tag:theconversation.com,2011:/us/topics/james-baldwin-32823/articlesJames Baldwin – The Conversation2020-09-13T12:11:26Ztag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1458182020-09-13T12:11:26Z2020-09-13T12:11:26ZTrump aligns ignorance with bigotry as he attempts to rewrite history<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/357495/original/file-20200910-19-1woaj5y.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C107%2C5874%2C3826&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">President Donald Trump speaks during an event on judicial appointments at the White House on Sept. 9, 2020.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">(AP Photo/Evan Vucci)</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>In what appears to be a blatant appeal to the white supremacists in his base, President Donald Trump has made clear his attempt to both defend and rewrite the history of racial injustice in the United States while eliminating the institutions that make visible its historical roots. </p>
<p>As Peter Baker, chief White House correspondent for <em>The New York Times</em>, <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2020/09/06/us/politics/trump-race-2020-election.html">recently pointed out</a>:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>“Not in generations has a sitting president so overtly declared himself the candidate of white America.”</p>
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<p>Trump has <a href="https://thehill.com/homenews/administration/346929-trump-revives-defense-of-confederate-monuments">defended Confederate symbols and monuments</a> and refused to criticize those right-wing groups that appropriate them in the interests of legitimizing racial bigotry and hatred. </p>
<p>He has attacked <em>The New York Times’</em> 1619 Project, in use in California public schools, as being anti-American. The project analyzes the history and legacy of American slavery. Trump wants it investigated by the Department of Education and <a href="https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/us-politics/trump-schools-1619-project-slavery-defund-education-b404780.html">has threatened to defund schools that include the project in their teaching.</a></p>
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<p>As the presidential election gets closer, Trump is desperate to reassert his white supremacist and white nationalist views, even though they’ve never been hidden during his presidency. </p>
<p>After all, his white supremacist ideology is the cornerstone of his appeal to the reactionary and bigoted elements of his base. </p>
<p>That explains why he’s issued an order to rid the federal government of programs engaged in <a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-54038888">racial sensitivity training, which he labels as “divisive, anti-American propaganda.”</a> </p>
<p>It explains why <a href="https://thehill.com/homenews/administration/505966-trump-swipes-at-nascar-for-banning-confederate-flag-bubba-wallace">he’s condemned NASCAR</a> for banning the Confederate flag. </p>
<h2>‘Organized forgetting’</h2>
<p>Some would argue that Trump’s latest investment in the logic of white supremacy and historical amnesia is a product of his ignorance of history. </p>
<p>But there’s more at work here than Trump’s power-drunk ignorance of the past. And it’s more dangerous and sinister than what’s often found in authoritarian regimes — it’s a racialized politics of organized forgetting.</p>
<p>At the heart of Trump’s attack on racial injustice is an attempt to replace historical consciousness with historical amnesia. </p>
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<img alt="Trump gestures and makes a face while speaking to a crowd." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/357534/original/file-20200910-18-1hx25hv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/357534/original/file-20200910-18-1hx25hv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/357534/original/file-20200910-18-1hx25hv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/357534/original/file-20200910-18-1hx25hv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/357534/original/file-20200910-18-1hx25hv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/357534/original/file-20200910-18-1hx25hv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/357534/original/file-20200910-18-1hx25hv.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">
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<span class="caption">Trump speaks at a campaign rally on Sept. 8, 2020, in Winston-Salem, N.C.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">(AP Photo/Chris Carlson)</span></span>
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<p>This purging of history is endemic to totalitarian regimes. In these dark times, history is once again being rewritten in the interests of tyrants and oppressive groups that do everything they can to cleanse it of elements of resistance and truth.</p>
<p>Trump’s rewriting of history and his attacks on forms of education that address racial injustices are happening at a moment when ignorance is aligning itself with the forces of bigotry. </p>
<p>Trump’s condemnations are malicious in their disdain of criticism and their attempts to undermine the value of historical consciousness. He attempts to render invisible the historical understanding of critical social issues that lie on the side of social and economic justice. </p>
<p>When the calls and struggles for racial justice are labelled as unpatriotic or dismissed as un-American, the abyss of fascist politics is not far away. But to misread or deny history denigrates those who have fought the battles of the past and risked their lives for the promises of a substantive democracy.</p>
<h2>The danger of ignorance</h2>
<p>As the great American essayist James Baldwin stated perceptively in his 1972 book <a href="https://www.kirkusreviews.com/book-reviews/james-baldwin/no-name-street/"><em>No Name in the Street</em></a>:</p>
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<p>“Ignorance, allied with power, is the most ferocious enemy justice can have.” </p>
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<p>Trump’s ignorance floods the Twitter landscape daily. <a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-46351940">He denies climate change</a> along with the dangers that it poses to humanity, <a href="https://www.nationalobserver.com/2020/07/17/news/inside-trumps-deadly-war-covid-19-science">discredits scientific evidence</a> in the face of a massive pandemic, claims that systemic racism doesn’t exist in the United States and mangles history with his ignorance of the past. </p>
<p>Implicit in Baldwin’s warning is that the greatest threat to democratic societies is a collective ignorance that legitimizes forms of organized forgetting, social amnesia and the death of civic literacy. </p>
<p>Under the Trump regime, historical amnesia is used as a weapon of miseducation, politics and power. Trump wants to erase the struggles of those who fought for justice in the past because they offer dangerous memories and lessons to the protesters marching in the streets today.</p>
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<figcaption><span class="caption">The Associated Press.</span></figcaption>
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<p>Efforts to erase the progress of the past, including emancipation, is a centrepiece of authoritarian societies. These efforts cause public memory to wither and the threads of authoritarianism to take root and become normalized. They’re often accompanied by a broader attack on critical education, civic literacy, investigative journalists and the critical media.</p>
