Sluts have been roaming the streets of Toronto, Boston, and Chicago to name a few cities.  Not just sluts, but the worst kind of sluts, college student sluts.  The SlutWalk is the organized march of women to take back the word slut.

The SlutWalk was spurred by the comments of a Toronto police officer to students at a Toronto law school.  He told students that “women should avoid dressing like sluts in order not to be victimized” when he was giving a presentation about sexual assault on January 24, 2011.  Founded by victims of sexual assault, the SlutWalk was founded to fight for victims’ rights.  The goal of SlutWalk is to finally banish the idea that the way women act creates sexual assault.

The idea of SlutWalk is for a woman to be able to dress the way she wants without being controlled by the male idea of sexuality.  This movement reminds me and this blogger of Third Wave Feminism, and especially the Riot Grrrl movement of my childhood.  Riot Grrrls were hard rocking Feminists of the early 90s.  Bands like Bikini Kill and Sleater Kinney sang about Girl Power and Revolution Girl Style Now!

They made really cool zines and dressed “slutty.”  Kathleen Hanna, lead singer of Bikini Kill, famously wore a Catholic schoolgirl skit and wrote SLUT on her stomach for Spin Magazine.  Riot Grrrls dressed this way so they could kill the negative connotations of words like slut.

As the new generation deals with the issues Riot Grrrls faced in the 90s, museums and books have also taken on these issues.  At the Experience Music Project in Seattle, a Riot Grrrl Retrospective examines the influence of Riot Grrrls on modern music and culture.  I am excited to see college students all over the nation taking up the Riot Grrrl torch and can’t wait to see where these Rebel Girls take the fight for equality.

Last year I was in charge of filling out the census for my house.  Being a history student, I was very excited to be involved in history.  My roommates, however, were not as thrilled.  I wanted to be as accurate as possible, so I hounded them for days to help me.  Finally we sat down together to fill out the census.  We were doing really well until we got to QUESTION EIGHT.

Being from Southern California we knew all about question eight because it was all over the news.  What surprised us was the conversation it sparked.  On the 2010 US census Latinos and Hispanics were not included in the race section (question nine).  If you are Latino or Hispanic you can answer question eight with your country of origin and then answer question nine with your race.  My Latino roommate was upset because she could not decide which race to choose.  To further complicate matters the race choices only included White, African American, American Indian, or many different Asian origins.

One roommate was Taiwanese American, so she wrote in Taiwanese.  This was a clear choice because of the many, many PSAs encouraging Taiwanese Americans to write-in Taiwanese.   For my El Salvadorian roommate, she identified as Native Central American; however, American Indian did not seem to include indigenous people from Central and South America.  She was upset because Taiwanese Americans were encouraged to write-in Taiwanese, while the mainstream news outlets encouraged Latinos and Hispanics to choose between White and African American.  In the end she wrote-in El Salvadorian because she didn’t fit into the race boxes presented on the 2010 census.

Why are Latino and Hispanic origins not counted as races on the US Census?

According to the LA Times, Census officials say they are adhering to race-category standards laid out for all federal agencies in 1997 by the White House Office of Management and Budget.  The problem with question eight is that, when forced to choose between White and African American, many Latinos and Hispanics will choose White.  The term White comes with the impression that the person who was forced to choose White receives the socioeconomic opportunities many Whites receive in this country.  In reality, most Latino or Hispanic people are not perceived as White and do not benefit from the outward appearance of Whiteness.

For the 2020 census, the 1997 policies will be re-examined.  It will be interesting to see what question eight’s fate will be.  In the meantime, the 2010 census is another example of how American ideas of race are constructed and perceived by different people.

Racism and Stereotyping Hurt All of Us.

In 2009, a student at Carpinteria high school petitioned to change the mascot.  The Carpinteria Warriors mascot was of a plains Indian with facial features that offend many Native Americans.  The mascot was armed with feathers and sacred “religious tools.”  The school board voted to approve her petition, after all the mascot was old and the precedent for changing a mascot is well documented.  However, the backlash that exploded in this small surf town, was so great that it reached the LA Times.

