Trampling On History To Kowtow To Current "Woke"-Think
Imagine inserting Casper the Friendly Ghost into a Paris apartment building designed to show how people lived during the French Revolution.
That's pretty much what's happening in New York City: a rather awful fictionalizing of history at a wonderful museum I really wish I known of and been to when I lived in NYC and/or went back there.
Excellent piece in The Spectator by Peter Van Buren:
When will our intellectual life return to normal, where facts come together into conclusions? Today, in service to ideologies like Critical Race Theory, conclusions are established and facts are manipulated or just ignored to support them.You can't argue intellectually against something so profoundly nonintellectual but you can take note of it in hopes that someday we will untangle ourselves. That's why today we're paying a visit to the Tenement Museum on New York's Lower East Side.
When I joined the Museum as an educator in early 2016, it was a small, elegant, good place. Inside a restored 19th-century tenement apartment house, it told the story of some of the actual all-immigrant families who had lived there, from inside their actual apartments. Of the over 7,000 people who inhabited that building over its lifespan, researchers established who had lived in which rooms, detailed their lives, forensically reconstructed the surroundings, and shared it with guests. Some rooms had 20 layers of wallpaper applied by the different generations who had lived there.
Rule one for educators like me was "keep it in the room," meaning focus on specific individuals and how they lived in the room where you were standing. Over the years, these included Irish, Jewish, German, and Italian immigrants. There had been no Bangladeshis, Spaniards, or blacks; their stories lay elsewhere, "outside the room." It is the same reason there is no monument to those who died on D-Day at Gettysburg. That didn't happen there. That story is told somewhere else.
Imagine the power of telling the story of an immigrant family's struggle between earning a living in the factories of New York and maintaining their religious traditions from their living room. Think about explaining sweatshop conditions in a room that was actually once such a place. No need to talk about the lack of space and privacy; it was literally all around. The Rogarshevsky family walked this hall. The Baldizzi family put their hands on this banister to climb the stairs at the end of a long day. They came home to this evening light in their parlor. They smelled the rain as visitors did on a March day. You could literally feel the history.
After Trump's election, everything changed. Our mission at the Museum went from telling real stories to "fighting fascism and destroying the patriarchy." With our focus on immigration, we were given tips on handling what the museum snidely called "red hats," MAGA-capped Trump supporters, usually Midwestern parents visiting a hip child in NYC who dragged them in for reeducation.
I witnessed an Asian museum educator say out loud without any concern from management "No more Jews, I want to tell my story!" Her parents were university professors from Asia and she was born in a tony NYC suburb, so I'm not quite sure what her story was. But no matter. Narratives were rewritten -- so, for example, the Irish immigrants went from suffering anti-Catholic discrimination in Protestant New York to being murderers of innocent blacks during the 1863 Draft Riots. Never mind that the Irish family spotlighted by the museum lived there in 1869 and had no connection to the riots. We were on a woke jihad.
This wokeness, which drove me to quit, is now headed for a new low in a desperate move to shoehorn a black family into the mix. The museum is planning for the first time not only to feature the story of a family who never lived there but that weren't even immigrants. They were born in New Jersey.
To accommodate this change, the museum will do away with its current Irish family tour in lieu of a hybrid to emphasize black suffering and deemphasize the actual life experiences of discrimination imposed on the Irish by "whiter" New Yorkers. They will build a "typical" apartment of the time on the fifth floor for the black family, an ahistorical space they never occupied, an affront to those whose real life stories once did. It would make as much sense to build a space that tells Spiderman's story.
The existing Irish tour is particularly important because it supports a classist, not racial, basis for discrimination in America. It forces guests to think through the roots of inequality given that rich white people already established in New York discriminated against poor white people (the Irish first, then the Jews and Italians). That narrative is problematic in 2021 because it spreads victimhood broadly, and chips away at the BLM meme that race is the cause of everything.
...The Irish are once again not popular among the rich white people running New York. At the Tenement Museum, their story will exist only as a sidebar to a black experience that never really was. It is a literal rewriting of history. What a shame that a place designed to help us remember wants to make us forget.
I feel like this could backfire spectacularly
NicoleK at December 2, 2021 9:32 PM
It has NicoleK.
"After Trump's election, everything changed." ~Peter Van Buren
Not really. That is only when you noticed. The rot set in decades before then.
Ben at December 3, 2021 5:03 AM
It makes you want to buy a used-book store and just keep it as is - a museum of the American experiment.
Here's more 50-years-after-the-fact insight; brought to you by Disney:
"The New Beatles Documentary Sheds A Whooooole New Light On The Problematic Narrative That Yoko Ono Broke Up The Beatles"
https://www.buzzfeed.com/amphtml/kaylayandoli/yoko-ono-moments-beatles-get-back
Baker at December 3, 2021 7:42 AM
Hmmm...we're back to "Irish need not apply"?
I R A Darth Aggie at December 3, 2021 8:02 AM
Class is the big divider in America. Unfortunately, we see the divide through race-tinted glasses and cannot see well enough to address the real issues with the distorted vision that race bias gives us..
"I got vision, and the rest of the world wears bifocals." ~ Butch Cassidy
Conan the Grammarian at December 3, 2021 8:08 AM
"Class is the big divider in America."
I don't see it, I think drive, ambition, and ability are. They lead to $ and influence. Class can give you some connections but that only goes so far.
If it were class, Oprah, daughter of a sharecropper, wouldn't be interviewing a Princess or have Presidents on speed dial.
Joe J at December 3, 2021 9:47 AM
Those, Joe, I would describe as aspects of social mobility. Those without such aspects, will not be socially mobile and will, generally, remain at their societal level of origin; and be very likely to stay there. Those with drive, ambition, and ability can - with a touch of luck - overcome the inertia of their social position and climb.