<p>But Trump’s defence of white supremacy, obvious in his attacks on the Black Lives Matter movement — <a href="https://www.cnn.com/2020/07/01/politics/donald-trump-black-lives-matter-confederate-race/index.html">which he labels as a threat to white Americans and a “symbol of hate”</a> — is particularly dangerous. </p>
<p>As <em>Washington Post</em> columnist Eugene Robinson <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/trump-is-shouting-his-racism-he-must-be-stopped/2020/09/07/06036768-f13a-11ea-bc45-e5d48ab44b9f_story.html">recently wrote</a>:</p>
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<p>“All of this is nothing less than undisguised white supremacy. Trump wants white voters to fear the Black Lives Matter movement. He wants them to see it not as a demand for justice and fairness but as a mortal threat to white privilege.”</p>
</blockquote>
<h2>Four years of nods to fascism</h2>
<p>While some critics eschew the comparison of Trump with authoritarian regimes, it’s crucial to recognize the four years of alarming actions by this administration that echo the horrors of a fascist past.</p>
<p>Rejecting a comparison to fascism makes it easier to believe that we have nothing to learn from history and to take comfort in the assumption that it cannot surface once again. </p>
<p>But no democracy can survive without an informed and educated citizenry. Historical amnesia provides the conditions for the truth to disappear, conspiracy theories to proliferate and education to be stripped of its critical function. </p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/qanon-conspiracy-theory-followers-step-out-of-the-shadows-and-may-be-headed-to-congress-141581">QAnon conspiracy theory followers step out of the shadows and may be headed to Congress</a>
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<p>What should every Canadian learn from Trump’s manipulation of racist fears as a political strategy? One crucial issue is that democracy cannot function without an informed citizenry; it demands constant attention, and must be reborn with each generation.</p>
<p>No democracy can survive the assault if it’s left unchallenged. </p>
<p>Fortunately, across the globe, people in the streets, in classrooms and in the media are taking a stand. Success from their efforts cannot come fast enough.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/145818/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Henry Giroux 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>Donald Trump’s attack on racial injustice is an attempt to replace historical consciousness with historical amnesia. It’s a racialized politics of organized forgetting.Henry Giroux, Chaired professor for Scholarship in the Public Interest in the Department of English and Cultural Studies, McMaster UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1154882019-04-15T14:11:24Z2019-04-15T14:11:24ZFranco’s invisible legacy: books across the hispanic world are still scarred by his censorship<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/269322/original/file-20190415-147508-1x39xik.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Spanish practices. </span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/danoliverm/40387989413/in/photolist-24wX1a4-i8hcGv-kdYYHg-dzJaGF-hVeWK5-iyYFDf-22HE65k-imjqxG-hWGMYA-2fkF9vv-iT63yi-gyoLwT-dfKotb-iHBwa1-hw56zg-pagxKj-buBJe2-jy5V8H-cFjm7L-9y5HgZ-sa9LQ4-2d23NDL-c57QHG-agLCym-o9DQ3A-2e86r1x-jgqwsA-bxov7G-fjX52m-fre4o7-qk28u3-e97b8B-ie8HiB-2cucfpm-hTNsUk-gbQJAE-9obgQ4-jzt4rN-jUru43-gwErDf-2aiB3yd-fNAwsy-EvGsHt-dT3mcE-nvojjq-i724Ma-2fe45xt-hMNuC6-i9j1Nt-hG5CLo">Dani Oliver</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>It’s exactly 80 years since <a href="https://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/spanish-civil-war-ends">the end</a> of the Spanish Civil War, when General Francisco Franco’s populist forces finally overcame the leftist resistance and plunged the country into full-blown dictatorship. Decades after his death, Franco continues to cast a long shadow over Spain, from the <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/apr/14/spain-vox-party-on-course-to-break-into-mainstream-politics">rise of</a> the far-right <a href="https://theconversation.com/gains-for-spains-far-right-vox-party-in-andalusia-fuelled-by-tough-opposition-to-catalan-independence-108107">Vox party</a> to the hundreds of <a href="https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/archaeologists-open-one-mass-graves-spanish-civil-war-180970175/">mass graves</a> of people who died in the war that are still waiting to be exhumed. </p>
<p>One other hugely important legacy that few people are aware of is the <a href="http://www.multilingual-matters.com/display.asp?K=9781788921800">continuing effect</a> on books, both in Spain and throughout the Spanish-speaking world. To this day, translations of many world classics and works of Spanish literature are being reprinted using expurgated texts approved by the dictator’s censors – often without publishers even realising it, let alone readers. It has had a chilling effect on freedom of speech over the years, and must be addressed as a matter of urgency. </p>
<p>Between 1936 and 1966, every single book published in Spain had to be submitted to a national board of censors for examination. The censors would decide whether the text should be banned altogether or was fit for publication, in which case they would stipulate any necessary changes. After 1966, <a href="http://www2.port.ac.uk/media/contacts-and-departments/slas/events/tr07-castro.pdf">when</a> a <a href="http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.540.2656&rep=rep1&type=pdf">new law</a> that partly liberalised freedom of speech was introduced in the country, publishers could voluntarily decide whether to submit a text for censorship. However, the authorities still retained the ability to withdraw any book from circulation that they deemed unacceptable. </p>
<p>Franco’s censorship laws sought to reinforce Catholicism and promote ideological and cultural uniformity. The censors enforced conservative values, inhibited dissent and manipulated history, especially the memory of the civil war. Sexually explicit material was banned, as were alternative political views, improper language and criticisms of the Catholic church. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/269321/original/file-20190415-147518-b1raym.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/269321/original/file-20190415-147518-b1raym.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/269321/original/file-20190415-147518-b1raym.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=446&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/269321/original/file-20190415-147518-b1raym.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=446&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/269321/original/file-20190415-147518-b1raym.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=446&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/269321/original/file-20190415-147518-b1raym.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=560&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/269321/original/file-20190415-147518-b1raym.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=560&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/269321/original/file-20190415-147518-b1raym.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=560&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">El caudillo.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Francisco_Franco_1930.jpg#/media/File:Francisco_Franco_1930.jpg">Wikimedia</a></span>
