Some Thoughts on Race & Levels of Power (Or, Virginia's State Capitol Creeped Me Out)

I've been in Richmond since Monday conducting research at the Library of Virginia on Janie Porter Barrett and other Black social reformers in the early 1900s. It's been a productive trip. It's more evident than ever that despite their elitism, Barrett and her peers really did care about the well-being of Black children and families in the state. I'm going to have to wrestle some more with my conflicting feelings about social uplift and the problematic divisions between Black elites and poor Blacks, but it's still inspiring to see what these people accomplished. 

After steeping myself in old ledgers, correspondence, and meeting notes relating to Black reform work in Virginia for a few days, I felt an odd discomfort when I visited the state capitol this afternoon. It was psychologically jarring to suddenly find myself surrounded by monuments to white manhood. This in itself is nothing new - most government buildings and monuments are primarily celebrations of the accomplishments of white men. But of all the capitols I've visited, I've never been as bothered as I was today by these types of spaces. The Black Virginians and white women I spent all week researching were completely absent, even though they worked closely with governors and legislators on many advancements in this state. To top everything off, I found this painting (link here) entitled "First Legislature in the New World" hanging on a wall near the rotunda. (Complete disregard of the Native American legal systems in place thousands of years before the men in this painting were born.) It gave me the creeps. Something about being surrounded by paintings and effigies of slaveholders just didn't sit right with me today.

So now I'm thinking about different levels of power and the racialized and gendered ways that we celebrate power in the US. The people in my research have power on the ground - they work closely with communities, local committees, churches, schools, and such. The men memorialized at the state capitol have power in the political and economic systems above the ground. As a historian, I want to join the ranks of other scholars who call attention to the important ground-level work that is, in my opinion, more representative of American social ideals than what we see in state capitols and other historical monuments. As a nation, we have to idolize politicians less and community activists more. Imagine how revolutionary it would be if we glamorized the people who ran our local Boys & Girls Club or homeless shelter just as much as we do our high-level politicians. After all, those are the types of people who have the most direct effect on our children and needy. But we deem the power dynamics developed in those areas inferior because they tend to favor people of color, the poor, and women.

Sidenote: I need to read theory more closely. I know Gramsci, Foucault, and a whole host of other folks have written countless pages on power and space and memory. Perhaps it's best that I digest theory in spurts: I learn something new each time I dig in.

I wish I was enough of a poet to articulate the eerie feeling I experienced today. Maybe I just shouldn't have gone straight from the archive to the capitol. Maybe the spirits of those men really didn't want my Black female self in their pretty clubhouse. That's alright though. I marched around that building free, literate, proud, everything they didn't want me to be. I hope they rolled over in their graves.

Addendum: In case someone messages me with this asinine question that I'm tired of answering - No, I do not hate white people or men. I hate racism & sexism. Two different things, people.