Finding America: Race, Belonging, and Identity in the National Museum of African American History and Culture

• In Event: Voluntary Associations and Civil Society: Legacies of Systemic Inequality

Abstract

Patriotism and overall favorable sentiment towards the United States has weakened, revealing the diversity in national identity rather than a strict binary. Scholars have cited political polarization, war, economic crises, and cultural shifts as drivers of changes in perception. However, scholars very rarely consider how museums contribute to one's identification with the nation, despite their importance to building social cohesion in society. Although the federal administration has publicly attacked and undermined the value and the legitimacy of the Smithsonian Institution, the National Museum of African American History and Culture. NMAAHC still remains a federally funded effort to diversify the national narrative. As visitors to the museum, juggling these two realities on opposite sides of the political spectrum, NMAAHC emerges as a valuable site to study race, memory,and national belonging. This paper centers the perspectives of marginalized people in a study guided by one questions: How do visitors of the NMAAHC identify America within the NMAAHC or distance the NMAAHC from America? Drawing on 42 interviews with visitors to the NMAAHC, this project explores conceptions of America, the nuances of American identity, and group identification in the current political climate. Preliminary findings reveal a profound "mnemonic fracture." Visitors struggle to reconcile the NMAAHC as a fundamentally "American" institution, frequently perceiving a "backpedaling" of national liberal values evidenced by police brutality and state-sanctioned erasure. I argue that the reception of the mission and the Black liberatory aesthetics of the museum is undermined by the prevalence of white nationalism and censorship in society today.

Author

• Jamya Mishawna Robinson, University of Notre Dame