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<p>Spain abandoned these policies after Franco’s death in 1975, yet most of the same texts are still widely available today. Ira Levin’s Rosemary’s Baby is available in more than 20 different Spanish-language editions, for instance, including an electronic one, all of which lack two extended passages that according to the censors glorified Satan. James Baldwin’s Go and Tell it on the Mountain is only available in a version with cuts that include references to birth control and details about the sex lives of the main characters. The publication of this expurgated text is sponsored by none other than UNESCO. </p>
<p>Many literary works by some of Spain’s most important 20th-century writers have suffered similar fates, including those by Ana María Matute, Camilo José Cela, Juan Marsé and Ignacio Aldecoa. In some cases, such as George Orwell’s Burmese Days and Ian Fleming’s Thunderball, censored parts have even survived in retranslated and restored versions. </p>
<p>With no one under the age of 40 even alive during the dictatorship years, few people are even aware of the problem. Public libraries are encouraging people to read thousands of volumes without realising they are censored. Many of these texts have been imported to Latin America, sometimes even being republished in different countries with their censored parts intact. It means that a fairly large proportion of the world’s population is being routinely denied access to literature as it was intended to appear. </p>
<h2>Why censorship never ended</h2>
<p>It is a <a href="https://www.economist.com/europe/2018/11/29/why-spain-had-to-overlook-its-painful-history">well known fact</a> that Spaniards have found it difficult to confront their traumatic recent history. The so-called “<a href="https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2007/nov/03/comment.spain">pact of forgetting</a>”, a tacit decision among the Spanish political elites not to question or examine the past, was seen by many as vital to make the transition to democracy possible in the late 1970s and 1980s. For years, this included a general amnesia about Franco’s cultural policies: even when books were retranslated to restore censored parts, few people said anything about it. </p>
<p>Spain’s 2007 Law for the Recovery of the Historical Memory was a <a href="https://elpais.com/elpais/2017/01/03/inenglish/1483446158_649781.html">major step</a> away from these years of forgetting. It condemned the dictatorship and established compensations for people who endured political violence during the regime. It also initiated the removal of statues and other public symbols which glorified Franco’s reign. Yet other cultural artefacts, such as books, were overlooked. </p>
<p>The upshot is that Spain’s literary censorship problem is alive and well today. Indeed, it is arguably getting worse: it is easy to release digital versions of these classics, so Franco’s hand even reaches into Kindles and tablets. We are talking about one of the most long-lasting yet invisible legacies of his regime. The effect on culture in Spain and in other hispanic countries is almost incalculable. Censorship has certainly distorted many people’s perception of the civil war and its consequences. Many readers will also be ignorant of writers’ real points of view regarding important social issues such as gender roles, birth control and homosexuality.</p>
<p>The question is how to deal with this complex problem – particularly now that the Vox party, which is expected to do well in the upcoming election, has <a href="https://elpais.com/elpais/2018/12/03/inenglish/1543831474_046256.html">promised to repeal</a> the Law of Historical Memory on the grounds that it manipulates the past. </p>
<p>The most important task is to raise awareness among the reading public. This needs clear support from the Spanish government, plus serious engagement from the whole literary sector, including libraries, publishing houses, translators, archives, cultural publications and writers themselves. The technologies that are giving new life to the problem could be used to help: a public database of restored texts, for instance, could become an important tool. </p>
<p>The point is that while Spain has increasingly been addressing the impact of Franco’s regime in the country’s social and historical memory since the early 2000s, the process of coming to terms with the past is far from complete. The pact of forgetting has not only marred Spain’s democratic progress, it has severely damaged the country’s cultural heritage. Spain and the rest of the Spanish-speaking world will not be free from Franco’s censorial shadow until this issue is publicly and decisively addressed. With people on the ascendant who would prefer to turn back the clock, there is no time to lose.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/115488/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Jordi Cornellà-Detrell has received funding from the AHRC. </span></em></p>Whenever writings were explicit, liberal or anti-Catholic, the Francoist censors crossed them out.Jordi Cornellà-Detrell, Senior Lecturer in Hispanic Studies, University of GlasgowLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/796672017-06-19T19:59:49Z2017-06-19T19:59:49ZThe top five films of the Sydney Film Festival (and the rest)<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/174385/original/file-20170619-5774-x1l6wl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Elizabeth Olsen and Aubrey Plaza in Ingrid Goes West: a gloriously uncomfortable film.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source"> Star Thrower Entertainment, 141 Entertainment, Mighty Engine</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>There were few flawless films at the 2017 Sydney Film Festival compared with 2016. Last year we were fortunate enough to see several perfect films (Suburra, Suntan, Wild, and Free In Deed, for example), and the overall standard of the films was lower this year than it has been for the past couple of years. Still, out of the 30 or so films I managed to see, there were many good ones and only one real dud.</p>
<h2>My top five for 2017 (in no particular order)</h2>
<p><strong><a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt5962210/">Ingrid Goes West</a></strong></p>
<p>This is the most coherent, tightly made film at this year’s festival. The story follows social media stalker and social alienate Ingrid (Aubrey Plaza) as she moves to California and worms her way into the life of her most recent Instagram crush, Taylor (Elizabeth Olsen), before, of course, everything falls apart. It is a gloriously uncomfortable film – profoundly so – and far from the kind of light, indie comedy one might assume from the advertising surrounding it. A little like <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0115798/?ref_=fn_al_tt_1">The Cable Guy</a> for millenials (but better than Ben Stiller’s film), it is funny, but in an excruciatingly black way. One of the most intellectually acute dissections of the pathologies generated by social media culture, it deserves highest regard for what it says about the way (some) people live now.</p>
<p><strong><a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt5723272/?ref_=fn_al_tt_1">In the Fade</a></strong></p>
