I want to post this exhibit from Carnegie Mellon University because it is a strong example of how archives have historically and continue to uphold white supremacy and white histories, and how they can work to change this fact.
This exhibit is a not just an acknowledgement of the way white supremacy has marginalized diverse actors in the school’s history, but it is also a call to real action on the part of CMU to thoughtfully and collaboratively recognize a fuller story.
Archives are missing many histories. This stems from their origins as a means to uphold institutional power – especially in a culture where written documentation, literacy, and the ability to preserve physical objects form the foundations of that power. In this construction, people without the means to read, write, or preserve records are disenfranchised because they lack appropriate “evidence” of their own lived experiences.
Because of a tradition of ignoring marginalized communities and non-western modes of documentation, when members of these communities come to archives to find their histories, it’s oftentimes hard to help them. We simply do not have the records. This contributes to the idea that people who are non-white, non-western, and non-heteronormative simply did not exist in the past. It’s called “archival power;” the ability to codify history and shape collective memory according to a specific set of standards. It is a false image of history and it is detrimental. How can a community form a cohesive understanding of who they are without understanding where they have come from?
Time and time again the destruction of social histories has ripped apart the fabric of communities. It was evident in the proliferation of American Indian Boarding Schools in the US and Canada, and evident in the severing of families during chattel slavery the United States. Shared social histories provide stability and purpose, and are necessary to the human condition, understanding ourselves as individuals, and our place in a community. I think about how much I know about my own family history and how that shapes my self-image. It is the foundation that allows me to move through the world as an actualized person, and it has been taken away from so many people in favor of upholding a white, western status-quo.
This is changing as oral histories and alternative means of expression become recognized as valid documents of historical experience. Re-thinking what constitutes a “document” or record in archival parlance is essential to deconstructing traditional archival power. At the same time, CMU put it well when they say:
“Still, we acknowledge that for members of marginalized identity-based groups… it may be difficult to entrust the University Archives with their story when we do not have a history of engaging with them or recognizing their substantial contributions to campus life and culture.”
Relationships between power and communities is the most fraught part of rectifying these historical gaps. Marginalized groups have little reason to trust institutional archives when they have been at best ignored, and at worst actively harmed by these repositories.
During protests against a private police force at Johns Hopkins University in 2019, school archivists were in the crowd asking for donations of posters and other protest materials to the university archives. While the archivist side of me understood the impetus for rapid-response collecting, as an individual outside the institution (I lived about 4 blocks from campus at the time), the presence of university employees soliciting evidence of my involvement felt potentially dangerous.
How would these items be examined, cataloged, or presented in the future? Would names or faces be linked to individuals in a way that could lead to potentially harmful action against them? This certainly happend during Black Lives Matter protests, where video and photographic evidence posted to social media put activists and protesters in the sights of law enforcement long after they left the street. How could I be expected to trust the institution whose actions I was actively protesting? This is the gap many archives must work to rectify.
Without acknowledging past harm, recognizing and working to avoid the possibility of future harm, and rebuilding trust through thoughtful, meaningful, and mutually beneficial partnerships, there is little ground on which to stake reconciliation.
CMU is setting an action plan for this reconciliation. Only time will ultimately tell its success, but it is a powerful example of how archives – including mine – can be called to action in order to rectify past wrongs and create a fuller, more truthful, more impactful awareness of our shared history.
Allison E. Fischbach 