Residents of Carpinteria who had attended the high school as long ago as the 1950s petitioned the school board to repeal the change.  The resulting school board meeting is an interesting study in the way different people view interpretations of Native Americans in our society.

Many felt that the mascot represented the years of State Football victories for the town, and the removal of the mascot would mark the removal of the pride for the past sport victories.  However, as an African American man said, “being a Carpinteria Warrior had profound effects on my life, such as learning to persevere despite overwhelming odds and caring for fellow teammates, but I would feel terrible if I was a part of something that was considered racist by anyone.”[1]

Those who supported changing the mascot were driven by the argument that Native Americans are continually depicted in racist and stereotypical ways.  The poster above showing various stereotypes as mascots, reads “Racism and Stereotyping Hurt All of Us. Native Americans Know This.  Now You Do Too.”  One of the arguments that was heard multiple times was that the  Chumash (the American Indian tribe that spans most of Southern California’s coast) “are peaceful, not warriors.”[2]  At the root, the problem was the way that the stereotypical mascot not only represented a stereotype of a group of people long ago, but also represents the stereotypes held about those people today.

This argument was opposed by the people who supported the mascot because they felt the mascot represented them not the Chumash people of the area.  One woman of both Zuni and Mexican indigenous lineage, said that “as a Mexican Indian, I acknowledge my Indian roots—American Indians don’t. To be a warrior is a proud thing.”[3]  Chicano Indians in Southern California have strove for many years to be identified as American Indians in the same way as North American Indians.

In the end, the school removed what it deemed as “offensive material” such as the feathers and sacred religious tools.  Today the school is still called the warriors, but all of the images of a mascot have been removed.  What had begun as a clear cut case in the school board’s eyes turned into a fight over a symbol that meant many different things to many different people.  The night of the hearing, the adults fought inside the gym while the students gathered outside in front of a mural about Chicano history and identity on the school’s wall.  There they held signs and flew the “to all my relations Red White Black Yellow” Flag for peace among all groups of people.  Maybe, the parents could have learned something from their children.

RedWhiteYellowBlack Peace Flag

[1]  Murillo, Cathy. “The Santa Barbara Independent Carpinteria School Board to Decide Mascot Issue.” The Santa Barbara Independent. <http://www.independent.com/news/2009/mar/12/carpinteria-school-board-decide-mascot-issue/&gt;.

[2] Ibid.

[3] Ibid.

Gambling is not my thing and I have been to plenty of smoky, dingy casinos.  That is why I was thoroughly surprised to hear from multiple alumni at the CGP Alumni Weekend that one of the best museums they have been to is The Mashantucket Pequot Museum & Research Center.  After hearing so many rave reviews, I had to investigate this magical oasis for myself.

The first thing I found when I searched the Internet for “Foxwoods museum” was controversy.  In 2008, Foxwoods opened a $700 million dollar addition to their casino.  This addition was hit by a firestorm of critiques.

When Donald Trump lost the bid for this addition to MGM he questioned the validity of the Mashantucket Pequot tribe and said, they “don’t look like Indians.” [1]  Although anthropologists and historians have documented the tribe’s history of oppression and struggles, critics continue to question the tribe’s legitimacy today.  A common complaint on the Internet claims that the tribe was extinct until there was the prospect of a casino.

In fact, the Mashantucket Pequot tribe was federally recognized in 1983 after a long struggle to gain back the parts of the reservation that were sold in 1855 and again 1856 by the State of Connecticut without the tribe’s consent.  Once the tribe was federally recognized, it worked to attract descendents whose ancestors had fled the harsh reservation system. [2]

How did the tribe respond to the claims that they “weren’t even Indians” in 2008?  The tribal leaders turned to the museum and research library.  On May 17, the day after the fabulous cocktail party that celebrated the opening of the MGM tower, the tribe gathered to celebrate the opening of the traveling exhibit “Race: Are We So Different?”