<p>Directed by acclaimed German filmmaker Fatih Akin, In the Fade is an intense, extremely well-made, legal-cum-revenge thriller. This nearly flawless film follows the life of Katya – brilliantly played by Diane Kruger – after her husband and son are killed in a neo-Nazi terror attack. The whole thing unfolds like a gripping short story. This is well-worth watching – even if the ending isn’t quite as satisfyingly cathartic as it could have been.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/174388/original/file-20170619-5793-wo17yo.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/174388/original/file-20170619-5793-wo17yo.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/174388/original/file-20170619-5793-wo17yo.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=337&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/174388/original/file-20170619-5793-wo17yo.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=337&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/174388/original/file-20170619-5793-wo17yo.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=337&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/174388/original/file-20170619-5793-wo17yo.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=423&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/174388/original/file-20170619-5793-wo17yo.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=423&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/174388/original/file-20170619-5793-wo17yo.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=423&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">Diane Kruger as the widowed Katya in In the Fade.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Bombero International, Macassar Productions</span></span>
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<p><strong><a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt5362988/?ref_=fn_al_tt_1">Wind River</a></strong></p>
<p>This extraordinary detective thriller set in the majestic mountains of Montana follows the partnering of hunter-tracker Cory (Jeremy Renner) with city-slicker FBI agent Jane (Elizabeth Olsen) as they investigate the brutal murder of a Native American girl and her white boyfriend. It ticks all the boxes expected of this kind of genre film, without feeling stale or hackneyed, combining existential introspection with an intriguing plot. The photography of the terrain is amazing as it slow-burns through the frosty wilderness towards an appropriately explosive climax and the performances are as good they could be. A near perfect genre film.</p>
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<span class="caption">Gil Birmingham and Jeremy Renner in Wind River.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Acacia Filmed Entertainment, Film 44, Ingenious Media</span></span>
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<p><strong><a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt5304464/?ref_=fn_al_tt_1">Happy End</a></strong></p>
<p>Michael Haneke’s latest film is far from perfect, but it makes the top five for its surprisingly breezy sense of humour and innovative use of (and reflection on) new media such as Facebook. The story unfolds a bit like a generational soap, following the dynamics within a wealthy French family presided over by decrepit patriarch Georges Laurent (Jean-Louis Trintignant). Isabelle Huppert, as the real family power broker, is as watchable as ever, and Fantine Harduin is delightful as the young (and not so innocent) Eve. Still, the film may annoy viewers looking for Haneke’s cerebral, demonic precision and control (a la <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0103793/?ref_=fn_al_tt_1">Benny’s Video</a> and <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0098327/?ref_=fn_al_tt_1">The Seventh Continent</a>).</p>
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<p><a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt5804038/?ref_=fn_al_tt_1">I am Not Your Negro</a></p>
<p>This documentary, based on an unpublished letter by American writer James Baldwin, is problematic but nonetheless immensely pleasurable – harrowing, intelligent, just. It is driven by excellent archival research, and presents a kind of layman’s history of the black civil rights movement (from Malcolm X to King). This is embedded visually in the context of police brutality in contemporary America. </p>
<p>Baldwin’s hyper-intelligent analysis is skilfully brought to the screen by Haitian-American director Raoul Peck, who interweaves narration by Samuel L. Jackson with contemporaneous interviews with Baldwin and other key figures from the period. The whole thing is, however, bound to the requirements of the commercial documentary format. It moves the viewer, but in a routine Hollywood-esque fashion, and, while attempting to embed the subject seriously in contemporary US culture, it is bound by its conceit of following Baldwin’s original text. Formally, it neutralises (and thereby mystifies) the contradictions at play and presents what is essentially an extremely well made pleasure piece for a middlebrow, middle-class, film festival audience.</p>
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<p>Several other films were great (without being extraordinary). These included Agnieszka Holland’s <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt5328350/?ref_=fn_al_tt_1">Spoor</a>, a delightful romp about an elderly Polish animal rights activist, <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt5376196/?ref_=fn_al_tt_1">Wild Mouse</a>, which follows the hijinks of a middle-aged German music critic when he loses his job and decides to get revenge (in a distinctly mouse-like fashion), and <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt4429194/?ref_=fn_al_tt_1">Paris Can Wait</a>, the first feature drama by Eleanor Coppola (wife of Francis Ford), a lovely but overlong piece of Eurosploitation. Diane Lane effortlessly does a middle-aged-American-woman-being reborn-in-Europe-thing, as she embarks on a cross-country trip through France with her husband’s charming French business partner Jacques (Arnaud Viard).</p>
<p><a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt5287168/?ref_=fn_al_tt_1">Sami Blood</a>, <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt4291600/?ref_=fn_al_tt_1">Lady Macbeth</a>, and Sofia Coppola’s American Civil War bodice ripper <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt5592248/?ref_=fn_al_tt_1">The Beguiled</a> were also very good films.</p>
<h2>The ‘Disappointments’</h2>
<p>Disappointment is, of course, a relative response – and these films were only disappointing vis-à-vis the films of last year’s festival (and in terms of their own potential). Compared to most films, they are still very good, and, with the exception of Song to Song, I would recommend seeing all of the below.</p>
<p>Well-intentioned documentaries and dramas that pandered to middlebrow sensibilities without addressing the socio-political and historical contradictions underlying their subject matter seemed prevalent at this year’s festival.</p>
<p><a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1699518/?ref_=fn_al_tt_1">The Young Karl Marx</a>, also directed by Raoul Peck, is a case in point. While on one level it is a very pleasurable romp – a Pride and Prejudice-style televisual reenactment of the bromance between Marx and Engels – it completely nullifies the dynamics of violence (and the violence endemic in capitalism and its primal scene, colonisation) at the core of the revolutionary thought that is its subject matter.</p>
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<span class="caption">August Diehl (Marx) and Stefan Konarske (Engels) in the political ‘bromance’, The Young Karl Marx.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Agat Films & Cie, Velvet Film, Rohfilm</span></span>
