On Making Us Whole Again.

Abstract

On Making Us Whole Again Adam Biggs (bio) As a historian of race and medicine, my first visit to the National Museum of African American History and Culture was a peculiar experience. I had been meaning to go since it opened in 2016 but only managed to arrange a trip this past summer as pandemic restrictions began to wane. By all accounts, it was extraordinary. World class in every way, the museum contained an abundance of richly informative and engaging pathways, beautiful exhibits adorned with artifacts, photographs, videos, artwork, descriptive narratives, holographic images, interactive features, and meditative spaces, each and all offering a vibrant account of African American lives and experiences. The building itself was also impressive. Distinct on the National Mall, its architectural styling signaled a decidedly modern enterprise, a statement about African American communities and the contemporary relevance of their history and culture. But, while compelling, something felt off to me. Only a few weeks prior, the House Select Committee had begun its televised public hearings investigating the January 6th insurrection and, before then, the Supreme Court inadvertently signaled its intention to overturn Roe v. Wade. Radical conservative activists had also been waging a vitriolic campaign against teaching African American history and sought to ban books that examined the nation's legacy of white supremacy. Each of these occurrences was amplified by or directly influenced by the fascist-aspiring, white nationalist Trump administration elected only weeks after the museum had opened. Indeed, if America was committed to celebrating the lives, contributions, and history of its Black citizens, it had a peculiar way of showing its enthusiasm. Strange though it may seem, as I toured the museum, my thoughts turned to Henry Adams, the American historian of the late-nineteenth century whose reflections on the 1893 Chicago World's Fair have always resonated with me. After visiting the exposition, Adams sensed a peculiar disjunction with history, wondering if the image of modernity projected at the fair was "real or only apparent." Indeed, if "the new American world could take this sharp and conscious twist towards ideals," Adams pined [End Page 478] sardonically, "one's personal friends would come in, at last, as winners in the great American chariot-race for fame."1 I suspect Adams and I would have different views about which of our "personal friends" should be victorious, but, having recently completed a dissertation on Black doctors and civil rights advocacy, I had a few people in mind. Ben Carson was not one of them. Known as a pathbreaking neurosurgeon, Carson had an installation at the museum dedicated to his achievements. According to the display, he had overcome poverty and failing grades in his youth to attend college at Yale University and, later, obtain a medical degree. After serving as a resident at Johns Hopkins, Carson became the first Black practitioner to head its Division of Pediatric Neurosurgery and, later, gained international notoriety for performing multiple "unprecedented" operations to separate conjoined twins. In 2006, Carson received the NAACP's Spingarn Medal and, in 2008, a Presidential Medal of Freedom. Through his "Think Big" project, the exhibit explained, Carson offered himself as a role model promoting the benefits of education as a pathway to success for disadvantaged youth. Carson's exhibit seemed designed to affirm the potential for marginalized Black communities to lift themselves up by their bootstraps and achieve in the face of America's oppressive racial order. However, doing so required a very selective accounting. Nothing was said about Carson's failed attempt to secure the 2016 Republican presidential nomination or his subsequent support of the Trump administration and appointment as Secretary of Housing and Urban Development. The narrative was silent about his efforts to dismantle policies designed to prevent discrimination in housing and homeownership implemented during the Obama administration and made no mention of his actions during the COVID-19 pandemic, where he sought to undermine the very medical institutions he relied on throughout his career by promoting speculative remedies and sewing doubt about FDA approved vaccines.2 As a student of Susan Reverby and familiar with the trappings of the "Great Doctor" narrative, I found this portrait of Carson discouraging, to [End Page 479...