You Can’t Ignore Race In History
In the last couple of years, I noticed that history was being rewritten. Usually that has occurred by politicians on the right. This time it is by entertainment executives disregarding race and ethnicity in the historical context of their productions.
I noticed it at first because there were Black actors playing courtiers in BBC dramas. These characters never spoke but were part of the contingent of extras just milling around palaces in premodern times. Then on the BBC drama “Poldark” set in 1790s Cornwall, Britain, an old military commander of Poldark’s arrives from the Caribbean with his Black wife…and is well accepted by the locals.
Britain’s Cornwall in the 18th century was a rural backwater. The inhabitants had been speaking English instead of a Celtic language known as Kernowek for only a couple of decades. The people were insular and thought of as not quite English by those in London. If the people of Cornwall were looked on with suspicion by the English, what about a Black woman?
The most outlandish example of this disregard of history was the claim that the wife of King George III, Queen Charlotte, was biracial in the period drama “Bridgerton.” This make-believe is based on an ancestor of hers, King Alphonso I of Portugal, who may have had Moorish blood. He was born in 1109 and Charlotte in 1744…some 600 years difference between them. Even if Alphonso had had Moorish ancestry, the 25 or so generations in between would take care of any characteristics that would make her seem a Moor.
Other more recent historical examples of trying to eradicate history would be the introduction of another Jamaican wife to a white farmer in 1930s Northern England in “All Creatures Great and Small” and that of a Black Anglican Bishop in charge of a 1950s diocese in Cambridge in “Grantchester.” Both of which are just historically inaccurate.
Historical accuracy is important because Britain may be an interracial society today, but it wasn’t for most of the past. By trying to make it so, younger generations are deprived of knowing how biased a place it was. Europeans and Americans could not have exploited Asians and Africans if their societies did not condone it. Manumission did not do away with prejudice.
Portraying the NYPD in a contemporary drama would be only accurate by having the majority of those actors in uniform being Black, Latino or Asian since almost 60% of the force is. If a New York drama takes place in the 1920s, the force should have an Irish face. History should not be changed in the name of political correctness.
I have been thinking about this for some time. And last week, an article in The Washington Post went into some detail about these phenomena. By disregarding race or ethnicity when bringing literary works or history to contemporary audiences, we make it seem as though prejudice and injustice never existed.
That doesn’t mean that a Black or Hispanic actor can’t play Richard III. We can suspend our belief to see it is a part, not an attempt to alter history. But to try and make Charlotte a Black queen is wrong. It isn’t an actor playing a part as much as a pretense to rewrite history.
Instead, we should be making films and television shows using African, Asian, and Native American works of literature. We have all seen too many contemporary dramas of both American and British Black actors as nothing more than drug kingpins. What about a drama based on Langston Hughes’ life or one about Harlem during the “Black Renaissance.”
Rewriting history to make slavery appear not so bad is wrong. To portray those enslaved just singing and dancing in the fields while picking cotton is outrageous. And to suggest that some slaves were happy to learn a trade and be able to keep some of their earnings is inexcusable.
We need to just tell the truth through art, literature, history and all else. By making believe that something did not happen or the Queen of England was Black will only condemn us to accept more untruth as fact. Do we want a society that disregards truth because it is inconvenient?