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<p><a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt6777306/?ref_=fn_al_tt_1">Sea Sorrow</a> – a heartfelt personal essay by Vanessa Redgrave about the destruction faced by and wrought upon refugees in Europe – similarly presents brutal subject matter in a fashion sentimental enough to generate a tear or two from the viewer, without actually addressing the role of economic appropriation in recent wars in the Middle East. </p>
<p>In a Q and A session after the film, Redgrave pointed out that targeting personal stories makes the whole thing more accessible. This is true, if it is merely a matter of entertainment, but without addressing the underlying structural and systemic dynamics, the whole thing becomes rather pointless, not to mention that it fails to acknowledge the role of capitalism in establishing these “crises” in the first place.</p>
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<span class="caption">Vanessa Redgrave in Sea Sorrow.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">idmb</span></span>
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<p>Perhaps most disappointing were the films that hovered on the verge of greatness but just fell short. This is exemplified by three almost-brilliant films from the “Freak Me Out” section of the program, which has often contained the strangest and most interesting films of the festival, including Kill List, Excision and Cheap Thrills.</p>
<p><a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt6302164/?ref_=fn_al_tt_3">Game of Death</a>, based on an amazing premise – a board game that makes people kill a certain number of random people – is extremely good for the first three quarters. In the final moments, though, what has been a formally and conceptually radical film becomes annoyingly moralistic, and this neutralises its impact.</p>
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<p><a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt4348012/?ref_=fn_al_tt_1">Mayhem</a>, likewise, is based on a brilliant premise. A virus has been legally proved to remove culpability. It infects an office building and the office workers are therefore able to legally engage in any kind of mayhemic violence against their colleagues - those higher up (or lower down) the office hierarchy. This is full of brilliant moments, but is let down by its irritating, smarmy voice-over. <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt5667052/?ref_=fn_al_tt_1">Fashionista</a>, a Repulsion-style psychodrama about a fashion obsessed vintage clothing shop owner, was inventively disturbing, but had a subdued, depressing ending that contradicted the affective dynamics of the rest of the film.</p>
<p>There were many films worth watching that weren’t particularly memorable (<a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt5540188/?ref_=fn_al_tt_1">The Nile Hilton Incident</a>, <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt5265960/?ref_=fn_al_tt_1">The Untamed</a>, <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt2315582/?ref_=fn_al_tt_1">Una</a>, <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt4218696/?ref_=fn_al_tt_1">The Wall</a>, etc.). Conversely, there was only one genuine dud.</p>
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<span class="caption">Ryan Gosling and Rooney Mara in Song to Song: an unbearably pretentious film.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Buckeye Pictures, FilmNation Entertainment, Waypoint Entertainment</span></span>
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<p><a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt2062700/?ref_=fn_al_tt_1">Song to Song</a>, starring Ryan Gosling and Rooney Mara as musician-types in Texas’s pop music capital, Austin, is an unbearably pretentious film even by writer-director Terrence Malick’s standards. It plays like a series of Instagram videos overladen with the incredibly banal observations of its main characters about life, liberty and love. </p>
<p>Characters fall in and out of love, as they (and the film) move from song to song – which Malick clearly thinks says something profound about the world. Even cameos by rockers like Iggy Pop, John Lydon, and Patti Smith – and a particularly memorable scene in which Van Kilmer cuts his hair on stage with a knife – are unable to save this one. Michael Fassbender gives a delirious (and, possibly, unintentionally hilarious) performance as an excessively wealthy music exec, but it’s all to no avail.</p>
<p>On a more positive note, the Kurosawa selection was good, and it was amazing to see Derek Jarman’s masterpiece Jubilee on the big screen. Compared to last year, the 2017 Sydney Film Festival wasn’t extraordinary – but it still offered the opportunity to see a great, mixed selection of films from around the world in the presence of a large audience. And this is one of the main things that gives cinema its value.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/79667/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Ari Mattes 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>Neo Nazi terror, a dark Instagram crush, a layman’s history of the black civil rights movement … here are the best offerings from this year’s Sydney Film Festival.Ari Mattes, Lecturer in Media Studies, University of Notre Dame AustraliaLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/696922016-12-01T11:13:31Z2016-12-01T11:13:31ZRefugees struggle to access universities, but Scotland is showing a way forward<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/148137/original/image-20161130-17065-11h7hsr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Towards inclusion. </span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/pic-486863284/stock-photo-three-happy-female-students-learning-outdoor.html?src=sqDXWay5eiCRtE-2K7ECfw-1-22">Daniel M Ernst</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Read university guidelines about reaching out to the diverse range of people in society and you’ll find all the usual phrases about “widening access”, “encouraging participation” and “public engagement”. These kinds of commitments are longstanding and laudable, but rarely controversial. </p>
<p>Until now – Universities Scotland, the umbrella body for higher education north of the border, <a href="http://www.universities-scotland.ac.uk/blog/refugees-welcome/">has extended</a> a hand of welcome to the only group where it is brave to do so – refugees and asylum seekers. It has published <a href="http://www.universities-scotland.ac.uk/wp-content/uploads/2016/11/Guidance-on-Providing-Asylum-Seekers-and-Refugees-with-Access-to-Higher-Education-Nov-2016.pdf">new guidance</a> for how universities in Scotland should handle applications from this non-traditional group. </p>
<p>This is a response to the <a href="https://theconversation.com/why-europes-fortress-approach-to-migration-crisis-wont-work-68755">substantial numbers</a> of Mediterranean refugees, largely from Syria, trying to reach safety in Europe in the past couple of years. Many have been university students or professionals in their own countries and are looking to continue their studies in the UK – or to have their qualifications recognised.</p>
<p>University administrators have to decide what level of study if any is appropriate, comparing the applicant’s previous studies and qualifications in their own country. In many cases, the potential students have lost everything and would only be able to attend courses with scholarships or some other kind of exceptional funding. </p>
