In this off week, I thought I would reflect on a conversation we had during class, about the stewardship of racist objects or archival materials. I believe that these materials are important to understanding the history of racism, and in particular how racism is disseminated or consumed by a popular audience. Where archives and museums should be cautious, however, is in their digitization projects. Racist material is sensitive material, and should be treated as such. Divorced from their contexts and their collections, racist material has the capacity to travel outside its intended audience.
Flashback moment: While I was an undergraduate at Fordham University, I had the opportunity to work on an archival exhibition in our library’s special collections. Fordham’s special collections had a large collection of racist and antisemitic ephemera, largely collected in conjunction with the Jewish Studies department as teaching tools. I worked with Dr. Magda Teter, then the chair of the Jewish studies department, on an exhibition about the different kinds of antisemitic material over time (our earliest example was an illuminated medieval manuscript- Fordham had an excellent medieval studies department). The collection extended to racist postcards, produced in the US, to racist and antisemitic children’s books produced in Nazi Germany.
Anybody who wants to can watch a nervous 21-year-old me in this video attempt to explain what we worked on! (Note: I tried for about a hour to embed this video and failed. So you can watch at the link!)
It was my first experience curating anything, and it was a great experience. It also helped me to develop my position on the continued presence of racist archival materials and objects in collections. I initially felt really strange about displaying these materials; what would people think when they entered special collections? Would people be upset? But ultimately the collection’s teaching value, particularly the cheap print materials, I felt surpassed its potential risks. Stewardship of racist objects and materials is a risk reward balancing act.