{"id":18257,"date":"2024-09-12T13:57:25","date_gmt":"2024-09-12T17:57:25","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/desis.osu.edu\/seniorthesis\/?p=18257"},"modified":"2024-09-18T18:22:34","modified_gmt":"2024-09-18T22:22:34","slug":"museums-are-fighting-racism","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/desis.osu.edu\/seniorthesis\/index.php\/2024\/09\/12\/museums-are-fighting-racism\/","title":{"rendered":"Museums are Fighting Racism"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

“Why would Filipino Americans, who make up 4 percent of the nation\u2019s nursing corps,\u00a0represent\u00a030 percent of Covid-19 deaths among nurses in the United States?” (George, 2021).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“Why do Latinas in major fields of employment\u00a0have to work\u00a022 months to equal the pay of what white men received over a 12-month period?” (George, 2021).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“Why would a mistaken drug raid lead law enforcement agents to fire ten rounds blindly into the home of health care worker\u00a0Breonna Taylor, killing her?” (George, 2021).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“Why do Asian Americans have a sense of historical d\u00e9j\u00e0 vu in the wake of\u00a0new violence\u00a0against them?” (George, 2021).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

These are all questions whos answers boil down to the concept of systematic racism. “Like a disease that continues to spread and endanger the nation\u2019s well-being, racism has scarred American life since\u00a0Europeans set foot on American soil centuries ago” (George, 2021).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Racism and the oppressive barriers that come along with it are at the forefront of many movements today, and one of these movements includes the efforts of museums.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“The Smithsonian\u2019s new initiative,\u00a0‘Our Shared Future: Reckoning with Our Racial Past,’\u00a0seeks to expand understanding of how racism has blighted today\u2019s world and threatens to poison the future if Americans do not confront the danger and open their minds to give all Americans equal rights, equal opportunities and equal access to the American dream” (George, 2021).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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The Americans exhibit at the\u00a0National Museum of the American Indian, Google Arts and Culture.<\/em> https:\/\/artsandculture.google.com\/project\/smithsonian-our-shared-future<\/a><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

The implicit biases and structural forms of racism in our country have been normalized and “the goal is not to get back to normal” as normal is destructive to many different racial groups (George, 2021).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“More than 50 years ago, the Kerner Commission report<\/a>, an analysis of 1967 racial disturbances, determined that the cause of disruption in urban Black neighborhoods was not outside agitators or media attention as some politicians claimed. Instead, the cause was, very simply, white racism. White institutions created it, white institutions maintain it, and white society condones it” (George, 2021).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

One of the exhibitions, \u201cMake Good the Promises: Reconstruction and Its Legacies,” in this initiative “showcases remnants of the post-Civil War Reconstruction era and its failed promises. Reconstruction pledged to offer new rights for African American people, but at the same time, it spurred white violence that sparked retrenchment and a failure to safeguard for Black Americans the right to vote and the opportunity for economic equality. In much the same way, the push for equal rights in the 1960s and 1970s drove a shift into reverse during the 1980s. And again, while Americans elected their first Black president in 2008, recent years have seen the growth of white supremacist groups and increasing evidence of violence by white police officers against Black Americans” (George, 2021).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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