Unlike the dioramas and films in the rest of the museum, this exhibit was designed for science museums.  The American Anthropological Association developed the exhibit to help the visitor understand the way science throughout history has created the idea of race.  One of its stated goals is to examine the “reality and unreality” of race. [3]

The Story of Race Exhibit

The museum chose to contextualize this exhibit with its own story.  Hanging over the entrance to the interactive exhibit was a photograph of over 100 tribal members.  The people in the pictures range from “fair-skinned blondes and red-heads to blacks and people who look more like the classic image of native Americans.” [4]  Dr. Kevin McBride, Research Director at the museum and Professor of Anthropology at Connecticut University, said, “The American public has this idea of native people that’s ingrained … that carries into what people expect the Pequots to look like and act like.” [5]

Today, the museum continues to promote understanding of American Indian identity.  In the permanent gallery, a mobile home is on display in the exhibit, symbolizing life on the reservation in the 1970s.  Inside visitors explore what it was like to live on the reservation and listen to oral histories of tribal members who lived there.  The exhibit aims to show that the reality of the reservation was that “more and more people are forced to leave for economic reasons,” explains Dr. McBride.  As tribal member John Holder remembers in his oral history, “We had zero income. There wasn’t something going on that provided income, and we were kind of in a situation where you were forced to use what you have.” [6]

The gallery concludes with the film, Bringing the People Home, which responds to the critiques of the tribe’s legitimacy and explains how the tribe rebuilt their nation and achieved Federal recognition in 1983.  The Mashantucket Pequot tribe struggled for recognition and now it faces popular belief that it does not deserve its success.  Once a tribe overcomes some of the trappings of the reservation system, new challenges develop.  Furthermore, for every Foxwoods there are countless numbers of tribes that have not been recognized or don’t have a casino.  What is the answer for these tribes?

[1] Parsons, Claudia. “Gambling Success Brings Controversy for Tribe.” Reuters.com US & International News. 09 June 2008. <http://www.reuters.com/article/2008/06/09/us-usa-gambling-pequot-idUSN2834775820080609&gt;.

[2] Mashantucket Museum and Research Center. <http://www.pequotmuseum.org/&gt;.

[3] RACE – Are We So Different? A Project of the American Anthropological Association. <http://www.understandingrace.org/home.html&gt;.

[5] Parsons, Claudia. “Gambling Success Brings Controversy for Tribe.” Reuters.com US & International News. 09 June 2008. <http://www.reuters.com/article/2008/06/09/us-usa-gambling-pequot-idUSN2834775820080609&gt;.

[6] Ibid

Courtesy of wikicommons.

The visibility of lesbian culture in modern America is greater than ever before, however, it is plagued by stereotypes.  The stereotypes run the gambit from the glamour of The L Word to the overly sexualized lesbian fantasy of the male sphere.

Popular culture’s display of lesbian couples such as Ellen DeGeneres and Portia de Rossi and Samantha Ronsom and Lindsay Lohan has helped lesbian culture break into the mainstream.  However, these women have been easily placed into perpetual stereotypes of butch and femme in mainstream culture.  In reality, butch/femme identity is hotly debated in the lesbian community today.[1]

In Odd Girls and Twilight Lovers: A History of Lesbian Life in Twentieth-Century America, Lillian Faderman presents a decade-by-decade study of lesbian sub-culture in America.  She examines butch/femme in its historical context.  Faderman argues that the butch/femme paradigm was actually a very classed and generational definition.

In the 1950s the world of butch/femme is strict.  Each were expected to fit specific roles. The unwritten rules of butch/femme dictated that a butch should have a tough “male” exterior and a femme project a passive “female” exterior.  From the outside this dichotomy seems to be drawn from the concept of male and female.  It is easy to dismiss these identifications as an attempt to replicate heterosexuality by designating one member of a couple as male (the butch) and the other as female (the femme).  However, Faderman shows that the butch/femme world is not actually an imitation of the heterosexual world, but really a movement that is submerged in class struggle. [2]

In the 1950s butch women were tough and defined by their ability to stand up as strong women and protect their femme counterparts.  Faderman’s interviews show that many butch women came from the working class.  Their goal was not to pass as men, but to define themselves by their ability to work as tough women.  Being butch and being part of a butch/femme relationship was a way to claim one’s place as a lesbian working class woman.  The older generation and the upper class of lesbians did not intermix with the butch/femme working class generation. [3]  Butch/femme was entrenched in the 1950s young, working class society and other women who were outside this world did not claim butch/femme identity.

