On a couple less
prominent ways to AmericanStudy an inspiring icon.
In the wake of
Nelson Mandela’s death, numerous commentators—including this AmericanStudier—expressed
the importance of remembering a series of dark American connections to the
legendary leader: the ways in which the
Reagan administration had supported the South African Apartheid regime; and
the concurrent ways in which numerous American
politicians and pundits defined Mandela as a terrorist, as
belonging in jail, and so on. Given the widespread rush to forget these
histories and pretend that Mandela had always been praised by all of us, I
certainly believe that we must indeed remind ourselves of just how many
significant American voices and leaders were on the wrong side of history in
this case, and through such reminders to consider what lessons we might learn
from that reality.
But there are
other, less widely expressed but just as salient AmericanStudies lessons we can
take away from Mandela’s life and death. For one thing—and I’m echoing the
great Ta-Nehisi Coates on this note—many of the posthumous tributes to
Mandela have paralleled quite directly what I wrote in
this post about Martin Luther King Jr.: focusing entirely on Mandela’s
late-life embrace of nonviolence and forgiveness and unity, and ignoring his
earlier and just as strongly held beliefs in utilizing, when necessary, far
more angry and even violent rhetoric and action in order to fight injustice. Moreover,
these aren’t just two distinct stages; just as the optimistic conclusion of King’s “I
Have a Dream” speech must be contextualized in relationship to the angry criticisms
voiced in the speech’s first half, so too must we understand Mandela’s appeals
to nonviolence and unity in conversation with his deep-seated understanding of
the limits of those strategies and goals (and, for that matter, of any
strategies and goals if they’re pursued myopically or without the abilty to
adjust and respond to changing circumstances).
It’s also worth
noting—as a
few commentators did in response to Mandela’s death—that Mandela and his African
National Congress were on
the US Terrorist Watch List as recently as 2008. Partly that fact reflects
the kinds of specific attitudes toward Mandela and his movement (and Apartheid)
that I highlighted in my first paragraph. But partly it helps us recognize something
that we tend, nationally, to be quite bad at considering: how much the concept
of “terrorism” represents not a category of identity or action so much as a
linguistic choice; and yet how much that choice, to call (for example) Mandela
a terrorist rather than an activist or freedom fighter or even militant,
impacts so many other conversations and realities for all concerned. That’s not
to say that there aren’t people or organizations or actions that we could
accurately define as “terrorist”—but because the term does not have a set of
legal standards and definitions (such as, say, “murderer”), it will always
remain, even in what seem to be the most clear or salient cases, a linguistic
and semantic choice, and thus one that we must always analyze and question even
(especially) when it feels most obvious.
Next 2013 event
tomorrow,
Ben
PS. What do you
think? Other 2013 events you’d remember?
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