If you haven't seen Steven Spielberg's Lincoln, this post may contain a few spoilers (the 13th amendment passes in the end).
I thoroughly enjoyed this film, by and large. However, there was one issue in particular that disturbed me. At the end of the film, Thaddeus Stevens borrows the original copy of the 13th amendment and takes it home to his black housekeeper (and apparent girlfriend/wife), Lydia Hamilton Smith. Stevens then presents the amendment to his significant other, saying "for you, my dear." This scene patronizes African Americans: as opposed to presenting the 13th amendment as something that is morally correct and righteous, this scene presents the 13th amendment as a gift bestowed upon black society by the white establishment--the right of freedom is not presented as inalienable, but rather as a bestowal from white society. Perhaps knowingly, Spielberg falls into a trap. In presenting the 13th amendment in this way, Spielberg's film takes on a paternalistic tone in depicting freedom as a gift as opposed to a right. This concept harkens back the colonial era, embodied so eloquently in Rudyard Kipling's poem The White Man's Burden, in that Lincoln shows it to be the position of white society to give freedom and civilization to African Americans throughout the United States.
Spielberg falls into the trap which James Baldwin discusses in the early 1960s. Baldwin points out that legislation, while helpful, cannot change attitudes throughout America. Attitudes, Baldwin argues, cannot be changed through legislation, but rather through social change. Liberals in the early 1960s saw civil rights legislation as the way to cure racism throughout America. President Johnson certainly subscribed to this view. However, in viewing civil rights in this light, they themselves were falling into what Baldwin described as a "missionary complex," thus positioning white liberals in line with colonial ideology. This complex reinforces white paternalism in the United States, which for Baldwin renders white liberals as unsuitable allies in the struggle for civil rights. Civil rights cannot be brought about through law or gifted to a group of people, but rather through an understanding that certain rights are inherent and inalienable: African Americans had a right to freedom well before the passage of the 13th amendment. The paternalistic attitudes embodied in Lincoln render the 13th amendment near meaningless for the African American community, and frustrate the overall significance of the film.
richgibson.com/talktoteachers.htm
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AMFgoQ39KK0
http://books.google.com/books?id=DLh6el7R6yoC&pg=PA61&lpg=PA61&dq=james+baldwin+round+table+transcript&source=bl&ots=8zJ2scp6ke&sig=A2lihWqZeQTILdIqknvtzjSE9xg&hl=en&sa=X&ei=Cs5RUq_CMYXK9gSmsoHYBg&ved=0CFYQ6AEwBg#v=onepage&q=james%20baldwin%20round%20table%20transcript&f=false
I agree that the way "Lincoln" conveyed the final scene of the handing off of the amendment as a gift to his servant does exemplify and exude a paternalistic relationship between the ‘white man’ and Africans. However unsettling this image is to us now, I think that in context this display would not have been seen as so negative. Paternalism was a large reality of slavery. Masters would express ownership over slaves in this manner and it can even be seen in the concern a master would give a slave when he would be buying or selling it. It was indeed the ‘white man’s burden’ to give slaves (what they thought) was a better life. Just as the resentment and general negative attitudes toward Africans had not gone away with the passing of the amendment, some of this paternal instinct may have remained as well.
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