By the 1970s lesbian feminists dismissed butch/femme culture as politically incorrect. Many lesbians of this era critiqued butch/femme as submission to patriarchal standards. Androgyny became the lesbian ideal.  Lesbians from all classes banned together as lesbian feminists.  The move away from the strict butch/femme definition is attributed to the new protection and identity created by lesbian feminism.  Women no longer needed butch/femme to protect themselves from the outside world.  [4]

Modern lesbian culture challenges the butch/femme stereotype, yet it acknowledges the complexity of gender identity.  Today many lesbians believe that simply defining butch and femme in terms of male and female is “highly problematic because of its underlying assumption of heteronormativity” (the tenet that heterosexuality is normal). [5]  If heterosexuality is normal then  all other forms of sexuality are not normal and, therefore, homosexuality is less than heterosexuality.

The world of butch and femme is no longer controlled by outside definitions of how a relationship is shaped (as male and female).  Women can choose to dress and act a certain way in a relationship without becoming more female or male.  Lesbian identity should not be defined by heterosexuality.

Queer culture today aims to show that homosexual and transgender people cannot be placed into heterosexual classifications.  Once we do this we can begin to truly understand the cultural issues and struggles of queer history.  Faderman’s work succeeds in understanding lesbian issues outside of the heterosexual paradigm in a decade-by-decade history.  It is the goal of many historians to now create an overarching storyline of lesbian history that is not simply negotiated through heterosexual definitions.  By understanding the legacy of butch/femme as a cultural movement we can begin to see these connections and escape the male/female heterosexual paradigm.

[1]  Garrett, Emma and Silver, Rachel. “Lesbians and Cultural Issues in the 20th Century.” Out History. 2008. Web. <http://outhistory.org/wiki/Lesbians_and_Cultural_Issues_in_the_20th_Century#Negotiating_Cultural_Identities&gt;

[2]  Faderman, Lillian. Odd Girls and Twilight Lovers: a History of Lesbian Life in Twentieth Century America. London: Penguin, 1992. 174

[3]  Ibid. 177

[4]  Garrett, Emma and Silver, Rachel. “Lesbians and Cultural Issues in the 20th Century.” Out History. 2008. Web. <http://outhistory.org/wiki/Lesbians_and_Cultural_Issues_in_the_20th_Century#Negotiating_Cultural_Identities&gt;

I remember the first time I saw someone wearing this t-shirt.  I was at an after party in downtown LA for a comedy show.  I didn’t get the message that this was going to be a hipster party.  It was obvious that I forgot my ironic eyeglasses and converse high tops.  Little did I know that I also didn’t get the message about the obligatory offensive t-shirt.  “Jesus is my Homeboy,” “Live and Die in Compton,” anyone?

I had already made a fool of myself when I had decided that the comedian’s jokes about Mexicans were offensive.  The blank stares I got in reaction to this comment further confirmed that I just didn’t understand the cool kids.  Said comedian now has his own late night show, so I guess the kids over at Comedy Central are cooler than me too.  I didn’t say anything about the Obama t-shirt.  To this day, I wish I had the nerve to confront the boy donning it.

I get the shtick:  “Daniel Tosh is so outrageous that it is ironic and funny.”  “This shirt is so openly racist, so of course I’m not racist.  I’m funny.”  What I don’t get is that it is ok to act this way.  Just because you are a hipster and it is cool to be jaded, witty, and ironic, doesn’t mean it is ok to be racist.

I have always thought that I was on the outside looking in, and that I just never really got the joke.  However, as I was looking for an image of this t-shirt, I found many articles about this very outlook.  Carmen Van Kerckhove over at Racialicious, was the first person to give this phenomenon a name:  “Hipster Racism.”

