhXDDj4KHa12ASoQ6AEIHjAA#v=onepage&q=Shaping%20the%20Future%20of%20African%20American%20Film&f=false">Shaping the Future of African American Film: Color-Coded Economics and the Story Behind the Numbers</a>.” </p>
<p>Unfortunately, trending hashtags and one set of Tony Award nominations are meaningless unless they inspire structural changes in the industry.</p>
<h2>When diversity is superficial</h2>
<p>It’s not clear whether the diversity represented in this season’s Tony Awards is a flash in the pan or a positive sign of things to come.</p>
<p>It isn’t the first season to feature a number of diverse actors and casts. The 1996 Tony Award season included August Wilson’s “Seven Guitars,” the musical “Rent” and George C. Wolfe’s black history musical “Bring in ‘da Noise, Bring in ‘da Funk.” </p>
<p>The next season, however, <a href="http://www.americantheatre.org/2016/06/07/the-broadway-season-was-diverse-offstage-too-not-that-youd-notice/">featured predominantly white shows</a>: “A Doll’s House,” “Chicago,” “Titanic” and a Broadway revival of “The Gin Game.”</p>
<p>Thus, without structural changes, this unusually diverse Broadway season is unlikely to continue. In fact, much of the diversity being touted is simply tied to one group, African-Americans. A closer look at the data shows that the diversity needle has actually regressed. </p>
<p>As a <a href="http://www.forbes.com/sites/leeseymour/2016/06/03/why-lupita-nyongos-tony-nomination-is-more-important-than-her-oscar-win/#f4c4e9d4299a">recent Forbes article noted</a>:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Since the awards began – 1929 for the Oscars, 1947 for the Tonys – over 95 percent of all nominees have been white, with the Tonys recognizing more people of color by 1 percent. The big difference is in the ratios: The Tonys recognize twice as many black artists, but the Oscars recognize three times as many Asians and Latinos.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Since the Asian American Performers Action Coalition started collecting data on Broadway’s diversity nine years ago, <a href="http://www.detroitnews.com/story/entertainment/theater/2016/06/07/broadway-diversity-things-really-changed/85574004/">the group has made some notable discoveries</a>. </p>
<p>In the past nine years, actors of color have yet to represent more than 26 percent of all Broadway roles. In fact, the numbers for last season’s nonwhite roles <em>dropped</em>, to 22 percent from 25 percent. </p>
<p>Even membership of the Actors’ Equity Association – the labor union for stagehands and stage actors – <a href="http://variety.com/2016/legit/opinion/hamilton-diversity-casting-actors-equity-guest-column-1201745244/">remains predominantly white</a>, with 68 percent of its 50,823 active members identifying as Caucasian. And in the <a href="http://www.actorsequity.org/docs/about/aea_annual_13-14.pdf">2013-2014 Actors Equity theatrical season report</a>, Latino and Hispanic actors accounted for only 2.9 percent of active membership. </p>
<h2>Inclusion and equity behind the scenes</h2>
<p>Behind the scenes, things aren’t much better.</p>
<p>In 2014, <a href="http://www.americantheatre.org/2014/09/19/artists-of-color-stand-up-against-discrimination-in-the-field/">American Theatre magazine</a> reported that only four playwrights of color appeared on the publication’s annual lists of the top-10 most-produced playwrights over a six-year period. </p>
<p>Designers and technicians can also contribute to the diversity of the industry. According to a <a href="http://www.americantheatre.org/2016/06/07/the-broadway-season-was-diverse-offstage-too-not-that-youd-notice/">2016 American Theatre magazine article</a>, a recent study from the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs found that 81 percent of the 346 theater designers polled were Caucasian. They arrived at the same percentage after polling 1,676 technical/production employees. They also reported that women remain underrepresented in all categories of United Scenic Artists membership, and men in the smaller, off-Broadway venues outnumber women in all backstage specialties except costuming and stage management. </p>
<p>While the people who make up creative teams are less visible than the actors on stage, they still play an important role in shaping the overall vision, message and audience experience of a show. </p>
<h2>Is the ‘Hamilton’ hoopla deserved?</h2>
