How to hide a painting
This week’s question comes to us anonymously:
Has it always been this bad or is the bad stuff just more exposed now?
A while back, my friend Anil Dash tweeted (skeeted? posted? I can’t keep up and I don’t really care) that Happy Days, a very popular TV show that some of us grew up watching as kids, was set in the Jim Crow era. This is, of course, correct. Happy days.
So while Ralph and Potsie were trying to get to second base at the sock hop in a Wisconsin high school, Emmett Till was being beated, shot, mutilated and lynched in Mississippi.
While Joanie was loving Chachi, Black homes and churches in Montgomery, Alabama were being firebombed in retaliation for a bus boycott initiated by Black people wanting to ride the bus with the same dignity as their white neighbors.
While Richie Cunningham was sharing a malt with Cindy at Al’s, Ruby Bridges, a little 6-year-old Black girl, had to pass through a gauntlet of screaming violent white neighbors to get to school.
It was only ever happy days for some.
In fact, Pat Morita, who played the owner of the diner where those happy white kids hung out, and went by the name “Albert” (the character’s actual name was Matsuo Takahashi), spent his teenage years in a Japanese Internment camp during WW2. He was born in Isleton, California.
Across the dial on another show, it’s worth remembering that not even the alabaster-skinned and platinum blonde Carol Brady was allowed to have a credit card in her own name unless it was co-signed by her husband Mike Brady, an architect who couldn’t properly design a bathroom-to-bedroom ratio. Mike Brady, by the way, was played by Robert Reed, a gay man who had to remain closeted in order to have a career, and died of AIDS in 1992.
It was only ever happy days for some.
I grew up a fat little immigrant kid in the 70s and I didn’t just watch this shit on TV, I inhaled it. Sitting as close as I could to a cathode-ray television tube until I was immersed in it, hoping that the happy days inside the tube were more real than the unhappy days outside the tube. I craved the story that America was selling about itself, and America has always been very good at selling a particular story about itself. As far as I was concerned, the America I was learning about on TV was the true America. Eight years of Catholic school did precious little to disturb that myth, and introduced new myths. I even had the proverbial high school history teacher who taught us that “well, actually…” the Civil War was fought over states rights. This was in Philadelphia.
The strangest word in the racist dogwhistle phrase “make America great again” has always been “again.” It begs two questions. Exactly when was it great before, and who was it great for? My guess is that the Americans who wear that phrase on their little red hats have the answer to both.
In November of 2022, Erika and I drove to Los Angeles. We were two years into a pandemic that everyone hesitates to talk about now, and just wanted to get out of town. We ended up at LACMA, wandering through an exhibition called Black American Portraits when a particular painting caught my eye. It was a portrait of Thomas Jefferson, painted in a realistic style that resembled the type of picture of Thomas Jefferson that decorates classrooms across the country, sometimes paired with Washington and Lincoln, especially around Presidents’ Day. Except this particular portrait of Thomas Jefferson appeared to be coming loose from its frame, revealing another painting behind it. A hidden painting that you maybe weren’t supposed to see. A painting of a Black woman in the middle of taking a bath. She is staring directly at the viewer. She appears irritated, but not shocked, that you are interrupting her in a private moment. She is, of course, Sally Hemings.
The painting is by Titus Kaphar, and titled Behind the Myth of Benevolence.
We did actually learn about Sally Hemings in school. But as the title of the painting suggests, we learned about her in a way that made Thomas Jefferson seem like a benevolent white man. An accidental slave-owner, even. It was the style of the time. Peer pressure got to him, like when you got frosted tips in the 90s. We were told he was so good to his slaves that he even desired them. He laid down with them. He loved Sally most of all! He gave her children! Very open-minded for his time.
These must’ve been happy days for Tom and Sally.
To be clear: Sally Hemings was an enslaved human being who was raped over and over and over by a man who felt like it was his right to own, and force himself upon, other human beings. His rapes resulted in the birth of six children (that we know of), all of whom remained enslaved, did not carry his name, and whose lines did not benefit from generational wealth. Thomas Jefferson, father of our country, did not give Sally Hemings children. He raped her in order to make more property for himself.
There is a second painting worth mentioning today. The Declaration of Independence, painted in 1818 by Thomas Trumbull, which hangs in the Capitol Rotunda. There’s glimpses of it in some of the photos from the January 6 insurrection! Honestly, it’s not a great painting. Pedestrian at best. The kind of painting that’s meant to record a moment more than it was ever meant to actually be a good painting. In this particular case, it’s recording the heroic poses of the forty-seven white men who signed the Declaration of Independence in 1776 and kick-started America. These are the men we refer to when we refer to The Founding Fathers™. Thirty-four of those forty-seven men enslaved other human beings. It’s fair to assume that all thirty-four of those men, who were willing to see people as property, were also willing—like Jefferson—to use property to incubate more property.
To answer the first part of your question, yes, it has always been this bad. America was born in blood, genocide, kidnapping, and death. Behind every story we were told about America’s greatness, there is a secret second painting. A thing America doesn’t want you to see. Behind every “from sea to shining sea” there is a Trail of Tears. Behind every first pitch at Dodger Stadium there’s the destruction of Chavez Ravine. Behind every moonshot there’s a Nazi V2 rocket. Behind every “liberation of the camps” there’s a Nakba. Behind every interstate highway system there’s the destruction of a thousand Black and immigrant neighborhoods.
Otherwise the “Make America Great Again” crowd would be doing everything in their power to highlight every moment of American history. They’d be asking every American to tell their story. They’d be telling the world about all the amazing things we did. Shouting all the moments that made America great rooftops.
Tell us about those happy days!
Instead, of course, they are doing everything they can to ban our books, and silence our voices, and hide the true paintings behind the paintings. Lest one of us go digging through a history book, encounter a photo of Ruby Bridges trying to get into school, and spot our own grandmother holding a sign calling a little 6-year-old girl the n-word.
To answer the second part of your question: is the bad stuff just more exposed now? Maybe. Probably. It’s certainly the shit that’s getting the most light pointed at it. But that just means you have to look a little deeper. They will tell you a story. America is good at telling stories. But look behind what they’re telling you. The truth really never disappears, especially if you keep telling it. Sometimes, the real painting—the real story—is behind the painting they’re trying to show you.
You just need to pull back their shit to get to our truth.
🖐️ Got a question? Ask it, and I will try to answer it if I can.
🔥 We had an excellent Saturday afternoon protesting at the local Tesla dealership today. Make a sign! Bring donuts! Make friends! Find out if there’s one in your area.
📣 There’s a few spots open in next week’s Presenting with Confidence workshop. Sign up! We’ll have fun.
🍉 The ceasefire is a lie. Palestinian children need your support.
🚰 If you are enjoying this newsletter, let me know. It makes my day.