Post by pavel on Jan 19, 2016 19:43:35 GMT -6
The city of Georgetown decided to kick off the new year by organizing a ball for January 30 at the Williamson County Courthouse. The theme and name of the ball? “Old South Ball: A Civil War Soiree.” The “soiree,” listed as the Civil War Ball on the Williamson Museum’s event calendar, invites people to attend in period attire and “enjoy the music of the 1860s” for just $25 per person and $40 per couple. According to a report by the Austin American-Statesman, Georgetown City Council helped promote the ball with a grant of $1,500.
There are several things wrong with this, and I’m not the only one who thinks so. A group called Positive Change for Georgetown has gathered more than a hundred signatures on an online petition asking the Williamson Museum to reconsider the ball’s theme. According to the petition, honoring the Civil War, “one of the darkest times in American history,” with a ball is chock full of white privilege.
Although the phrase “privilege” is often confused to mean that something extra or beneficial is given to a certain group of people (and, yes, that can sometimes be the case), it usually means that certain people enjoy the benefits of not dealing with difficulties or obstacles that other groups encounter. In this case, white privilege comes into play because white residents aren’t living in a city in which their local government celebrates an era when people who looked like you were enslaved with a ball. Maybe the organizers had good intentions, but these intentions didn’t give enough thought to the variety of residents in the city and county. Why would black residents want to attend a party with a Civil War theme? Why would anybody?
As Lou Snead, a retired minister, told the Statesman, the ball “ feels like it’s a party for white folks, although they probably didn’t intend it to be that.”
Read more: www.texasmonthly.com/the-daily-post/museum-plans-to-hold-the-old-south-ball-a-soiree-for-the-civil-war/
There are several things wrong with this, and I’m not the only one who thinks so. A group called Positive Change for Georgetown has gathered more than a hundred signatures on an online petition asking the Williamson Museum to reconsider the ball’s theme. According to the petition, honoring the Civil War, “one of the darkest times in American history,” with a ball is chock full of white privilege.
Although the phrase “privilege” is often confused to mean that something extra or beneficial is given to a certain group of people (and, yes, that can sometimes be the case), it usually means that certain people enjoy the benefits of not dealing with difficulties or obstacles that other groups encounter. In this case, white privilege comes into play because white residents aren’t living in a city in which their local government celebrates an era when people who looked like you were enslaved with a ball. Maybe the organizers had good intentions, but these intentions didn’t give enough thought to the variety of residents in the city and county. Why would black residents want to attend a party with a Civil War theme? Why would anybody?
As Lou Snead, a retired minister, told the Statesman, the ball “ feels like it’s a party for white folks, although they probably didn’t intend it to be that.”
Read more: www.texasmonthly.com/the-daily-post/museum-plans-to-hold-the-old-south-ball-a-soiree-for-the-civil-war/