<p>So are the new guidelines a counter-cultural move by academia, home to the expert elites so mistrusted and derided by Brexiteers? Are Scottish universities striking a powerful altruistic blow for human rights and minority recognition? Or does this represent grandstanding opportunism and political expediency on a newly dispiriting scale? This matters to me personally, as one of the few black academics in Scotland. </p>
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<span class="caption">Open book?</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/pic-246905632/stock-photo-open-book-on-the-wooden-table-in-the-university-campus.html?src=56eiYapR3hiObVcX7YKBiA-1-53">AN NGUYEN</a></span>
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<h2>Differences in emphasis</h2>
<p>Scotland is similar to England when it comes to how it engages with refugees and asylum seekers in general, but its political narrative is sounding increasingly different. Take the <a href="https://www.gov.uk/government/speeches/vulnerable-persons-relocation-scheme-for-syrian-nationals">Vulnerable Persons Relocation scheme</a>, for example, Westminster’s belated response to those seeking refuge from Syria. </p>
<p>By September, Scotland had taken about 1,200 out of the total 4,000 resettled in the UK. These are tiny numbers <a href="http://data.unhcr.org/syrianrefugees/asylum.php">compared to</a> more than a million people settled in mainland Europe and over 4m in the Middle East and north Africa, but Scotland’s ability to respond has been controlled by reserved legislation. It has <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-scotland-politics-37234429">done so</a> with a tone and speed that makes the most of its limited parameters – irrespective of the political opportunism undoubtedly in the mix. </p>
<p>The Universities Scotland initiative looks to be in a similar spirit, stealing a march on the rest of the UK, where refugees applying university face exactly the same problems. Universities throughout the world have traditionally sought to respond to the needs of refugees through the likes of scholarships, distance learning, language courses <a href="http://www.campusfrance.org/en/page/eu-funded-project-hopes">and</a> specific <a href="https://www.britishcouncil.org/education/ihe/what-we-do/international-partnerships/spheir">programmes</a>, but there is no centralised funding available to help Scottish universities cover such costs when it comes to refugee applicants with no resources. </p>
<p>Yet the fact that Scottish university principals and vice principals are supporting the initiative has created the space to implement assistance openly and purposefully. This should improve on the current situation, where refugee applicants tend to need to find a willing personal champion on the inside to prevent the system blocking them by failing to recognise the reality of their life experiences. </p>
<p>The new guidance also alerts each university to how its processes might empower or obstruct a particularly vulnerable refugee, and ways in which the admission process might support them. It specifically highlights where normal university processes would obstruct someone who has come either without all their documentation, or has had their studies interrupted, or can’t supply the usual references or professional accreditation certificates. The internal changes that this requires are not straightforward: they entail levels of trust and flexibility not usually associated with university bureaucracy. </p>
<p>The guidance requires academic departments to adapt, too. Teaching staff are used to working with new students adjusting to life in a new country, but refugee students may be so bewildered and traumatised that returning to study holds a complex mix of therapeutic positives and emotional difficulties. </p>
<p>Refugees can meanwhile take the guidance as a visible sign they are welcome. It says that although there can be immense practical difficulties to studying in their destination country, it is possible. </p>
<h2>The value of the move</h2>
<p>I have personal and professional experience of the unsettling and increasing ways in which migrants and other people who don’t fit an unspecified norm can be “othered”. The near constant political and media narrative during the EU referendum took it to a different level. Scotland cannot be complacent here: though it has not seen the recent <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/society/2016/sep/28/hate-crime-horrible-spike-brexit-vote-metropolitan-police">increased racist crime</a> reported in the rest of the UK following Brexit, levels have not fallen either.</p>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/148127/original/image-20161130-16998-1fz5z2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/148127/original/image-20161130-16998-1fz5z2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/148127/original/image-20161130-16998-1fz5z2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=756&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/148127/original/image-20161130-16998-1fz5z2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=756&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/148127/original/image-20161130-16998-1fz5z2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=756&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/148127/original/image-20161130-16998-1fz5z2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=950&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/148127/original/image-20161130-16998-1fz5z2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=950&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/148127/original/image-20161130-16998-1fz5z2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=950&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">James Baldwin.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:James_Baldwin_37_Allan_Warren.jpg#/media/File:James_Baldwin_37_Allan_Warren.jpg">Wikimedia</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>In this context, public efforts like this one from Universities Scotland are important. As the writer James Baldwin <a href="https://twitter.com/Crutch4/status/798331691454566403/video/1">once said</a> while discussing the evidence of black people being obstructed and denied access in 1960s America: “I can only conclude what [white people] feel from the state of their institutions.”</p>
<p>If you believe, as I do, that access to education is one of the most socially effective and morally important drivers for integration and development, this new guidance is unequivocally good news. It shows that universities in Scotland are working to build on mechanisms which enable people to study and to regain the professional and vocational levels they had achieved in their countries of origin. No more students having to needlessly repeat and find funding for years of study that they shouldn’t need to go through. No more engineers, doctors and scientists working as carers, taxi drivers or security guards. </p>
<p>Coming shortly after the news of Donald Trump’s victory in the US presidential election, it feels like a breath of fresh air in an otherwise polluted political environment.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/69692/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Ima Jackson 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>New guidelines from Scotland’s universities association are a major step in the right direction.Ima Jackson, Lecturer in Health and Life Sciences, Glasgow Caledonian UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/654602016-11-28T01:26:26Z2016-11-28T01:26:26ZWhy literature matters in debate about race and immigrants<p>The people who voted for Donald Trump did so for a variety of reasons, but chief among them was the sense of their having been economically abandoned for several decades. Trump has promised to restore their economic dignity. That is a laudable goal. </p>
