The Museum of Now: on "Slavery in New York"
The
I stare at a slave who's been dead a hundred and fifty years. Posters for the exhibit \work{Slavery in
I ride the subway to Central Park West to see the exhibit. It's a neighborhood where money layered on money has built invisible walls not found on maps but New Yorkers know by instinct. Usually I leave my streets, where men eye men for money, to relax within these walls, to feel security I can't afford and breathe in the quiet world of liberal privilege.
Today I measure the distance between me and the old man in the poster, between the life he endured and my unknown fate. The New York Historical Society opened the exhibit and though it closes March 5th the show raises questions about who we were and who we are. Slavery is centuries old but the reality of it lies beneath our feet. In 1991 construction workers drove the steel of modern
Exhibit sponsor J.P. Morgan Chase wants to conceal the benefit they derived these skeletons. In 2004 a reparations attorney found J.P Morgan's fortune was built selling insurance to slave traders. Their funding is their down payment on the past. If they subsidize historical reviews of slavery they won't owe anyone victimized by their wealth today.
As I entered \work{Slavery in
The soundtrack of slavery, rhythmic moaning and iron smacking iron, continued as a video lit the faces of the audience. It explained how
I hovered around the white women, listening for a racist remark to justify my anger, which may be older than any history. They noticed me and began speaking in tones of forced regret. I was left with little evidence just how they said "blah-aks" as if spitting bitterness out.
In the first room are wire sculptures of slaves. I touched one and wondered what history did slaves have to hold? A faint scar on my finger shined briefly as I turned my hand. Maybe they just read the truth written on their bodies by whip and work.
On the wall a map of
A panel showed the 1664 British take over of
Nearby a video installation shaped like a well looked up from the bottom to four black women braiding their voices together. They talked of lovers in prison; magic cures for cracked hands and laughed as they admitted they just wanted a pair of white women's gloves. Only one held out, "I want new hands," she said and they hummed agreement. Their struggle to survive demanded they drop any illusions, one being that those in power will ever freely share it. Slaves knew this and a precious few acted on it. On the wall was a summary of 1741 plot to set
The next display was a slave cabin and the master's house. The slave quarters were bare and small. It was only in times of chaos that blacks had freedom to move, as in the Revolution of 1776 when desperate armies recruited them.
I passed a video of two scholars detailing
By the 1800s blacks were out numbered by European immigrants, yet remained the symbol of enslavement against which the new arrivals measured their freedom and their "whiteness". By 1816 the American Colonization Society began urging blacks to move to
We nod to each other. I asked one about the exhibit, "It's good but it doesn't go far enough," he said. "Slavery was bloody. This is too Disney." He took out a New York Post newspaper. "Besides," he said pointing to it, "Racism is here now. You got papers doing character assassination on the second non-white to run for mayor." He walked away. \work{Slavery in
At the end is a booth with dark curtains; inside visitors confess feelings of shame and anger and guilt and their interviews play on video screens. I walked in and closed the curtains and watched myself in the dark screen.
I rode the subway to Bed-Stuy, came out and looked towards home. If we could see beyond our time and from that place look back, what would the exhibit \work{Race in
They'd see our versions of the American Colonization Society; the Moors and Nation of Islam, the Black Israelites and Rastafari in the streets. Each group rips open the hurt caused by racism then promises a paradise that has not and will never exist. It can't because racism is not based in skin but in the soul, where fear of others and ourselves follow us no matter where we run.
I remembered the installation of the woman at the well asking for new hands. If there was an exhibit of today, it'd show us buying new skin and new teeth. Visitors would see a people use clothes and jewelry to conceal the cheapness of black skin. They'd see a people who centuries ago could not testify in court, who spoke worthless words now glue gold and diamonds to their teeth. They'd see a people replacing their bodies with symbols of wealth, as if asking for new ones like a race of desperate cyborgs.
Visitors could see stressed out mothers yelling at children, who grew up to be men screaming at girlfriends who have babies they yell at. They'd see women standing on corners through the night, waiting for men to buy them. They'd enjoy a video installation looking up from the cup of a homeless man talking survival with friends. The exhibit might remind them of neighborhoods they don't go to, where people live beyond invisible walls.
A black man stumbled up to me, "Boss? You got change?" he asks. I shake my head but look him in the eye while lying. I walk home looking at my empty palms; they are not scarred or calloused from work. They are new hands that could change my small part of the world and it seems change is what everyone is asking for.
I get in and take off my coat. In the bathroom I stand in front of the mirror and feel the immensity of time, the certainty that my hair will go snow-white and generations will be born after I'm gone and look back on me and judge. I realize in the mirror is a man who's been dead since he was born, dead because he hasn't done anything with his freedom.
"Slavery in
October 7, 2005 through March 5, 2006
New York Historical Society
170 Central Park West at 77th Street
New York, NY 10024