An inconvenient intrusion.

"Honey I am home!" It's nice to be back on the plantation, it really is. I really love traveling but Philly is where my heart is. (At least for now.)

Before I forget; thanks for all the holiday shout outs and the wonderful e-mails and comments that you all left me. Right back at [everyone of] you.

Now enough of the niceties; let's talk.

I recently encouraged all of you who care about real American history to visit the wonderful President's House Memorial here in Philly. Sadly, not everyone shares my sentiments. It seems that some big shot arts critic from the New Yaawk Times took issue with the new attraction here in the city where our "founding fathers" left their mark.

Edward Rothstein penned the following:

"PHILADELPHIA — The convulsive currents that roil the telling of American history have become so familiar that they now seem an inseparable part of the story itself. Here is a nation, conceived in liberty and dedicated to a proposition of human equality, that, for much of its first century of life, countenanced slavery, institutionally supported it and economically profited from it. The years that followed have been marked by repair, reform and reversals; recompense, recrimination and reinterpretation. Extraordinary ideals and achievements have been countered by extraordinary failings and flaws, only to be countered yet again, each turn yielding another round of debates......

And here, in this city where the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence were signed; where a $300 million Independence National Historical Park has been created, leading from the National Constitution Center to Independence Hall; and where the Liberty Bell, as a symbol of the nation’s ideals, draws well over a million visitors a year, a great opportunity existed to explore these primal tensions more closely on a site adjacent to the Liberty Bell Center in Independence park. Unfortunately, those opportunities have been squandered in “The President’s House: Freedom and Slavery in the Making of a New Nation” which opens on Wednesday.....

“History is not neat,” we read. “It is complicated and messy. It is about people, places and events that are both admirable and deplorable.” And the President’s House, we are told, “exposes the core contradiction at the founding of this nation: enshrinement of liberty and the institution of slavery.”

But what precisely is being exposed? A few yards away, the Liberty Bell Center discusses abolition and slavery; the park’s visitor center has an exhibition about the Underground Railroad; the nearby African American History Museum has a powerful audio and video history of blacks in Philadelphia. Accounts of slavery are even found at Mount Vernon.

Here, though, we get neither a sense of the place, nor a sense of the issues (and much of the year, the open air will be inhospitable). We don’t learn about the differences between Washington and Adams. We don’t learn much about the pictured events. There is no real narrative. Illustrations can also be melodramatically contentious: we see a seemingly disdainful Washington dangling a “peace medal” before a suspicious Seneca Indian leader

As for slave life, it is also difficult to piece together. The video screens that come to life above the fake mantels give the impression of a half-finished 21st-century home. The videos themselves (with scripts by Lorene Cary), in which slaves and servants provide first-person accounts of experiences, at least provide some sense of life. But how do we put these experiences in context? What was Philadelphia’s free black community like? How did white workers and black slaves live together here?

We are told that the President’s House “offers an opportunity to draw lessons from the past.” But what lessons? That Washington was flawed? That slavery was an abomination? Are these revelations? A memorial to the practice of slavery is mounted here, inscribed with the names of African tribes from which slaves derived, but it has no particular relationship to Philadelphia or this site. The need for some such memorial is keen, but here it seems thumped down as an intrusion..." [Read the full article here]

And that, my friends, is the problem with so many folks in the majority population: They view the sad legacy of slavery as nothing but an "intrusion". Memorials such as this one only reminds us of the flaws that even the "greatest" among us had. And if they were flawed, what does that say about us?

I am glad that folks like Annete John- Hall and my friend Michael Coard responded.

"The esteemed critic obviously missed the point of the exhibit.

Rothstein argues that the commemoration, by focusing on slavery, loses sight of other important history. You know, real American history.

Like more about George Washington, for one. The father of our country, America's foremost patriot. Military man. President. Name and image affixed to every stamp, currency, school and monument you can possibly imagine.

Except that a narrow little inconvenient truth surfaced as plans were made to build a president's house memorial. Something conveniently omitted from my history books: Washington unapologetically owned more than 300 Africans, nine of whom he shuttled back and forth between his Virginia plantation and his presidential home in Philadelphia." [Source]
Well put, Anette. But you have a long way to go if you want to convince the rest of A-merry-ca that your position is the correct one. I leave you with the words of "Tyrome". (Not a real name, I am sure. Just someone trying to be funny by poking fun at what he/she perceives as an ethnic name from a certain group.)

"PC ot[sic] of control. We don’t care about 1700-era slave stuff. The whole slave/victim/in-the-past thing is gettning[sic] real old to Americans.

My Irish ancestors where mistreated but thats[sic] not worth building a monument.

George Washington did great things for OUR country. People shouldn’t hijack it to push there[sic] PC victimhood shtick. "

2011 should be fun.