To Be or Not To Be [a Slave].

EVENT

A story in today's Flint Journal: 'Slave' label gets village re-enactor ousted.

I am genuinely curious how others respond to this article.

At first, I thought it was an open-and-shut issue for me; that Mr. VanRaemdonck was acting like a tool and that was that. And part of that impression still stands; he is both posturing and playing to the lowest common denominator in demanding an apology. If his desire to teach and share history is as rigorous and well-intentioned as he thinks, and if he is consciously breaking from the definition of his assignment to prove a point (which he is, inasmuch as slavery was a social status, not a profession), then the emphasis should be on the students. That is, if VanRaemdonck was as noble-minded as he claims, whether or not he is owed an apology is ultimately beside the point, and shouldn't be his point of contention.

From there, however, I find things murkier than I expected.

At first, I am inclined to agree with Ms. McMillan who is paraphrased as saying that "there were better choices than labeling the young boy a 'slave'- even if the label was designed to share history." Certainly interacting with a stranger in this way, and presumably someone young who may have any number of questions of concerns that VanRaemdonck is unaware of and unable to address, seems limiting at best and arrogant at worst. Moreover, as McMillan went on to say that "there were also free people of color in the southern states during this time period," it is as assumptive for VanRaemdonck to describe any participant as a slave as it is for him to describe any wight child as a "slave owner." Clearly, he did not do this.

I agree with all this.

And yet, there's something compelling, something both direct and true in VanRaemdonck's initial defense of his action:

"I told him, 'This is the 1860s, and we're in Georgia. ... In that time period, you probably would have been a slave,'" said VanRaemdonck, 44, a Flint firefighter. "I told him the historical fact."

Which makes me wonder if all of the earlier comments aren't somehow passing the buck. That is: While VanRaemdonck was asked to leave because he upset an African American child, does this have just as much to do with a sense of white comfort? It would ease my mind, surely, to be able to enact a Civil War period drama without having to consider the South's reprehensible and the North's extremely compromised positions on the issue. I don't know that I should be permitted that luxury. As I like to say, I don't feel obliged to feel guilty for a situation beyond my control (I've never bought into the "white male guilt" thing), but only so long as I undertake to understand the implications and effects of my social status and to ameliorate them as best as I can. Among Americans at large, one of the most reprehensible attitudes I can name is the thought that just because one has avoided using the word "nigger" they are not racist nor do they contribute to racial strife; in fact, in the last fifty years, if not all along, I am inclined to think that the most damage (by almost any measurement; economic, cultural prerogative, biased dispensation of opportunities and resources) has been caused by people who do not consider themselves to be racist.

And so I am forced to deal with the issue again, from the opposite side.

What would be the right answer for children at Crossroad's village?
Should one just answer farmer for everyone, black and white, since 90% plus of the Southern population was living by agriculture. Somehow that takes all the fun out of the activity, while missing the point entirely.

Should the activity be discarded?

Is it too controversial and problematic to assign children a fictitious profession they might have held in a different time?

If that was the reason for discard, then what is lost?

What is gained by keeping the activity?

What changes might be made?

It's hard to escape the logistics of the problem, and their intractability is part of what makes it almost hard to wrestle with. But if we set aside VanRaemdonck and whatever silly beef he has with the park district:

What would we do?

* * * * *

I hope I hear back from a lot of people on this.

I suspect this is an issue that will draw an above-average spread of opinions among my friends and readers, and some, perhaps unexpected.

END OF POST.