<p>For months, Lin-Manuel Miranda’s “Hamilton” has garnered glowing reviews and accolades. Aside from its history-making 16 Tony nominations and 11 wins, Miranda was also awarded the Pulitzer Prize and a MacArthur Genius Grant. The original soundtrack has topped the popular music charts, and, <a href="http://www.slate.com/blogs/browbeat/2016/04/17/historians_are_criticizing_hamilton_and_fans_should_be_thrilled.html">as of April 2016</a>, the show had sold tens of millions of dollars in advance sales, with tickets going for more than US$1,000 on the resale market.</p>
<p>Nonetheless, the show still used some traditional on-stage <a href="http://www.thenation.com/article/how-hamilton-is-revolutionizing-the-broadway-musical/">Broadway formulas</a>. Warren Hoffman’s “<a href="https://books.google.com/books?id=9jzlAgAAQBAJ&pg=PT109&dq=The+Great+White+Way:+race+and+the+broadway+musical+preview&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwirku2t5aPNAhWJVz4KHeYODPEQ6AEIHDAA#v=onepage&q=The%20Great%20White%20Way%3A%20race%20and%20the%20broadway%20musical%20preview&f=false">The Great White Way: Race and the Broadway Musical</a>” explains how American musical formulas and themes either exclude people of color or includes them in ways that privilege white identity. Miranda and the cast appear to remix those formulas in the tradition of hip-hop. </p>
<p>For example, the opening song is a classic establishing number; Hamilton and his comrades captivate the audience with a charm song; several major characters sing an <a href="http://howlround.com/gimme-gimme-the-i-want-song-in-musical-theatre">“I want” song</a>, which has traditionally been used to develop characters and reveal their motivations; and romances and their love ballads intertwine with a “big-canvas plot,” or a broad historical storyline that traces Hamilton’s rise and fall. All are simply infused with black music and dance styles. And in the end, the story is still about a white man, even though the majority of the cast employs people of color.</p>
<p>Furthermore, much of the attention “Hamilton” has received reinforces expectations about the roles for people of color (especially black people) on Broadway. Due to a <a href="https://books.google.com/books?id=10rEGSIItjgC&pg=PA494&lpg=PA494&dq=black+actors+stereotypical+roles+Broadway&source=bl&ots=AT4RcpS2NN&sig=2pxZ2z7iJeykmHEJwU1HRzb-ZJA&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwi8x7GJ8qPNAhVKNj4KHYlJAic4ChDoAQg1MAg#v=onepage&q=black%20actors%20stereotypical%20roles%20Broadway&f=false">longstanding pattern</a> of casting people of color in stereotypical or minor roles, a show like “Hamilton” featuring people of color singing, rapping and dancing – even as the Founding Fathers – can feed into popular stereotypes. In comparison to a range of predominantly white cast musicals and plays, there are fewer Broadway productions starring people of color who do not sing and dance to tell their stories. This is the challenge of remixing old formulas on stage in the 21st century. </p>
<p>But it’s off-stage – in the development process and finances – that could offer a new model for producing plays. </p>
<p>Miranda developed the creative concept as an album or mixtape rather than a musical, which freed him from certain expectations associated with the form. </p>
<p>According to <a href="http://deadline.com/2015/09/hamilton-by-the-numbers-anatomy-of-a-broadway-blockbuster-1201534240/">Deadline</a>, commercial partners had no artistic or financial control and could not benefit financially from the trial run at the off-Broadway Public Theater. The arrangement helped the Public Theater preserve its nonprofit status and allowed Miranda and the cast to retain creative control even after its move to Broadway. </p>
<p>As of April 3, <a href="http://www.billboard.com/articles/news/7325353/hamilton-money-breakdown">“Hamilton” had grossed</a> $61.7 million and <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2016/06/12/theater/hamilton-inc-the-path-to-a-billion-dollar-show.html">could pass the $1 billion mark</a> in a decade. (“The Lion King” ($6 billion) and “Wicked” ($4 billion) are notable musicals that have achieved similar success.) In addition, “Hamilton’s” original cast <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2016/04/16/theater/hamilton-producers-and-actors-reach-deal-on-sharing-profits.htm">will share some of the profits</a> thanks to a new deal that has reinvigorated debates about actor compensation. </p>
<p>Back in March 2016, in preparation for the show expanding beyond New York City, a “Hamilton” casting notice <a href="http://www.theatlantic.com/entertainment/archive/2016/03/hamilton-casting/476247/">called for nonwhite actors in principal roles</a>. While it brought attention to the advantage white actors tend to have when the vast majority of Broadway productions feature white casts and white characters, it also led Actor’s Equity to intervene after a lawyer charged that the notice violated New York City Human Rights law. Although all actors are being encouraged to audition and will be considered, the incident exposed the critical role “Hamilton’s” creators are attempting to play in demonstrating the possibilities of color-conscious casting. </p>
