Abstract
The New York Times’ 1619 Project, which casts slavery instead of human rights and liberty as the driving force of the United States’ cultural and economic development, caused such a furor among conservatives that it provoked a public response from the White House in the form of President Trump’s 1776 Commission. I argue that the elevated salience of this contested history constitutes an opportunity for sociologists of culture to leverage the multivalence of historical-figures-as-cultural-symbols as a means of restoring dialogue between the two halves of polarized contemporary America. Figures such as Thomas Jefferson, Abraham Lincoln, and Martin Luther King Jr. constitute emblems of different virtues and vices to different political communities; by unpacking these value-associations, how they formed, and the biographies and writings of the figures themselves, sociologists can foster a more substantive dialogue about the relevance of history to current inequalities and conflicts. However, this opportunity will be foreclosed to sociologists unless we forthrightly advertise our own normative commitments and embrace the role of invested participants instead of detached analysts.
Presenters
Isaac KimmelPhD Candidate, Department of Sociology, University of Notre Dame, Indiana, United States
Details
Presentation Type
Theme
KEYWORDS
Collective memory, Normativity, United States, Political identity, Public discourse, Race
