Blunt Instruments: Recognizing Racist Cultural Infrastructure in Memorials, Museums, and Patriotic Practices

by Kristin Ann Hass, Nadia Marshall (Reader)

Cultural infrastructure has been designed to maintain structures of inequality, and while it doesn't seem to be explicitly about race, it often is. This book helps listeners identify, contextualize, and name elements of our everyday landscapes and cultural practices that are designed to seem benign or natural but which, in fact, work tirelessly to tell us vital stories about who we are, how we came to be, and who belongs. Examining landmark moments such as the erection of the first American museum and Colin Kaepernick's kneeling pledge of allegiance, historian Kristin Hass explores the complicated histories of sites of cultural infrastructure, such as the · the American Museum of Natural History · the Bridge to Freedom in Selma · the Washington Monument · Mount Auburn Cemetery · Kehinde Wiley's 2019 sculpture Rumors of War · the Victory Highway · the Alamo Cenotaph With sharp analysis and a broad lens, Hass makes the undeniable case that understanding what cultural infrastructure is, and the deep and broad impact that it has, is essential to understanding how structures of inequity are maintained and how they might be dismantled.

Genres: History, Nonfiction, Politics, Museums, Race, Audiobook, American History

Audio CD

First published January 24, 2023

About the author

Kristin Ann Hass is a Professor in the Department of American Culture and Faculty Coordinator of the Humanities Collaboratory at the University of Michigan. She lectures, teaches, and writes about nationalism, memory, publics, memorialization, militarization, race, visual culture, and material culture studies.

She has written three books. Blunt Instruments: Recognizing Racist Infrastructure in Memorials, Museums and Patriotic Practices helps readers to identify, classify and name elements of our everyday landscapes and cultural practices that are designed to seem benign or natural but which, in fact, work to maintain powerful structures of inequity. Sacrificing Soldiers on the National Mall is a study of militarism, race, war memorials and U.S. nationalism and Carried to the Wall: American Memory and the Vietnam Veterans Memorial is an exploration of public memorial practices, material culture studies and the legacies of the Vietnam War.

Hass is also the editor of Being Human During COVID. Over the course of the pandemic, the questions that occupy the humanities have become shared life-or-death questions about how human societies work and how culture determines our collective fate. The contributors in this collection draw on scholarly expertise and lived experience to try to make sense of the unfamiliar present.

Hass holds a Ph.D. in American studies and has worked in several historical museums, including the National Museum of American History. She was also the co-founder and Associate Director of Imagining America: Artists and Scholars in Public Life, a national consortium of educators and activists dedicated to campus-community collaborations.

Reviews

[Melissa · Rating 5 out of 5]

I read this as a complement to Controversial Monuments and Memorials, a publication from the American Association for State and Local History, which covers some similar ground, but Blunt Instruments was published both post-2020 and offers an "outsiders" perspective. I mean that in the sense that Controversial M & Ms was largely contributed to by historians and public history professionals, whereas Hass is a scholar of American Culture, and as her section on museums demonstrates, she is better positioned maybe to take a more critical look at some of the institutions (and assumptions) that public historians and museum workers have more difficulty seeing due to how close they're standing to the subject, if you will. Fwiw as someone who works at a history museum, I found her section on museums both fair and illuminating. Some of it I was familiar with, but there was also a fair bit that I wasn't.

My main criticism is that for a book that strives to make the subtleties (that wield incredible power and influence) of cultural infrastructure legible to a more general public, it reads very much as something written by someone who works in academia. While Hass is certainly not afraid to state an opinion, the writing itself often drags compared to general nonfic, and while I think her point with the series of questions and answers at the end of each chapter section is to establish a working framework, it also felt a bit like filling out a worksheet together, where she just *extra* wants to make sure we got the point of the lesson - pardon, chapter section - that she just finished.

[Sarah · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is an interesting topic, but the style is kind of weird. It reads like a college paper where the author is repetitively tying everything back to the thesis.

Anyway... I picked this up because of the removal of the Philip Schuyler statue in Albany, NY. I didn't feel too informed about the issue. The main takeaways for me are that many of these memorials, especially war memorials, were built well after the event or person's lifetime, and represent the era in which they were built rather than the era in which they memorialize.

I've also been more mindful of art & history museums in the past few years as folks have started talking about the origin of some of the artifacts. The book also discusses how these types of museums are not neutral; they always have a point of view that can be surmised by the layout of the museum, the era in which is was built, and the architecture of the building, among other clues.

The last section was about patriotic practices, namely the Pledge of Allegiance and the Star-Spangled Banner. All I will say is that I'm glad I'm not in school anymore!

[Denise B · Rating 5 out of 5]

Idk if this is an overstatement, but ALL AMERICANS SHOULD READ THIS.