Social classes in the US, unlike the established countries, were never fixed with titles and peerages bestowed by a monarch. Granted, there are still hurdles to overcome in America - behavior, manners, education, connections, etc., but the mobility is there.
Thus, the progeny of a peasant (e.g., Oprah) can become a billionaire and be accepted, even celebrated, several societal levels higher than his or her level of origin. And, even when one cannot finagle acceptance into the highest reaches for one's self, one can bestow some financial and social acceptance of one's progeny through the application of said drive, ambition, and ability - and judicious application of the fruits thereof.
Conan the Grammarian at December 3, 2021 10:54 AM
"The New Beatles Documentary Sheds A Whooooole New Light"
I heard Dylan is getting back together.
Gog_Magog_Carpet_Reclaimers at December 3, 2021 10:56 AM
Eh, there's been social mobility in old Europe as well. Think of the Medicis or Cromwells.
NicoleK at December 4, 2021 12:45 AM
You kinda prove their point with that example NicoleK.
Ben at December 4, 2021 7:00 AM
They did not start out as nobles
NicoleK at December 4, 2021 10:00 AM
They did not start out as nobles
NicoleK at December 4, 2021 9:11 PM
The fact that you can individually name the european socially mobile vs in the US where there are too many to name any but the most recently and most wildly successful shows just how different the social mobility is between the two areas. The claim wasn't that there was zero social mobility in Europe. Warlords became kings and established countries. Merchants bought their way in. But such mobility was (and still is) very low compared to the US.
Ben at December 5, 2021 5:35 AM
Oliver Cromwell came to power in a bloody religious war and regicide. Not exactly the poster child you want to use in illustrating how early Europe embraced social mobility.
Conan the Grammarian at December 5, 2021 7:23 AM
I was thinking of Thomas Cromwell, advisor to the king and son of a blacksmith. I mean, he also started out as a warrior, but it's still an impressive rise.
NicoleK at December 6, 2021 4:37 AM
}}} Those, Joe, I would describe as aspects of social mobility. Those without such aspects, will not be socially mobile and will, generally, remain at their societal level of origin; and be very likely to stay there.
Wrong. Wrong. And wrong again.
In actual fact, America is THE most socially mobile nation IN THE WORLD, thanks to its largely class-indifferent attitude, in comparison to the rest of the world's attitudes towards class differences.
Income Mobility for All Income Groups is Significant
https://mjperry.blogspot.com/2011/08/income-mobility-for-all-income-groups.html
Money Quote: The study found that nearly 58 percent of the households that were in the lowest income quintile (the lowest 20 percent) in 1996 moved to a higher income quintile by 2005 (see top chart above). Similarly, nearly 50 percent of the households in the second-lowest quintile in 1996 moved to a higher income quintile by 2005
The above is a keynote for the income mobility concept and how it works in the USA, but Carpe Diem -- run by an economics professor, so, not some jerk talking off the top of his head -- also uses generally reliable sources for their statistics, too.
OBloodyHell at January 14, 2022 8:29 PM
More from Carpe Diem:
Income mobility is much more important than rising income inequality or stagnating household income, and we have a lot of it (mobility)
https://www.aei.org/carpe-diem/income-mobility-is-much-more-important-than-rising-income-inequality-or-stagnating-household-income-and-we-have-a-lot-of-it-mobility/
Evidence shows significant income mobility in the US – 73% of Americans were in the ‘top 20%’ for at least a year
https://www.aei.org/carpe-diem/evidence-shows-significant-income-mobility-in-the-us-73-of-americans-were-in-the-top-20-for-at-least-a-year/
OBloodyHell at January 14, 2022 8:30 PM
And more:
https://mjperry.blogspot.com/2009/06/movin-up-and-down-income-quintiles.html
Money Quote: MP: A common misperception is that the top or bottom income quintiles, or the top or bottom X% by income, are static, closed, private clubs with very little turnover - once you get into a top or bottom quintile, or a certain income percent, you stay there for life, making it difficult for people to move to a different group. But reality is very different - people move up and down the income quintiles and percentage groups throughout their careers and lives. The top or bottom 1/5/10%, just like the top or bottom quintiles, are never the same people from year to year, there is constant turnover as we move up and down the quintiles.
And another big one:
Explaining US income inequality by household demographics, 2020 update
https://www.aei.org/carpe-diem/explaining-us-income-inequality-by-household-demographics-2020-update/
I cannot recommend Carpe Diem strongly enough. Yes, you are free to disagree with it -- but you will still be assured of encountering an "opposition" viewpoint on issues even if you disagree. And you should consider that to be A Real Good Thing.
OBloodyHell at January 14, 2022 8:31 PM
Yes, you are correct, if you fail to have an education, if you give yourself a long, visible history of drug abuse and illegal activity, each step eats away at your social mobility.
But the real issue here is making people think they have no chances at mobility, because that is, for many, the reasons for the above -- why get an education if you can't get anywhere? Why avoid drugs and crime, if you can't get anywhere?
This is the problem attitude, and it becomes self-reinforcing. We need to teach kids about the media lie, about the classist lie, about the LIBERAL lie -- that America is a horrible, racist place to live.
Is America perfect? No.
Can it do better? Yes.
But most of the problems America has can be fixed by teaching people respect for the Law, for Property, for each other, for respecting that hoary old thing, "Common Sense".
As a movie character once said:
"The moral of the story, Frank, is that, If you're walking on eggs... Don't Hop."
OBloodyHell at January 14, 2022 8:38 PM
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