<p>However, through his corrosive campaign rhetoric, Trump has also made it acceptable to speak in hateful ways about many groups of people including Mexicans, Muslims and blacks. These groups are now feeling extremely vulnerable: Their fears are about the safety of their bodies and their lives. </p>
<p>This is anxiety that most white Americans – regardless of their economic status – are insulated from. </p>
<p>In the United States, whiteness confers power and privilege even when undercut by economic destitution. As the nation prepares itself for a Trump presidency, it is important to remember that this power and privilege will intensify. </p>
<p>Feminist Peggy McIntosh enumerated 50 of the things white people can take for granted in her 1988 essay <a href="https://www.deanza.edu/faculty/lewisjulie/White%20Priviledge%20Unpacking%20the%20Invisible%20Knapsack.pdf">“White Privilege: Unpacking the Invisible Knapsack,”</a> including: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>“I can criticize our government and talk about how
much I fear its policies and behavior without being seen as
a cultural outsider.”</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Twenty-eight years later, this, it would seem, is one of the white privileges that <a href="https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2016/10/24/alabama-and-greenville-backlash-anthem-protests-black-students">is not being accorded</a> to the black athletes who have chosen to kneel, sit or raise a fist during the playing of the national anthem before a game. Just consider <a href="http://www.usatoday.com/story/sports/columnist/nancy-armour/2016/09/25/colin-kaepernick-anthem-protests-backlash-social-media-emails/91076216/">this reader’s email</a> to USA Today and note the ease with which the rage is articulated: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>“When these (expletive) take a knee they are spitting in the faces of soldiers … They are spitting on the graves of everyone killed on 9/11.” </p>
</blockquote>
<p>The commentator’s rage makes no room for the non-violent expression of the athletes’ outrage at the injustice experienced by black males. </p>
<p><a href="http://www.temple.edu/tempress/titles/2118_reg.html">My research</a> on empathy, antipathy and how we perceive those who are unfamiliar makes clear that there has been no meaningful acknowledgment by politicians or the mainstream media of the power and privilege of whiteness. And yet if we as a country want to ensure <a href="http://www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctt14jxtd9?Search=yes&resultItemClick=true&searchText=ethical&searchText=morality&searchText=justice&searchText=law&searchText=equal&searchText=protection&searchText=clause&searchUri=%2Faction%2FdoAdvancedSearch%3Ff6%3Dall%26amp%3Bf3%3Dall%26amp%3Bed%3D%26amp%3Bacc%3Don%26amp%3Bf0%3Dall%26amp%3Bla%3D%26amp%3Bc4%3DAND%26amp%3Bf5%3Dall%26amp%3Bsd%3D%26amp%3Bf2%3Dall%26amp%3Bq6%3D%26amp%3Bq4%3D%26amp%3Bc5%3DAND%26amp%3Bq1%3Djustice%26amp%3Bpt%3D%26amp%3Bf1%3Dall%26amp%3Bq2%3Dlaw%26amp%3Bq3%3Dequal%2Bprotection%2Bclause%26amp%3Bc2%3DAND%26amp%3Bc3%3DAND%26amp%3Bf4%3Dall%26amp%3Bq5%3D%26amp%3Bisbn%3D%26amp%3Bgroup%3Dnone%26amp%3Bc1%3DAND%26amp%3Bq0%3Dethical%2Bmorality%26amp%3Bc6%3DAND">“equal justice for all”</a> then it is crucial for groups with power to recognize the advantage they have and address that imbalance. </p>
<p>From discussions in my classrooms and from my research, I have learned that there is relative “safety” in using literary texts to practice “what if” scenarios about our own capacity for understanding the <a href="https://monoskop.org/images/a/a6/Sontag_Susan_2003_Regarding_the_Pain_of_Others.pdf">“pain of others”</a> and for recognizing how our power and privilege can contribute to others’ injury, whether that be material, political or emotional. </p>
<h2>White on black justice</h2>
<p>The first literary example I want to use broke ground at the time of its publication by drawing attention to the automatic and unexamined privileges conferred on whiteness. </p>
<p>In Richard Wright’s 1940 novel <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Native-Perennial-Classics-Richard-Wright/dp/006083756X">“Native Son</a>,” the white attorney general tells the prisoner Bigger Thomas, a native of the south side of Chicago: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>“I know how you feel, boy. You’re colored, and you feel that you haven’t had a square deal, don’t you? … I know how it feels to walk along the streets like other people, dressed like them, talking like them, and yet excluded for no reason except that you’re black.” </p>
</blockquote>
<figure class="align-left ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/144582/original/image-20161104-27904-c71bb0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/144582/original/image-20161104-27904-c71bb0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=783&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/144582/original/image-20161104-27904-c71bb0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=783&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/144582/original/image-20161104-27904-c71bb0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=783&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/144582/original/image-20161104-27904-c71bb0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=984&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/144582/original/image-20161104-27904-c71bb0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=984&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/144582/original/image-20161104-27904-c71bb0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=984&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Richard Wright.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Richard_Wright_(escritor).jpg">Farm Security Administration - Office of War Information Photograph Collection, Library of Congress</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Despite the psychological manipulation of the prisoner that this superficial display of empathy demonstrates, even the limited acknowledgment that being black is a frustrating disadvantage is a rare admission. </p>
<p>But here is what the fictional attorney general does not do.</p>
<p>He does not acknowledge the historical and political forces that have created the institutions that automatically give the advantage to people like him. </p>
<p>Juries in the 1940s were entirely composed of white men. That did not, however, strike those in power as being inherently unjust, because white men were deemed capable of being able to weigh the evidence and make fair and unbiased decisions. </p>
<p>“Native Son” sold an astonishing 215,000 copies within three weeks of its publication. Its <a href="http://www.bassettusd.org/cms/lib8/CA01900987/Centricity/Domain/665/Native%20Son%20Novel.pdf">primary impact</a> was that it offered white readers a searing look into the black protagonist’s deep pain and fierce anger. But it did not lead to change, if we are to judge from the housing discrimination in Chicago in the 1940s that created deep and entrenched economic, social and political <a href="http://www.chicagomag.com/city-life/May-2014/The-Case-for-Reparations-and-the-Legacy-of-Discrimination-Against-Probationary-Whites-in-Chicago">segregation.</a> </p>