[Christy Lou · Rating 4 out of 5]

Information is a 5, written like a thesis paper

[Zachary]

In this book, Prof. Hass argues that "cultural infrastructure," particularly memorials & monuments, museums, and patriotic practices are all tools used by various individuals, groups, or governments to shape the culture in various ways. Hass examines the use of these tools over time, considering who was responsible for them, what their viewpoint was, how that view was presented, etc. Many, intentionally or incidentally, upheld and promoted white supremacists ideas and messages. I think this book overall does a good job at presenting the evidence and makes a convincing argument

If I had a complaint with the book, it is that Hass seemed intent on arguing that all the evidence supports her argument. Although I do generally agree that her argument is correct, I thought that some points were a stretch that hurt the book.

That said, this book points out a lot that should be considered as we view the manmade creations around us and I think this book would be valuable to anyone interested in how cultural infrastructure has developed over time or those wanting to understand the message things like monuments a museums communicate.

[Laura · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5 stars. Bass is a typical cultural historian in that it’s often difficult to read them because they tend to be very wordy and they tend to twist their narratives to support their theses. At least that’s what I found during my graduate work in American History. The writing is often convoluted and takes much liberty and leaps and bounds.

For example, she writes how memorial highways maintain structures of inequity. She does write about Black neighborhoods and business districts which were destroyed for the highways, but she really focuses on the naming of the highways as a “blunt instrument” of racist infrastructure. She even states, “Again, this may seem like a leap…” So she’s aware of her leaps and even uses the word “again.”

I felt like she just overall trashes museums in general. “A brief walk through the early history of museums make clear that while some of the big claims this chapter makes about museums - that they are part of a system of racist cultural infrastructure, for example - may seem incendiary or very much of the moment of racial reckoning in 2022 evidence for these claims about race and power is quite simply everywhere in the DNA of America museums.” Yikes. What a generalization. “The massing of fortunes based on exploration of all forms is very deep in the history of museums wealth built by pillaging, was organized and displayed to enable an argument about the superiority of the pillager over the pillaged. This may seem too blunt or like a crash overgeneralization, but in fact, it is a fundamental fact of modern museums. Certainly, this is the history of museums in the United States in Europe, and it carries a logic with a long shadow, this logic continues to impact museums and how they work in the culture. It is this logic that gives them their power as blunt instruments of a racist, cultural infrastructure.” I’m not saying this doesn’t exist, but if you only were to read this book you’d think it is all that does exist. Personally, I think she overstates the importance of the “look” of museums and their architecture as well.

She did present valid points, but they were overshadowed by her overall generalizations. For example, she cites a study by the Guerrilla Girls which found that less than 5% of the artists in the Modern Art section at the Met Museum are women. Also, I was shocked to read about the renaming of the National Museum of American History for the man who donated 80 million dollars (he’s a mall developer) and the exhibit which was his brainchild, The Price of Freedom (something Hass later calls “paid patriotism”). She does also credit some more recent exhibitions and praises new museums like the African American Museum. And I enjoyed her narrative about the origins of the Pledge of Allegiance and the timeline of it from its inception for the Worlds Fair in 1893 to its forced usage of today. Also, I was completely shocked to learn the Department of Defense pays the NFL and other sports organizations to hold veteran recognitions, Military Appreciation Nights, the unfurling of field-sized flags, and other “paid patriotism” events.

It seems she should’ve stuck with the history of museums rather than a blanket condemnation of museums. I have a friend, a well-respected professor and scientists (and TED talker), who is an ichthyologist, who credits his career choice to the Museum of Natural History because he spent so much of his childhood there. And he’s not white and he’s the child of immigrants. But she is very dismissive of that museum. She does not mention the many smaller, local museums scattered throughout the country which do not fit her argument. The Laura Plantation, in Louisiana about an hours’ drive from me, does a great job of telling the enslaved story. As does the West Baton Rouge Museum. There are so many good museums which tell the story of many diverse Americans.

[Scott Martin · Rating 3 out of 5]

(Audiobook) (3.5 stars)History can be in the eyes of the beholder. One persons monument is another person's symbol of oppression. Given recent events in America and the emphasis on the motives, reasons and impacts of memorials and other ways to remember the past, there is increased literature about the subject. Enter this work, which looks at the backstory of many of the memorials and other ways that America celebrates and remembers. As the title suggests, Hass hits at the racial motivations and backgrounds for much of the monuments/memorials out there.

Starting with the Civil War and the Confederate memorials, Hass takes the reader through a survey of American history and how America used those devices to convey not just a memory, but a perception of what people wanted others to remember and take away from the past. The various organizations that funded and advocated for those memorials had agendas that many would not agree with, and the author is no exception. From there, it is on to the role of museums and how they also contributed to the racial identity of America, or the perception of that identity. The work ends on a rant about the NFL and its hypocrisy on the National Anthem and Colin Kapernick. The death of George Floyd is also seen as a major moment in how Americans reevaluate how it honors and remembers the past.