<p>But it’s Danai Gurira’s “Eclipsed” – which was nominated for six awards – that may be more groundbreaking in upending traditional Broadway practices. </p>
<p>In an industry that is otherwise dominated by white males, it’s the first show in Broadway history to be written, directed and performed by black women, while also being financed by black women. Besides nominations for Best Play, Best Direction (Liesl Tommy), Best Actress (Lupita N'Yongo), Best Featured Actress (Pascale Armand) and Best Costume Design (Clint Ramos), “Eclipsed” was the only nominated play featuring a diverse cast that <em>wasn’t</em> a musical. </p>
<h2>Do Tony Awards make a difference?</h2>
<p>In theory, Tony Awards should make a real difference in the careers of nominees and winners. But that’s not always the case. </p>
<p>According to a <a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/ira-kalb/oscarnomics-2015-what-awa_b_6494378.html">2015 Huffington Post article</a>, awards help market any product and bring in more revenue. Awards also offer additional benefits including, but not limited to, validation, credibility and branding. </p>
<p>Although the study talks specifically about the benefits of winning an Academy Award in the film industry, the Tony Awards, which honor excellence in U.S. theater, are considered the equivalent on Broadway. Winning an Oscar typically translates into a huge payoff for everyone involved, but even nominations are expected to enhance future options and earnings. </p>
<p>For example, <a href="http://www.newyork.com/articles/broadway/the-tony-award-worth-its-weight-in-gold-55472/">Tony Award-nominated productions tend to see increased ticket sales</a>. This year, “Eclipsed,” “Shuffle Along,” “The Color Purple” and “Hamilton” all experienced boosts in gross revenue after the Tony Award nominations were announced on May 3. (Hamilton was already playing at capacity, so it only experienced minimal gains.) </p>
<p><a href="http://articles.latimes.com/2013/jun/11/entertainment/la-et-cm-tonys-bump-20130611">Winning a Tony in the acting category</a> can also lead to long-term employment on other projects. For example, actor Tracy Letts landed a role as a series regular on Showtime’s “Homeland” after winning a Tony for his performance in Edward Albee’s “Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?”</p>
<p>But actors of color have reported not seeing the same sort of return in the wake of a nomination. This could be due to the continued dearth of roles for people of color on Broadway. </p>
<p>For instance, Leslie Odom, Jr., the “Hamilton” star who was nominated for the “Best Actor in a Musical” award, <a href="http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/race/tonys-actor-roundtable-7-broadway-898512">hasn’t experienced any additional interest</a>:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>I think what we’re having is a rare moment. I think what we really need to pay attention to is the next two seasons… Imagine if a white actor were having a similar situation to what I’m having, with the kind of success of the show, there might be three or four offers a week for the next shows you’re going to do. There are no shows for me to do. There’s just no roles. </p>
</blockquote>
<p>For the momentum and attention generated by this year’s awards to continue, <a href="http://www.wbur.org/hereandnow/2016/02/16/hamilton-behind-the-scenes">structural changes have to be made on and off stage</a>. It’s important to expand notions of diversity and inclusion beyond the black and white binary. All ethnicities and marginalized groups, which includes LGBTQ people, different body types and varying disabilities, should be looped in.</p>
<p>It’s not just a moral imperative; it’s also a creative and economic one.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/60773/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Monica White Ndounou does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>On the surface – and when compared to the Oscars – the 2016 Tonys looked like a groundbreaking moment for diversity in entertainment. But when it comes to inclusion, Broadway has a long way to go.Monica White Ndounou, Associate Professor of Drama, Tufts UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.