Stupid White Female Professor says: monuments to American pioneers reinforce white supremacy

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Some art must be read ‘carefully’ to see ‘cultural biases coming through,’ U. North Dakota professor says

A University of North Dakota history professor who studies the American West believes monuments depicting the pioneers “reinforce white supremacy.”

In an interview this week with KJZZ Phoenix, Cynthia Prescott (pictured) discussed her research on pioneer monuments, including a book that argues the artwork promotes “white cultural superiority” and “gender stereotypes.”

Much like with Confederate monuments, the professor said America should re-examine artwork honoring American settlers.

“A lot of people have talked about Confederate monuments in particular, as being monuments that were put up in the late 19th, early 20th centuries for the purpose of enshrining a racial hierarchy. And through my work, I argue that Western pioneer monuments were doing very similar cultural work,” she told KJZZ.

Prescott, who chairs the History and American Indian Studies Department, said the purpose of pioneer monuments was “to reinforce white supremacy over peoples of color.”

“And they, in particular, were addressing so-called white civilization in contrast to native ‘savagery’, and seeing whites as being superior to the indigenous peoples they were displacing in the American West,” she said.

A few of the statues have been taken down, but many more exist, she said.

“So for example, there was one in San Francisco that depicted a Spanish missionary towering over a seated Native man who seems to be in a very submissive position. And that image was very problematic to a number of people, and the city chose to remove that portion of that monument in 2018,” she said.

In some cases, however, she said the problems with such monuments may be subtle and their purpose must be read “carefully” in order to see the “cultural biases coming through.”

Such is the case with the 1990 statue “Spirit of the Frontier” in Prescott, Arizona, she said.

“The artist’s intention, as best I’ve been able to uncover from written records, indicates that she really intended this to be a positive depiction of both white settlers and the Yavapai people …” Prescott said.

“However, if you look closely, … the pioneer mother is gazing forward, kind of preparing to move forward into the future. She and her young son, and there’s a wagon wheel behind them, again, reinforcing this notion of progress and moving forward, moving westward.

“In contrast, the Yavapai woman is depicted gazing downward at the baby in her arms, which makes her look less engaged in the future,” the professor said.

At the University of North Dakota, Prescott’s primary research focus is “gender in the American West,” according to her biography.

She also is developing a “Reacting to the Past” role-playing classroom game to prompt students to think about “whether to preserve, relocate, or remove San Francisco’s controversial Pioneer Monument, and how to reinterpret that monument,” her biography states.

The pioneer monuments join a long list of things academics have labeled as racist in recent years.

The College Fix recently published a list of 103 things higher education institutions declared as racist, including Dolly Parton’s free book program, evolutionary biology, and milk.

Source: https://www.thecollegefix.com/professor-says-monuments-to-american-pioneers-reinforce-white-supremacy/