Overall, the work is straightforward with its perspectives and conclusions. The work is written much like a scholarly paper, with the writing not quite as dry as a purely academic text. There will those who will take issue with the premise of this work and no doubt, you may have trouble finding this work in some libraries. However, it is worth the time to read/listen. A lot of times, there is far more conveyed in a memorial/museum/ritual that is shown at the surface.

[Jim Collett · Rating 5 out of 5]

I feel fortunate in winning a free copy of this book. (I should add I only sign up for books I think I actually want to read). I found this fascinating and, I have to say, disturbing reading. Hass lays out a detailed case that all three of these pieces of cultural infrastructure have been used throughout our history to support arguments for racial inequality. She analyzes each of these through the lens of six principles and six key questions in different time periods. Much of her point can be made with the sixth principle. These things "are not neutral. Ever." She builds her case with a great deal of detail of specific examples and points.
The book begins and ends with the case of Colin Kaepernick and, I do not think anyone who reads this book with an open mind, can avoid coming away with a far more in-depth view of that story. Hass makes on bones about writing this book as an advocacy case. She closes by defining it as "a tool" to help readers better see and understand her point.
While the book is written in a detailed, well-footnoted manner, Hass does regularly engage a conversational tone (in frequent asides to the reader, some as reference to earlier points, some as somewhat rhetorical questions). That might bother some readers. I actually enjoyed seeing her passion so clearly displayed.
I have to admit as someone who works as a volunteer with a small local museum, I struggled most with her argument there. However, if I am honest, I know she makes a good case, even for our little museum.
I think this book could infuriate some readers which, of course, would only prove her point.
I recommend this book for those with the courage to read it.

[Carianne Carleo-Evangelist · Rating 4 out of 5]

I really enjoyed this book, which Hass broke up into monuments, memorials, museums and regular patriotic practices and how each of these has and continues to contribute to issues of white supremacy in the United States. This was particularly strong with her bookending the book with stories about and the role of Colin Kapernick. A primary tenet was how none of the elements, whether physical buildings or practices, are neutral which she underscored throughout with history lessons and when and by whom they were created, and what that meant. She also included a look about how american museums evolved, not only in construction but also within their collections. She also went into an in-depth exploration of the revenues the NFL received from the National Guard et al and how that might have affected their treatment of the kneeling. She also explored the intersecting levels of history and people, especially why the Montpelier plantation is interpreted differently than plantations such as Mount Vernon, and the broader meaning of statues such as Silent Sam. An excellent listen that's simultaneously in depth and a good overview of the issues.

[Man Ha · Rating 5 out of 5]

A great point of view from the historian explains all the art, culture, monuments, and museum with the real meaning and messages behind that symbol. At the same time, the message to the next generation about culture, diversity, and equality matters in the future. It will matter and affect the children's environment during their schooling and the society where they grow up.

Another great point is about the actions of athletes or politicians on social media, such as Kaepernick or Ozil. When fighting for the people's voice, their careers went down due to politics while they tried to voice their concerns to the nation. Even though some businesses avoid political topics, expressing concern about equality matters to human society perspectives. Those actions will not impact much on the operation of the company, but they awaken the realization of what action people need to take for future generations.

[Bee (Meribiaa) · Rating 4 out of 5]

Mostly focused on the US, but applicable to Canada, it traces the origins and motivations of memorials, museums, and patriotic practices, and how they’re inseparable from the racist societies and impulses that existed in those eras. These objects of cultural infrastructure not only remind of us of a racist past, but help perpetuate a racist present day.

Hass constructs a timeline of the origins and motivations of these pieces of cultural infrastructure and links to them to the anxieties, political movements, tensions, and goals of the eras that they were created in. Often created decades or more after the event, they’re not simple memorials to help the grieving, but pointed messages being made by those with an agenda.

Finally, she writes about the pushback in recent decades and where things might go from here.

Detailed, eye opening, and readable, it can be a bit repetitive but this helps things stick out.

[Ruchi · Rating 5 out of 5]

Easily one of my favourite books of the year and ever, if not for the wildly interesting and important subject matter but the way of connecting sharp academic based insight with history, politics, art, archival studies, cultural and critical theory…an interdisciplinary and analytical dream of a book. Accessible and compelling.

[Jess · Rating 4 out of 5]

Interesting examination of how memorials, museums, and patriotic practices seek to assert the dominant culture. More work needs to be done towards removing racist imagery and embracing inclusion.

[kalei · Rating 4 out of 5]

I listened to the audio book- if you want to learn about "recognizing racist cultural infrastructure" you will probably like this book.

[Tiffany Bridges · Rating 5 out of 5]

Historical. Brought a lot of things to my attention that I hadn't previously thought about.

[Vance · Rating 4 out of 5]

3.75, I liked the second half of the book much better than the first half.

[Tom Griffiths · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book has a lot to say. It takes a large topic and breaks otninto bite sized digestible chunks. It is not perfect, but it is good.