Last Monday in class, we watched a documentary about the Jim Crow Museum of Racist Memorabilia. The museum collects racist items from American history and displays them to the public to raise awareness. In this film, Dr. David Pilgrim, the museum founder, talks at length about how guests in the museum try to psychologically distance themselves from the hateful things they see. Pilgrim mentions how people look for the least offensive things they can find and question why they are in the museum. He says that people also argue that the things featured in the museum are simply part of the past and that we as a society should just forget about them. This sense of denial permeates the film and is reflected in many of Pilgrim’s interactions with sellers.
I thought for a while about what Pilgrim said after we finished the documentary. While thinking, I was reminded of a quote from the 1958 novel The Once and Future King by T.H. White:
“He had been taught by Merlin to believe that man was perfectible: that he was on the whole more decent than beastly: that good was worth trying: that there was no such thing as original sin. He had been forged as a weapon for the aid of man, on the assumption that men were good … His (Round) Table, his idea of Chivalry, his Holy Grail, his devotion to Justice: these had been progressive steps in the effort for which he had been bred… But the whole structure depended on the first premise: that man was decent.” (628
White’s novel is a retelling of the Arthurian legend that provides a distinctly human and flawed portrayal of centuries-old characters. It is a book that shows that even otherwise good people, with just intentions, can cause irreparable damage to the world, themselves and others. White attributes this to what he calls “original sin”. White’s original sin is not the religious concept talked about in the Bible. Rather, White believes that original sin it is a product of the horrible things that our ancestors have done to each other. Original sin is what causes the endless, violent cycle of bloodshed, oppression and vengeance that plagues humanity. On countless occasions, otherwise good people are dragged into conflicts because of racial epithets, familial disputes, or petty rivalries. No one is safe from this.
It might seem odd that I am bringing up a fantasy novel from the late fifties to discuss racism in the United States of America. However, I believe there is a lot of common ground here. In my experience, many white people, believe that racism is an issue that can be solved by not talking about it. This conclusion seems perfectly logical to people who do not struggle with race in daily lives. However, this is just a means of dealing with an inconvenient reality. People might claim not to see color, but race and racism are very much alive. Upon doing further research, I discovered that some of the most recent items in the Jim Crow Museum date back to 2008. It is not so easy to distance ourselves from that.
To me, this is a clear reflection of The Once and Future King. Racism in the United States of America is a form of original sin. It is the byproduct of centuries of violence, cruelty, and oppression that cannot be erased by saying it does not exist. Believing that racism will go away by pretending it is not there relies on all human beings being basically good. Only that is not true. Our society’s refusal to openly discuss race in a healthy manner has led to the resurgence of hate movements across the country. Just look at the Charlottesville Unite the Right rally from 2017 or related protests. That is not something we as a society can ignore. The legacy of racism is too strong to ignore and just passively allowing things like this to happen is what empowers hate movements. Racism is our country’s original sin that we all as Americans must reconcile.