{"id":33935,"date":"2013-09-30T02:30:25","date_gmt":"2013-09-30T02:30:25","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.mixedracestudies.org\/wordpress\/?p=33935"},"modified":"2015-10-14T00:24:43","modified_gmt":"2015-10-14T00:24:43","slug":"never-ending-story","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/?p=33935","title":{"rendered":"Never-Ending Story"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong><em><a href=\"http:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2013\/09\/29\/movies\/conversation-about-race-has-not-brought-cultural-consensus.html?pagewanted=all\" target=\"_blank\">Never-Ending Story<\/a><\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.nytimes.com\" target=\"_blank\">The New York Times<\/a><br \/>\n2013-09-27<\/p>\n<p><strong><a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/A._O._Scott\" target=\"_blank\">A. O. Scott<\/a><\/strong>, Chief Film Critic<\/p>\n<p><em>\u2018Conversation About Race\u2019 Has Not Brought Cultural Consensus<\/em><\/p>\n<p>The \u201cconversation about race\u201d that public figures periodically claim to desire, the one that is always either about to happen or is being prevented from happening, has been going on, at full volume, <strong>at least since the day in 1619 when the first African slaves arrived in <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Jamestown,_Virginia\" target=\"_blank\">Jamestown<\/a>.<\/strong> It has proceeded through every known form of discourse \u2014 passionate speeches, awkward silences, angry rants, sheepish whispers, jokes, insults, stories and songs \u2014 and just as often through double-talk, indirection and not-so-secret codes.<\/p>\n<p>What are we really talking about, though? The habit of referring to it as \u201crace\u201d reflects a tendency toward euphemism and abstraction. <strong>Race is a biologically dubious concept and a notoriously slippery social reality<\/strong>, a matter of group identity and personal feelings, mutual misunderstandings and the dialectic of giving and taking offense. If that is what we are talking about, then we are not talking about the historical facts that continue to weigh heavily on present circumstances, which is to say about slavery, segregation and white supremacy.<\/p>\n<p>But of course we are still talking about all that, with what seems like renewed concentration and vigor. Nor, in a year that is the <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wiktionary.org\/wiki\/sesquicentennial\" target=\"_blank\">sesquicentennial<\/a> of the <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Gettysburg_Address\" target=\"_blank\">Gettysburg Address<\/a> and the <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wiktionary.org\/wiki\/semicentennial\" target=\"_blank\">semicentennial<\/a> of the <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Martin_Luther_King,_Jr.\" target=\"_blank\">Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King\u2019s<\/a> \u201c<a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/I_Have_a_Dream\" target=\"_blank\">I Have a Dream<\/a>\u201d speech, are we simply looking back at bygone tragedies from the standpoint of a tranquil present. The two big racially themed movies of the year, \u201c<a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/The_Butler\" target=\"_blank\">Lee Daniels\u2019 The Butler<\/a>\u201d and <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Steve_McQueen_(director)\" target=\"_blank\">Steve McQueen\u2019s<\/a> \u201c<a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/12_Years_a_Slave_(film)\" target=\"_blank\">12 Years a Slave<\/a>,\u201d are notable for the urgency and intensity with which they unpack stories of the past, as if delivering their news of brutal bondage and stubborn discrimination for the first time&#8230;<\/p>\n<p>Read the entire article <a href=\"http:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2013\/09\/29\/movies\/conversation-about-race-has-not-brought-cultural-consensus.html?pagewanted=all\" target=\"_blank\">here<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Never-Ending Story The New York Times 2013-09-27 A. O. Scott, Chief Film Critic \u2018Conversation About Race\u2019 Has Not Brought Cultural Consensus The \u201cconversation about race\u201d that public figures periodically claim to desire, the one that is always either about to happen or is being prevented from happening, has been going on, at full volume, at [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12,459,1196,8,6940,20],"tags":[5443,15966,2640,2327],"class_list":["post-33935","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-articles","category-history","category-literary-criticism","category-media-archive","category-slavery","category-usa","tag-a-o-scott","tag-anthony-oliver-scott","tag-new-york-times","tag-the-new-york-times"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33935","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=33935"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33935\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":43215,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33935\/revisions\/43215"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=33935"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=33935"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=33935"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}