What do you think?  Is Hipster Racism really racism or has some of society moved past racism?  Are hipsters (and the rest of us) evolved enough to make a derogatory comment in order to expose real racism?  In class we have been talking about racism in the past, but we really have been dancing around modern racism.  It is easy to say that racists live somewhere else – geographically, socially, and economically.  In reality racism is among us.  I think true feelings and fears hide inside Hipster Racism, but then again, maybe I just don’t get the joke.  Do you?

What is a stroller?  Is there really nothing more to a stroller than a mode of transportation?  It is just something our mom’s and dad’s used to get us from one place to another.

It is silly to say the choice of one’s automobile doesn’t have any meaning.  Cars and trucks tell us about people’s aspirations and needs.

Cars help us understand how people see themselves within society.  A stroller, or pram, or baby carriage must also have meaning and a story to tell.  The name we give to an object has meaning in itself.  Do you say stroller?  Or pram? Or carriage?

So, if objects have meaning, do objects have race?  Artist Fred Wilson would say, yes, yes, yes.  Wilson is known for creating new contexts for displaying objects from museum collections to shape the way we understand them.  His hallmark is creating non-traditional pairings of objects, such as the Klu Klux Klan hood and the baby carriage above.  He displays the same objects as curators do around the country, “but what Wilson tweaks are display conventions.” [1]

In 1992 the controversial and groundbreaking exhibit “Mining the Museum” exhibit opened at the Maryland Historical Society.  Wilson took traditional museum objects and paired them with those objects that become relegated to collections storage because they are too controversial.  He juxtaposed slave shackles to colonial silver tea sets and a slave whipping post to Victorian era chairs.

Seeing these objects together allows the viewer to see the whole story.  The goal of this exhibit is to understand both the African American and the white history, and how they interact.  The title “Mining the Museum,” reflects Wilson’s ability to do many new things with traditional objects.  He is literally “excavating the collections to extract the buried presence of racial minorities, planting emotionally explosive historical material to raise consciousness, and finding reflections of himself within the museum.” [2]

Wilson says, “I usually let the objects tell me what to do.” [3]  Wilson used the objects to show the racist impulses that can run deep in the storage rooms but, are shuffled to the back of the collection by displaying the images with the “fine” objects we expect.

He also used the objects to tell the narrative of what it is to be African American.  In the case of the baby carriage and the hood, he is commenting on the realities of living in a Jim Crow world.  The carriage and hood were displayed next to photographs of black nannies with white babies. The meanings of this display are multiple:  babies learn oppression as early as the carriage, prejudice is a learned hatred, the realities of living Jim Crow are even present with children.

The way visitors experienced the exhibit was also revolutionary.  Instead of being told about the objects, “visitors were armed with an education broadsheet of concrete poetry.” [4]  Wilson gave them the questions not the answers.  He wanted the visitors to find their own meaning, and answer “For whom was it created?  For whom does it exist?” for each of the objects. [5]

What do you think about Wilson’s approach?  Is he purely an artist or is he a curator?

It is clear that Wilson believes that museums are not completely addressing issues of race.  I would agree with Wilson, as he says, “I love museums like I love my family, and families could always improve.” [6]  Wilson offers a new paradigm to the way we understand objects and race that I think we should adopt into our growing museum family.

[1] Helfand, Glen, “Object Lesson,” San Francisco Bay Guardian, January 22 – 28, 2003, Volume 37, No. 17

[2] Stein, Judith, Sins of Omission [Fred Wilson’s Mining of the Museum], http://judithestein.com/sins-omission-fred-wilson%E2%80%99s-mining-museum

[3] Helfand, Glen, “Object Lesson,” San Francisco Bay Guardian, January 22 – 28, 2003, Volume 37, No. 17

[4] Stein, Judith, Sins of Omission [Fred Wilson’s Mining of the Museum], http://judithestein.com/sins-omission-fred-wilson%E2%80%99s-mining-museum

[5]  Education Broadsheet, “Mining the Museum: An Installation by Fred Wilson,” The Contemporary & Maryland Historical Society, Baltimore, MD, 1992-3

[6] Helfand, Glen, “Object Lesson,” San Francisco Bay Guardian, January 22 – 28, 2003, Volume 37, No. 17

Museum exhibits have a purpose:  they tell a story, they teach you something, and they make you think.  Behind the scenes at a museum, people are working to help us learn and understand this story, but who should decide what we should learn from a museum?

