The Historical Lens

I was both relieved and disheartened about the revelations about the historical lens that Dr. Jennings brought before us on Wednesday. First, on a more surface level, I was somewhat concerned about taking this class when I saw the reading material. We have lots of history books to read, lots of facts. Although I haven’t read the books from our list, my library shelves at home are stuffed with ones that could easily duplicate them. I have taken Colonial American History, African American History: 1865 to the present, World Slavery, Western Women and Imperialism, North Carolina History, and The South in Black and White. I love history, but please don’t give me another course that is a bunch of facts that do not force me to look at myself and my world differently.

According to Wednesday’s lecture, a simple black history or black church class can turn black people into a museum. I want to think that I know where Dr. Jennings is going, but I’m not totally sure, but I’ll take a stab at it. First of all, I must identify that I’m white and that it matters for me to say that I may not fully understand. But I wonder if this experience of the museum is like recent trips I’ve taken down to the Student Health Center.

On one occasion, I sat in the waiting room. I overheard two students talking about their hopes and goals as future medical professionals. “What are you interested in?” One student asked another. “Radiology,” the student answered as they began to share all of the things they found fascinating about the topic. Perhaps it was a day that I was particularly frustrated by having my day interrupted by my medical needs, but I felt a wave of anger flow over me and I deeply desired to start a confrontation with the students.

You see, radiology for me, is personal. Radiology for me means setting time aside for sitting in the MRI with a reminder that I’m getting closer to my grave each day—a reminder that comes from my body that is failing all too soon and from being in a machine the size of a coffin. Radiology for me means swallowing nuclear medicines that require you to tell children and pregnant women not get near you for a specified amount of time. Radiology for me means sitting on a table stripped of my dignity with a foot-long needle injecting dye into my hip joint using only local anesthetic. I wanted to yell and scream at the students, “Before you dare talk about how cool radiology is, you better get on the table and feel the pain first.”

I appreciate that a Doctor wants to get an overview of a patient’s general medical history, but there are days I want to just be accepted for what I arrived there for—on this day, an analysis of a mole. Before I could even begin with my most current dilemma, we spent what felt like an agonizing 30 minutes going over the same medical history that most days I’d like to just forget. And with revelation of a past ailment to the Doctor, she replied, “Oh how fascinating, tell me more about that.” The interrogation and her excitement over my pains and struggles made me a feel like a freak show.

Perhaps that is what it means to make someone a museum. Dr. Jennings said that “historians are often not sensitive to the ideological purpose of telling stories.” I whole-heartedly agree. When it came time for writing my thesis in History, I remember the pressure that was put onto me to keep myself from getting too involved with the story in which I was telling so that my views would not taint it. They would say, “we want just a story of raw facts, but don’t forget to make a persuasive argument.”

The focus on cold hard facts tends to leave folks without a conscience. I’ll never forget my World Slavery class. It was one of the most amazing classes I’ve ever taken, taught by a dynamic professor who genuinely cared about his subject matter. We had deeply explored the ruthlessness of the slave trade and finished up the semester with examples of both contemporary slavery and examples of the legacy of racism and the American slave system. About a year later, I joined with a group of students frustrated by racism that was occuring on our college campus. I saw a kid who had been in my class. I hurried to him to give him a pamphlet, assuming that his superior participation in our class would make him sympathetic to our cause. Within seconds of speaking with him, I saw this intelligent man drop the pamphlet onto the ground and walk off. He didn’t care about the real people on the ground that historical problems affected; rather he wanted the facts for a good grade.

This is a general problem I’m even finding in myself as I hear about things that I have heard time and time again. There are times when the facts stay facts and they do not penetrate my heart and my soul. It is like folks from war-torn Northern Uganda who shared their stories of abuse by the Lord’s Resistance Army. They shared how tired they were of telling their stories only to have folks walk away unchanged. Rather than change in the lives of the Africans who had suffered the abuse, they only saw foreigners turn into NGOs or journalists who told the people’s story for profit.

Lord, help me to not only hear your Word, but to feel your Word. Lord help me to not only feel, but help me to become a doer of the Word.