<p>Several years after its publication, some black readers, most notably novelist James Baldwin, <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2015/03/01/books/review/james-baldwin-denounced-richard-wrights-native-son-as-a-protest-novel-was-he-right.html?_r=0">were infuriated</a> at what they saw as the two-dimensional portrayal of Bigger’s fury and enraged despair. </p>
<p>Yet, over the years since its publication, “Native Son” has continued to be <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/1986/12/07/magazine/on-rereading-native-son.html?pagewanted=all">reassessed and reconsidered</a> – performed on stage in 2014 and re-reviewed in 2015 – so powerful has been its message of systemic and pervasive racism. </p>
<h2>The privilege of being unaware</h2>
<p>Unthinkingness is a central theme in the poem “To the Lady,” by <a href="https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems-and-poets/poets/detail/mitsuye-yamada">Mitsuye Yamada</a>. </p>
<p>An anonymous woman (we don’t know much about her other than that she is from the group in power) asks about the Japanese-Americans whose loyalty was questioned following the bombing of Pearl Harbor and who were incarcerated in camps: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>“Why did the Japanese Americans let/ the government put them in/ those camps without protest?” </p>
</blockquote>
<p>She is blissfully unaware of the political context that made it impossible for them to protest. Though <a href="https://www.archives.gov/education/lessons/japanese-relocation">two-thirds</a> of the Japanese-Americans who were incarcerated during World War II were American citizens, they did not have the basic power to demand that their constitutional rights be upheld. They did not have the support of <a href="https://www.pbs.org/thewar/at_home_civil_rights_japanese_american.htm">their neighbors</a>, who were bystanders at best and hostile enemies at worst in this violation of their constitutional rights. </p>
<p>It is the power and privilege of the poem’s lady that offer her the luxury of being unaware of the asymmetry of influence. </p>
<p>It is telling that after the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, many Japanese-Americans <a href="https://books.google.com/books?id=Yj_aM_lEcZcC&pg=PT117&lpg=PT117&dq=Japanese+American+Citizens+League+solidarity+with+Arab+and+Muslim+Americans+in+2001&source=bl&ots=KBGtPeHkEh&sig=xL9m3FG16cD3tHV3avfV-Z1Up4M&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwidjNbZ_OXPAhXDNT4KHVZBBRsQ6AEILzAD#v=onepage&q=Japanese%20American%20Citizens%20League%20solidarity%20with%20Arab%20and%20Muslim%20Americans%20in%202001&f=false">came forward</a> to offer support to Muslims, Muslim-Americans, and Arab-Americans so that their constitutional rights would not be violated in the same way. </p>
<h2>Refusing to be willfully ignorant</h2>
<p>Studying how power is hidden or revealed, understated or boldly displayed in the two examples above can set us on the path to introspection. </p>
<p>How does one become complicit in ignoring unequal power? What can we carry from literature into life? </p>
<p>Take the following instance in which an individual in a position of power appears to have engaged in introspective analysis and responded with nuance and complexity.</p>
<p>It takes place in an airport, a public space that has increasingly become associated with danger and where different groups of people are in different positions of power. </p>
<p>In a memoir essay by former sports broadcaster Varun Sriram that he submitted for <a href="http://www.sacssny.org/publications/Sudha%20Acharya%20Testimony%20AALR%20v2.1.5%20Fall%202011.pdf">a collection I edited,</a> we learn of his airport experience. </p>
<p>Sriram, a young Indian-American man – looking, as he says, with his unshaven face and brown skin like everybody’s stereotypical image of the “terrorist” – tells how he foolishly left his carry-on bag unattended at an airline gate while he went to purchase a pizza. </p>
<p>A white woman who had been giving him hostile looks summoned a security guard who picked up his bag and left the area. When Sriram returned, he was told by the white woman that she had called the guard. In a panic, he went in pursuit and luckily saw the guard at a distance. </p>
<p>Sriram apologized profusely for his carelessness and politely asked the guard if he could have his bag back. Sriram accurately described the contents of the bag, and the security guard returned it to him. </p>
<p>We will never know the exact reasons that led the guard to make the unusual gesture of returning the bag to Sriram and treating him as harmless rather than as a threat. But in “reading” this incident as one would a literary text, one can readily acknowledge that the guard, despite his obvious power advantage over Sriram, nonetheless appears to have used that advantage to make an empathetic decision.</p>
<h2>Through literature to empathy and righteous outrage</h2>
<p>Like airports, urban streets have been scenes of violence and danger. The merest gesture of a “wrong” move can mean death for an African-American male, as the recent events in Minnesota, Oklahoma and North Carolina have all too sadly revealed. </p>
<p>When we hear <a href="https://trustandjustice.org/resources/intervention/implicit-bias">recommendations</a> for training police officers, what exactly do we want? </p>
<p>I would argue that training must engage the imaginative capacity of those in power. It must lead them to acknowledge their power and privilege, and it must then give them opportunities to exercise their imagination in deepening understanding of themselves and of those individuals and groups over whom they hold this power.</p>
<p>Literature allows for such practice. </p>
<p>In the hands of a skillful facilitator, for example, it is impossible not to be outraged at what one can learn about the stranglehold of white power in an essay like <a href="http://newdeal.feri.org/fwp/fwp03.htm">“The Ethics of Living Jim Crow,”</a> in which novelist Richard Wright shows us how the simple act of riding an elevator as a black busboy in the presence of white men can be fraught with life-threatening danger. </p>
<p>The question to be asked then is how that situation compares to the one on our streets today – nearly 70 years later. </p>
<p><a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2016/04/27/arts/design/art-helps-police-officers-learn-to-look.html">A recent initiative in New York City</a> has police officers visiting the Museum of Modern Art and being trained, through looking at paintings, in how to observe carefully and critically. </p>
<p>That we don’t similarly use literature to enlarge empathetic capacity and evoke righteous outrage is surprising and inexplicable. The times cry out, I would argue, for bold initiatives that bring literature into our courtrooms, banks, town halls, housing offices, police departments, health care centers and political venues to initiate necessary discussions about asymmetrical power and its corrosive impact. It will be particularly imperative in the times ahead.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/65460/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Rajini Srikanth 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>If police officers are sent to museums to train observational skills, shouldn’t literary texts be used to teach empathy?Rajini Srikanth, Professor of English, College of Liberal Arts Dean, Honors College, UMass BostonLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.