This question becomes even more complicated when we consider the ethnographic objects of people who were traditionally marginalized by scientific racism, such as the people of the Northwest Coast Indian tribes.

In 1887, Franz Boas began to outline the way museums should display their ethnographic collections.  Boas is considered the father of modern American Anthropology.  His basis of study in science changed the way anthropologists examine the world.  Unlike most of his contemporaries, Boas believed that ethnographic exhibits should tell the visitor that culture is “relative, and that our ideas and conceptions are true only as far as our civilization goes.” [1]

Boas used this ideology to organize his exhibits, particularly the Hall of Northwest Coast Indians at the American Museum of Natural History.  He believed that “if the underlying idea of the exhibit can be brought out with sufficient clearness, some great truths may be impressed upon (the audience).” [2]  He organized the objects by a “tribal arrangement of collections,” not by object type, in order to teach the visitor the meaning of the object within that culture. [3]

Today, many museums strive to do just this in their exhibits.  Curators aim to help the audience understand the importance of objects to their origin culture.

This goal is at the heart of the 1989 meetings of the staff of the Portland Museum of Art and the Tlinglit elders about the objects in their Northwest Coast Indian collection.  The curators wanted to understand how the objects represented the culture of these tribes.  Unlike Boas, they asked representatives from the culture marking a key difference between how museums approach objects now.  However, it is what those present learned about these objects from the representatives is what is truly surprising and modern.

The museum professionals expected the elders to tell them about the objects, “for example:  this is how the mask was used; it was made by so-and-so; this is its power in terms of the clan, our traditions.” [4]  In reality the objects “provoked (called forth, brought to voice) ongoing stories of struggle.” [5]

Historian James Clifford argues that this experience is an example of when museums become contact zones.  A contact zone is “a space in which people geographically and historically separated come into contact with each other and establish ongoing relations.” [6]

Ethnographic objects in museums are objects that invoke “histories (memories, hopes, oral traditions)” and work as tools of the contact zone to “challenge and rework a relationship.” [7]  When objects are seen this way, they become tools for “active collaboration and a sharing of authority.” [8]

Any time an object is used in a way that ignores its presence as a mutable object of a contact zone, it is subject to the dominant culture’s views.  Clifford believes that if we ignore these objects’ status within a contact zone, we continue to perpetuate “culture-collecting strategies” that are a reflection of old world views of “dominance, hierarchy, resistance, and mobilization.” [9]

Maybe, in reality, ethnographic objects don’t have a story.  They are continually changing because they reflect a continued story.  Next time you find yourself at an ethnographic museum think about the story.  What do the objects tell you?  Are they just reflections of another culture, or are they a reflection of what happens when two cultures meet?

I challenge you to think about what the museum wants you to learn about that culture and think about what that might be saying about our own culture.  We can learn more about contact zones and other cultures from the way we displayed these objects in the past and the way they are viewed by both cultures now.

[1] Jacknis, Ira, “Franz Boas and Exhibits: On the Limitations of the Museums Method of Anthropology,” Objects and Others: Essays on Museums and Material Culture History of Anthropology, Volume 3, Ed. George W. Stocking, Jr (Madison, WI: University of Wisconsin Press, 1985), 83.

[2] Ibid, 86.

[3] Ibid, 79.

[4] Clifford, James, “Museums as Contact Zones,” Routes: Travel and Translation in the Late Twentieth Century, (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1997), 188.

[5] Ibid, 193.

[6] Ibid, 192.

[7] Ibid, 194.

[8] Ibid, 210,

[9] Ibid, 213.