HATEFUL THINGS

31Jan08

I didn’t really know what to expect from the hateful things exhibit. I felt like I learned a lot from the video that we viewed before walking through the museum. A lot of the memorabilia was made before my time so I wasn’t aware of most of it.  So watching the video and learning about the items before hand helped a lot. I know that some people feel like these things should be destroyed rather than put on display in a museum. I disagree with that because I think that it’s a part of history and should be taught. Mostly because I believe that now a days a lot of issues involving racism are watered down, looked over, or even joked about. A museum like this one helps to ground people a little bit, bring them to learn about and realize how serious of an issue it really was or is.

            The most hateful artifact that I remember seeing was a portrait of African American babies. They were completely unclothed and some were on the ground, some were in trees. At the bottom of the picture it read, “alligator bate”. I feel like this was one of the most hatful things because its not only racist, its dehumanizing. Portraying African American children as animals only to be fed to alligators is wrong on so many different levels. Making someone feel less equal because of their color is awful, and making them feel as if they’re less than human might be even worse.

            I do believe that over time the level of racist acts have improved. This doesn’t mean that every day there aren’t racist actions going on, because even some of the things in the museum were recent. But we can only hope that people will educate themselves about the history of the issue, and where it is currently and take a more positive out look when it comes to race so that things can get better. Like David Pilgrim said in the video, its not that it should stop being talked about, but instead be talked about in a different way.

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