To prove her point, they rewrite history. “An experience that has taught me to appreciate the smaller things in life, instead of the finer things in life.You might remember this lady as being part of the 1619 Project, which makes the argument that literally everything in American history is racist, has always been racist, and apparently will always be racist.I’ve created a space for both truths in my mind. It’s a fact, but it doesn’t take away from his writings about Nature (at least to me). There is, without a doubt, writings by Emerson that do not mix well with our current standards for being non-racist. My professor was amused by my protests, and when I think of the class now, I’m not as outraged.
It seemed unfair to me to place modern expectations and standards on those of the past. I, as an English major from GSU who loved all the Transcedentalists, laughed at the idea and argued in-class that it was unlikely that someone who was an abolitionist could be so accurately described as racist. We read a book titled, The History of White People, by Nell Irvin Painter, and one chapter argued the racism of Ralph Waldo Emerson. It also reminds me of a race class that I took at KSU in the American Studies M.A. It is a privileged standpoint, 20/20, and I think that is something we have to be careful of in our work as historians. My 90-something-year-old grandmother listened as I described (in probably too much detail for lunch!) the horrors of the bomb, and when I was finished, she exclaimed, unscathed, “Well, I believe it was the right thing to do! It ended the war!” My father laughed at the generational divide between us, and when I felt I couldn’t argue with her (not just as my elder but because she might have had a point!), I later reflected that had I been around during the war, I might have felt precisely as she did. I came away convinced that dropping the bomb was reprehensible, and shortly after viewing it, I shared my thoughts with my family over dinner one afternoon. Interesting, indeed, that they don’t appear to reference the bomb’s lasting effects beyond unconditional surrender.Ī quick Google search has proved fruitless, but there was a documentary I saw several years ago about the dropping of the bombs that featured animated vignettes and was one of the most powerful documentaries I’ve ever seen. Wow, Claire! Thanks for looking this up for us. It’s been 24 years since the controversy of the original exhibit, yet I feel that Kohn’s article is still relevant, both to the Enola Gay itself as well as, like Steven pointed out in his post, the debate over what to about the Confederate monuments.
I find this disappointing, but perhaps not surprising. I’d like to see the physical exhibit itself, but as I don’t have easy access, I would imagine that it’s in the same vein as what you can find online. The Enola Gay’s page on the Smithsonian’s website offers both a summary and a longer description about the Enola Gay and its involvement in dropping the atomic bomb on Hiroshima, but offers nothing on the bomb’s effects beyond Japan’s unconditional surrender. The (in)famous plane is part of the World War II Aviation exhibit and went on display in 2003. Udvar-Hazy Center in Virginia, a separate facility from the main National Air and Space Museum. The Kohn reading was much more informative and interesting and it got me thinking, ‘so what happened after the exhibit was pulled?’ After a quick Google search, I was slightly surprised that the Enola Gay is in fact on display at the Steven F. I had been aware of the controversy of the Enola Gay exhibit, having read a short article about it when I was an undergrad.