Conference Proceedings 2010 [pdf] - Art & Design Symposium ...

highlighting slavery’s historic role in food production. It was meant to invoke questions in market visitors so as
to encourage them to consider where their food came from, how it was made, and how slavery played a
significant role in contributing to some of our favorite foods. I didn’t see it.
Instead of moving on, I decided to consult with my colleague, an African-American woman whose scholarship
includes issues of race, community-based arts, and multicultural education. In our brief conversation, I realized
that my personal narrative was too limited to have seen it. My interpretation of the exhibit, based on my
observations of it and analysis of data collected from viewers, focused initially on the potential for such an
exhibit in a public space as a form of community engagement and the methods by which the exhibit engaged
the audience in learning and questioning. Had I ignored the comments toward racism, I would have written an
evaluative report that contributed to ongoing issues of racism instead of calling attention to the complexity
inherent in interpretations of spaces such as history and art, in this case the emphasis being on sugar cane
production. Images used in the exhibit portrayed enslaved people working in a field and actual shackles on
display, presented, primarily, as “factual data.” These images and items were meant to bring to life the
inhumanity of slavery but the images were not explored deeply through critical questioning and were on display
in a very loud end of the market where viewers might not have the personal space through which to process
emotions stirred by the exhibit. It was a very raw environment to expose such sad and devastating historical
imagery.
It’s in these many, daily interpretive spaces that multiple lenses of interpretation might shed light on ongoing
issues such as racism. Individual interpretations can often become too narrow, missing valuable opportunities
for multicultural learning. I left the conversation with my colleague tired and sad, realizing the impact of my
limited perspective on my work as an educator, researcher, and administrator. As I recovered, I realized that
my ongoing struggle is, through dialogue and openness, to continue to face my own limited personal narrative
in interpreting the multiple spaces in which I find myself.
Vesta’s Voice
Having been a university student in the sixties and seventies, a multicultural curriculum developer in the
seventies an African American female all of my life, and an educator for several decades now situated in the
largest university in the United States with a primarily white population and ethos, I have limitless opportunities
to reflect on many chapters and nuances of my narrative. It is not the narrative that is sufficient, reasonable or
experienced by all. It is mine. And yours is yours. However, our varying stories are infused with greater
significance at their points of nexus, interaction, overlap and conflict. It is through these stories that we attempt
to explain, defend, question and affect the reality we know as history and culture.
Surely, our worldview forms the way we perceive reality, and, as educators, the way that we teach. Currently,
for example, my narrative is keenly and sometimes poignantly affected by the part of our shared story that can
be realized through the existence of Malia and Sasha Obama, the daughters of President and First Lady
Obama. In spring of 2009, I wrote an essay for the NAEA Newspaper that explored a possibility for considering
how the source of imaging or visual culture, that is, the Obama girls can serve as a touch point for the
interrogation of a racialized America, as follows:
I watched Sasha and Malia Obama enter the international stage with a countenance belying their ages of
seven and ten bolstered by the confidence and steady bearing that centered, humane, confident, savvy
parents can pass on to their children. They are beautiful. They are African American. Their willing and
untarnished smiles and attentiveness are at once youthful, inquisitive and knowing. Their connection to other
little girls and boys, adolescents, women and men and me elude description but certainly have something to do
with filling our hearts and granting us the relief that comes from a burden lifted. Across countless world
contexts parents and teachers consume the Obama girls’ delightful interactions with their parents and with
public strangers. I admire their glistening intelligence and unfettered joy. As an educator, I hope to see such
confidence in the smiles that students give me and each other as they learn, understand, and know.
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