Racism Is So Universal, It Has Become Normal: Race, Representation, & Accuracy in Popular Media
Channel: AskHistorians
Date: 2021-10-18

Our collective idea of what history was ‘like’ owes a great deal to visual media, with even fictional portrayals offering a visceral point of reference that the written word can rarely hope to match. The decision of how to portray the past in popular media can therefore take on a profound social and political importance, and history-based media often risks becoming a flashpoint in contemporary cultural debates. Different portrayals become highly praised or contested based on how far they conform to or challenge our pre-existing ideas about the past, particularly surrounding contentious contemporary issues such as race and national identity. This panel explores the tensions surrounding portrayals of the past in popular culture, and the power of ingrained assumptions about ‘accuracy’ to distort and even erase particular historical narratives.

Learn more about this panel at https://www.askhistorians.com/race-and-accuracy

This panel includes a live Q+A with the panelists 19 October 2021 @ 3:00 - 5:00 PM EDT, on https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians

Featured in this panel are:

"At the Mercy of the Tide. The History of the Chōsokabe Clan According to Nobunaga’s Ambition: Sphere of Influence (Koei, 2013)" by Claudia Bonillo
"Counting Black Faces: The Marginalization of Black British Soldiers in Response to 1917" by Stefan Aguirre Quiroga

Moderated by Avan Fata

This panel is part of the AskHistorians 2020 Digital Conference. For more Conference content, please go to: https://www.askhistorians.com/2021-digital-conference

Land Acknowledgment:

The AskHistorians Digital Conference (AHDC) Organizing and Diversity and Inclusion Committees acknowledge that the AHDC 2021 is being produced in and viewed from various locations across the world. Many of these locations include lands that are the ancestral, unceded, and treaty territories of Indigenous Peoples from Turtle Island, Abya Yala  [ab-EE-ah ee-AH-lah], and the Americas in their entirety to the traditional lands of Indigenous Peoples in Sweden, Australia, and across the globe. We acknowledge that these lands have been stewarded by these Indigenous communities and nations since time immemorial and we offer our gratitude to these Peoples. We, moreover, recognize that, five hundred years later, settler colonial nations continue to benefit from the brutal realities of genocide and forced removal that enabled the original settler colonizers and conquistadores to seize these lands.

The AHDC organizers acknowledge both the land upon which we are virtually hosting this conference, those lands from which the conference is being viewed, and the deep-rooted and long-lasting wounds caused by white imperialism and settler colonialism. The harmful effects of these actions continue to hurt Indigenous communities across the world. We recognize the responsibility we have as historians to amplify Indigenous Voices and speak for those who can no longer speak for themselves. We also acknowledge that while we pursue this goal, academia itself has often been at the forefront of colonial domination and must therefore reckon with its own injustices. Understanding this, we have chosen to make a donation to the Indigenous organization, Forest Peoples Programme, in an effort to give back to Indigenous communities around the world. While we appreciate that Indigenous political, trade, and kinship relationships extend beyond the geographic boundaries that we commonly assign to distinct communities and nations, we would like to particularly acknowledge the Indigenous Peoples upon whose ancestral lands the AHDC 2021 has been produced or hosted as follows:

Doeg
Piscataway
Sami