Abstract

Excerpted From: Susan Ayres, Critical Race Theory Bans and the Changing Canon: Cultural Appropriation in Narrative, 30 William and Mary Journal of Race, Gender, and Social Justice 207 (Winter, 2024) (409 Footnotes) (Full Document)

In Colson Whitehead's Pulitzer Prize-winning novel, The Underground Railroad, the protagonist, Cora, successfully runs away from the Georgia plantation, where she is a slave, to freedom in South Carolina. In the fictional town of Griffin, South Carolina, Cora passes as a free woman who works as a nanny and goes to school at night. Her white teacher tells the class of black students, “In North Carolina ... what we are doing is a crime. I would be fined a hundred dollars and you would receive thirty-nine lashes. That's from the law.” Ironically, today it is unclear how or whether the history of slavery can be taught in Florida, Tennessee, South Carolina, or one of the thirty-five states that prohibits the teaching of critical race studies. While these statutes vary, and some do not even mention the phrase “critical race theory,” the result could be the same--teaching the novel might be prohibited for raising “divisive concepts.” The work might also be banned on a list generated by a local school board or state legislature.

In the past when I taught The Underground Railroad, the state of Texas had proposed, but had not passed, a critical race theory ban at the post-secondary level, so I reminded students that our discussion might be prohibited in one of the states that had extended bans to the college and university level. The university-level ban is sure to be proposed again when the Texas legislature next meets, and Texas may join the eleven other states that have extended these laws to the university-level. It is uncertain how courts will respond to First Amendment challenges to bans in higher education; while a federal judge blocked Florida's college-level critical race theory ban, that challenge and others are making their way through the courts. In the meantime, as Kimberlé Crenshaw remarks, the “moral panic over what has been labeled Critical Race Theory” and the resulting censorship by politicians of “any study of the way that the American legal system sometimes facilitates and reinforces racial inequality,” is simply “not a healthy feature of a robust democracy.”

In resisting attempts to whitewash history and repress a robust democracy, some educators have focused on a pedagogy of anti-racism, which “highlights, critiques, and challenges institutional racism.” One way to promote an anti-racism education is with narrative or stories, including fiction (such as The Underground Railroad) and history (such as the 1619 Project). In that vein, this Article takes an interdisciplinary studies approach to consider the history of and literature about Ota Benga, an African brought to the United States at the turn of the twentieth century by a missionary and explorer. Benga was treated like property, and was exhibited at both the St. Louis World's Fair and the Bronx Zoo. In 2020, the Bronx Zoo apologized for its “inhumane treatment” of Benga, which the Zoo acknowledged had amounted to “unconscionable racial intolerance.”

Literary works that have depicted Ota Benga's life are worth considering because they offer empathic portrayals and social critiques of racism. However, since these works may be viewed as cultural appropriations of Ota Benga's story, it is important to consider what “cultural appropriation” means and what makes it objectionable. Debates about cultural appropriation are not new but tend to flare up with debates over identity politics. In her recent book Appropriate: A Provocation, writer and literary critic Paisley Rekdal points out that unlike other types of cultural appropriation, such as of fashion or food, literary appropriation is especially fraught with problems because “literature traffics in memory and history: the two things that most powerfully comprise and contextualize cultural identity. It's also why even the most empathetic writing of race ... gets particularly tangled .... To write into these spaces is to tread on someone else's intimate territory.” So, while claims of cultural appropriation of fashion and food can become heated, claims of cultural appropriation in literature can become impassioned.

This Article raises questions about how we should evaluate harms in works that are culturally appropriative, and how we should weigh the harms against the benefits of teaching a classic text, such as To Kill a Mockingbird, or a modern text, such as American Dirt. For instance, some argue that To Kill a Mockingbird “approaches racism from one direction--from an external, white outsider mentality .... But what's lost ... is the focus on Black humanity and Black complexity.” Jeanine Cummins' novel, American Dirt, about the immigration of an undocumented Mexican mother and son was a bestseller but was denounced by many Latino reviewers as “trauma porn” or as a cultural appropriation filled with racial stereotypes and inaccuracies.

In untangling questions of cultural appropriation, Part I of this Article considers the various and sometimes inconsistent definitions and approaches to cultural appropriation. Part II describes some of the potential harms of cultural appropriation to insider or marginalized cultures. Part III summarizes the narrative of Ota Benga's life, explaining how he came to be displayed as a Congolese pygmy at the 1904 St. Louis World's Fair and subsequently in 1906 at the Bronx Zoo. Part IV looks at literary works about Ota Benga, analyzing whether the work is harmful appropriation, and what we gain from studying it. The conclusion considers potential strategies to rehabilitate or recuperate literary works that are denounced as harmful cultural appropriations, but which we might nonetheless find benefits in reading and teaching.

[. . .]

In today's contentious society, and as more and more states enact critical race theory bans, educators must resist attempts “to eliminate one side of the debate.” Thus, it is more important now than ever--in this seemingly “dystopian” era--to develop a pedagogy of antiracism and to work through questions of cultural appropriation, as long as higher education “is peculiarly the 'marketplace of ideas.”’

Professor of Law, Texas A&M University School of Law.