The American Studies department sponsored its first symposium on Friday, April 2. Students heard from contributors to the book Racially Writing the Republic: Racists, Race Rebels, and Transformations of American Identity, co-edited by American Studies Professor and Chair Duchess Harris.

Three of the book’s contributors, Gary Gerstle, director of the Center for Historical Studies at the University of Maryland, Northwestern University School of Law Professor Dorothy Roberts and New York University Professor John Kuo Wei Tchen spoke about their contributions, as did Harris’ co-editor Bruce Baum. Baum introduced the book by saying that the contributors dedicated it to a “land where every man is free,” a line from Langston Hughes’ poem “Let America Be America Again.”

Baum said that the book addresses how the American dream has, for many, been perverted into a racialized nightmare. Harris said that the book also includes profiles of “race rebels,” such as W.E.B. Dubois and James Baldwin, whose alternative views challenge the mythical America of the founder’s rhetoric.

Referencing Baldwin, Baum said that “there is a collision between our image of America and its reality, and we have the option of meeting the collision head-on and becoming what we are, or retreating and trying to remain in a fantasy.” Baum said that one aim of Racially Writing was to face Baldwin’s challenge by taking a new look at U.S. history.

Each contributor reexamined a major American historical figure and his or her influence on American society and its foreign relationships.

Tchen read from his contribution to Racially Writing, which addressed the relationship George Washington established with China and the way he affected the United States’ relationship with Chinese goods. He said that Washington set the national elite’s taste for oriental decoration and goods. He said that Washington bartered goods with the East to establish trade with China as part of nation building.

Gerstle addressed Theodore Roosevelt’s seemingly dual nature as both a “racial nationalist” and a “civil nationalist.” Gerstle said that as a civic nationalist, Roosevelt hated discrimination based on religion, nationality or race and loved the idea of hybridity.

However, Gerstle said, Roosevelt’s racialized ideal of U.S. citizens cannot be depicted as a circumstantial result of the times. According to Gerstle, his hold over the national imagination kept the American civil national dream from being manifested. Gerstle said Roosevelt thought of America as a land of English-speaking, self-reliant, liberty-loving whites and as warriors above all. Gerstle said Roosevelt thought that a “fierce foe” was required to develop the “great American race.” For example, he said that Roosevelt thought that “the war to exterminate the Indian created America.”

Gerstle pointed out that Roosevelt’s contradictory behavior is exemplified in the story of Kettle Hill, a battle in which his fame and glory rested in the hands of black troops. Gerstle said that he gratefully acknowledged black regiments’ heroic role until it became too dangerous politically to present the intermingling of racial groups. He then wrote the black regiments out of the story of the adventures of the First U.S. Volunteer Cavalry, or Rough Riders, during the Spanish American War. The story has been immortalized with Roosevelt’s omission.

Gerstle said that Roosevelt’s contradictory behaviors indicated that he, in some sense, inhabited two nations. He pursued social order through racial hierarchy as a racial nationalist while enjoying the freedom of civic traditions in his personal life as a civic nationalist.

Graham Turner ’07 said that the information about Roosevelt was especially poignant. “The idea of leaving out huge parts of that battle says a lot about the way that no matter what certain groups do, they will be written out of history,” he said.

Roberts spoke about the racial origins of the birth control movement. Roberts said that Margaret Sanger, who defied social and religious traditions to found the American Birth Control League, which eventually evolved into Planned Parenthood, is still idolized by many as the mother of birth control. However, Roberts said that Sanger promoted the idea that social problems are caused by reproduction of socially disadvantaged people, and that birth control should be used to thwart that reproduction.

Roberts said that the eugenics movement, popular during Sanger’s time, gave the birth control movement the authority of scientific credence. According to the Merriam-Webster Dictionary, eugenics is the science of improvement of the hereditary qualities of a race or breed through control of mating. Birth control, in turn, gave eugenicists a method of reducing the birthrate of less desirable classes and maintaining a specific racial stock, thus creating a symbiotic relationship with which Sanger fully complied.

Charles Campbell ’06 said that he was impressed with the symposium. “I found it to be accessible to me as a student who has never taken an American Studies course,” he said.

Spanish Professor María Cepeda said that she appreciated the way the contradictory nature of historical figures was portrayed by the speakers.