fearful places

A couple days ago I fell into a conversation about the growth of ethnic studies programs in high school and college curricula, and found most of the people participating motivated mainly by fear and anger. They seemed threatened by the existence of these courses, and zeroed in on boogeymen -- mainly Ward Churchill -- associated with them, although I don't know why they feel this way.

The history of race and ethnic relations in the U.S. is, like any other history, based on documents: letters, diaries, wills and other legal records, books written by the people under study, phonograph records, movies, etc. There may be lies in the documents, but the documents themselves never lie (unless they've been altered -- a whole other topic).

A case in point is the 1929 motion picture "On With the Show," billed as the first all-talking musical review in color (although all color prints have been unfortunately lost). The film itself is mediocre, a variety show whose acts are held together by a flimsy and unnecessary plot, but one scene in it might provide a trove of potential topics for an ethnic history class.

I don't think I've posted this link before -- Ethel Waters singing "Am I Blue" in the above-cited film. In addition to her inspired chirping, the specifics of the director's presentation of this dignified African-American songbird are most interesting. However, as always, I'll leave it to the students to draw conclusions, or not as the case may be, and limit myself to retrieving and presenting the documents.

Note: I would have posted this sooner, but Blogger was down for about 24 hours. That's OK, though, since unlike in the old days, time doesn't mean that much to me.

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