I think the idea of oral history is especially important when concerning social issues. So many events in history have been improperly recorded or recorded with bias due to inability or fear within minority communities to get their side of the story out. The video below is a collection of oral histories from Nashville's own civil rights struggle. Similarities to Jackson's movements Church assistance was important. As in Jackson, the murder of a popular civil rights activist also helped the movement gain momentum. There is a television interview brought up with a woman named Diane Nash and the Mayor when she points out discrimination in restaurants. This was an important moment in Nashville's Civil rights movement as an authority figure was forced to publicly address the issues concerning race within the town. As the interviewee notes, after that 'the walls came crumbling down'. This is an example of how powerful the medium of television is in affecting change. "The Civil rights period hit me real hard. It hit me in a lot of ways that i can say made me who i am today. I got to see the civil rights movement from the inside- out, and then i got to live the results of it." notes the last interviewee. The issue of visibility was the largest issue during this time and television was one big way for minorities to 'see' themselves represented. On the rare occasions a person of color made the screen it was largely beneficial, especially when that person was addressing the mayor of the town.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XlItC56HTD8
On the opposite end of the spectrum, I found this video on Youtube. In this segment an african american man is using the medium of video to discuss a lesser explored race issue: is the white race going extinct? I am posting this link because so far we have discussed racism in terms of every race but white. I think this is because generally and historically the white race has been the dominant power, although not necessarily dominant in numbers. If this man's observations are accurate, what do you all think this will mean for our world and issues of race? I'm really interested to see the discussions that arise from this as it is a point we have not yet discussed.
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-6257452152477811592&ei=DbPWSteMCIGeqQOm7q2RCg&q=race+and+globalization&hl=en#
1 comment:
I'm not sure if we can call it racism given the reasons that he lists for the white race supposedly dying out. I also think that given that the white power structure is still firmly in place, its unlikely that whites will completely die out. However it is interesting to imagine how the telling of history and the content of what is told would change if that happened, or if the paradigm would stay the same even without whites? For instance, we have talked a little about how maybe written history is a western thing in that pre-history refers to the time before writing, and that quote about Africa having no history since it had no writing. But we have no really discussed the African tradition of story telling and oral history through Griots… Are there other ways that we could say history is preserved aside from the oral tradition and the written tradition?
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