I’m a woman with a doctorate who also happens to love popular culture. Most of the time cinema or television is where my mind goes to rest, regroup and rejuvenate.
Sometimes, like last week, the nerdy side and the contemporary side clash. That’s exactly what happened when I read criticism of John Boyega’s comments about the HBO hit Game of Thrones. He made an eloquent point: there are no black main characters who are not slaves, liberated slaves, or working for the advancement of white people in the series watched by millions of viewers around the world. We make an event of it in my house, shunning social media for 24 hours until its available in the vast corners of the realm like Qatar.
(If you’re not into pop culture, the show is based on the series of books by G.R.R. Martin and set in a mythical civilization akin to medieval Europe.)
There weren’t black people in medieval Europe, wrote commenters on every thread where the original GQ interview was regrugitated. Different versions of the same protest included there weren’t that many or be happy there are some tan white people and let them pass for non-whites.
Expanding on the theme: Boyega was a nobody and now he has opinions. He should be glad he got one and keep his mouth shut.
Hadn’t any of these people read or seen a performance (or one of the films) of Othello? Shakespeare’s play alludes to the history of Moors on the Iberian peninsula. Othello is a black man married to a white woman encited to jealousy by a devious advisor. Okay so maybe not, being a 3 act play, etc. What about the film O with a once relatively unknown Julia Stiles, Josh Harnett and Mekhi Phifer, set in high school?
Speaking of Shakespeare, here is a writer in Elizabeath England who was ultra conscious of the ravages of importing people, spreading colonialism, and building empires. Again, was everyone sleeping through The Tempest in high school? (That’s the one about the white sorcerer who lands on an island and makes the native his slave…)
As I lamented the lack of awareness about European history last Friday night – yes I am THAT friend, weekend buzz kill in our ever approachign 40s – my friend said she didn’t learn about the Moors in Spain until college. That gave me pause.
This gave me pause.
When did I first know that the Moors, aka people from Africa, set up in Spain and Portugal from the 8th (MIDDLE AGES) to the 15th century, running things very, very well, until they were expelled aka kicked out, ushering in the Spanish Inquisition and the decline of the Spanish empire? To this day towns like Alcoli do re-enactments (think Civil War battle replays) of the army sending the Moors out. In fact there are festivals all over Spain that commemorate this history that most Americans probably never learn.
Was in it AP European History in 11th or 12th grade when my teacher, as passionate about history as he was about being the school’s assistant soccer coach, taught us that along with the Moors, the Spainish divested themselves of their moneylenders, aka Jewish residents, and therefore triggered an economic crash ending the golden age of Spain? (Fine so what we once used to describe “Moors” no longer exists as an identity for a people group they are a mix of ancestors including African and Arab ancestry….)
Was it he or my college professor who made the link for us that the expulsion of the Moors, Jews, and anyone else who was different, was a prelude to the dangers of expelling people, on par with the later roundup of anyone who was different in Hitler’s Germany?
You know what memory is like.
Slippery at best and a quick footed dancer even in sleep.
I couldn’t tell you right now (or ever) if it was in my high school or college history class that we learned, in today’s terms, immigrants are good for social and economic diversity. At the end of my first year I found out I didn’t have to take the European History because I had placed out on my AP test. My professor was sheepish and apologized since I had done extra work to be eligible for a Honors section of the course.
At the end of my first year I found out I didn’t have to take the European History because I had placed out on my AP test. My professor was sheepish and apologized since I had done extra work to be eligible for a Honors section of the course.
“That’s okay,” I said after a moment of GTFO ARE YOU SERIOUS I WASTED A SEMESTER??? “We wouldn’t have met otherwise.”
Sounds like I was an ass-kisser, and it’s true I can be very diplomatic.
Yet this particular professor I stayed in touch with and became my lifelong friend. Who knows – maybe we would have met later on in The World Since 1945 and it would have been the same. There was no honors section of that course, four of huddled around a desk in her office on which papers, books, and notebooks teetered in stacks that would inspire the makers of the Leaning Tower of Pisa. She tried to convince me to become a history major since I had enough courses – all I had to do was add one more senior seminar.
I was already double majoring in Psychology and English because my favorite professor in that department – also my advisor – made the same argument (all I needed was two courses). Ready for the ‘real world’ or the next step in my life I said no and went on to graduates in literature.
All this to say do I only know about the Moors in Spain because of passionate teachers in my life? Yes.
We need passionate teachers who can inspire writers to grow up and tell the stories of those who are on the margins. Because those people also transmit knowledge that becomes tacit as we grow older.
We need good teachers so we can be more accurate keyboard warriors.
When we’re educated well we aren’t threatened when others want to join the table. We support them because we know a flourishing society is when all members contribute. help spark a conversation about the current mainstream. Whether or not people are prepared to listen.
We can spark a conversation about the current mainstream. Whether or not people are prepared to listen.