Couple Quarrels Over Piece Of America's Shameful Past

[conuly]

DEAR ABBY: I am a Hispanic-American woman who has been married to my husband for three years. He was born and raised in North Carolina. He's a wonderful person. We both share a passion for antiques, and we love researching and learning about the past. My husband is white, and he grew up in times of segregation. He feels comfortable sharing and showing stuff from that time.

A year ago, we watched the movie "Green Book" about the travel guide published from 1936 to 1966 for African American travelers to use when discrimination was widespread. After that, he became obsessed about buying a copy of an actual Green Book and, regardless of my concerns, he did.

We recently bought a Victorian house built in 1900 and have been excited about renovating it and keeping it as close as possible to the original style. We have also enjoyed buying antique furniture to recreate that time in our home.

My husband bought an old wall phone and hung the Green Book on it. I expressed to him how uncomfortable this makes me, but he insisted on hanging it in the sitting room. When one of my friends comes over, I try to hide the book, but my husband finds it and hangs it back on the phone.

I wasn't born in America, but I am a naturalized citizen and familiar with the sad period of segregation the book represents. What do you think about this? Am I too sensitive to the issue? Should I just take the book and place it in the trash? -- OFFENDED IN THE SOUTH

DEAR OFFENDED: What is your husband's motivation for having and displaying the book? He may be a wonderful man, but he is insensitive to your feelings. Because you have already told him how uncomfortable it makes you, it is beyond inconsiderate that he would hang the Green Book in your shared sitting room.

Resist the urge to destroy it, but when friends come over and inquire about the book that is so prominently displayed, don't hesitate to tell them -- in plain, unvarnished language -- how you feel about it. You are entitled to your feelings.

https://www.arcamax.com/healthandspirit/lifeadvice/dearabby/s-2843449

Comments

[lilysea]

As a white Australian I am by no means an expert on race and racism in the US but this makes me feel very uncomfortable...

It would be very very different if the husband was Black,

but because the husband is white, it feels like

a) he's treating an artefact of painful history as a decor object; or

b) he's acting like he's nostalgic for a more racist past; or

c) he wants to get cookies for how enlightened he is; or

d) he thinks his desire to show how much he liked the film The Green Book is more important than any harm having the book there might cause any Black friends who visit.

[conuly]

It's certainly a weird choice! And if Husband had written in I'd tell him to stop being so freaking weird and keep his historical curiosities in his study or den, like everybody else does with their hobbies, and also in the appropriate context - books go on shelves, not on the wall. And I'd certainly spell out all the reasons you did for why it looks inappropriately weird rather than just weirdly weird.

But it's a weird and possibly offensive choice that cannot be handled by throwing it out or by dragging friends into the middle of this dispute.

[cora]

e) He is trying to show "I don't call the cops on black people" in the weirdest way possible.
f) he is at the beginning of his anti-racism journey and is being embarrassingly European American about the whole thing

If it's F, there are plenty of much better book he could have chosen. A few examples: The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness by Michelle Alexander, Stamped from the Beginning: The Definitive History of Racist Ideas in America by Ibrim X Kendi, Uncomfortable Conversations with a Black Man by Emmanuel Acho (this one is a favourite of a lot of performative coworkers of mine, Why Are All the Black Kids Sitting Together in the Cafeteria?: And Other Conversations About Race by Beverly Daniel Tatum.

I also don't know that the green book itself is offensive so much as the portrayal in the film. "We did this really atrocious thing to you/your culture - so we're just going to not talk about it out of 'respect'" is something mainstream American culture does all the time. It seems like LW is trying to continue this tradition, while husband is trying to figure out "how do we talk about very real, very hard things the Manifest Destiny/Capitalism culture has done to other cultures?"

Either way, whether the decor is or isn't racist is pretty irrelevant for LW & spouse. They're really having an issue that boils down to respect for each other and ability to compromise. Why does husband feel it is appropriate to have a piece of decor his wife hates so much in a shared space? Why is he unwilling to either compromise (it goes into a room that isn't necessarily a shared space or isn't occupied by everyone as much such as the kitchen, den, study, bonus room, etc) or just get rid of the decor piece? Why does he feel that his opinions on this piece of decor are more important than LWs? When would it be okay for LW's feelings about decor to override her husband's?

[cimorene]

Why does husband feel it is appropriate to have a piece of decor his wife hates so much in a shared space?

This.

[conuly]

That letter did not go where I thought it would at all! It was such a swerve from what I expected at the end of the first paragraph that it actually took me a couple of re-reads to recalibrate my thoughts.

And now that I've done that, this is what I think:

1. There is almost never a good reason to throw out another adult person's possessions without their permission. "I don't like this on my wall" is certainly not the very rare case when it might be called for - indeed, I'd go so far as to say that this is abusive behavior. I don't care how irritated you are, if you've gotten to the point where you're discussing this like it's a rational option, you've gone too far.

2. What's conspicuously missing from this letter is reasons. We know that Husband feels strongly about having this book on his wall. We know that LW feels equally strongly about not having it there, and considers it offensive.

But at no point did LW tell us why either of them feels this way. And this is important context! Important context that LW apparently doesn't feel Abby needs, so... did she feel Husband needs it? Or did she just say "I don't like it" and expect him to fill in the blanks? And on the flipside, did he explain his feelings, or did he just say "I want it, and it's my house" and expect her to go along with it? Is there communication happening?

3. Resist the urge to destroy it, but when friends come over and inquire about the book that is so prominently displayed, don't hesitate to tell them -- in plain, unvarnished language -- how you feel about it. You are entitled to your feelings.

She's entitled to her feelings, and she may even be correct, but that doesn't make it okay to drag guests into the middle of her marital dispute. Don't do this. Just don't. That's not punishing Husband, that's punishing your friends and family, who genuinely don't want this.

4. I have no idea whether or not this is offensive or not. I certainly think it's an odd choice of decor for a white man with no connection to explain why he feels so strongly about it, but I don't know whether or not it's offensive. I'm offering no opinion on that.

[lilysea]

There is almost never a good reason to throw out another adult person's possessions without their permission

Yes, if I think "what is a reasonable reason to throw out someone else's stuff without asking them for permission beforehand?" I come up with off the top of my head

a) the stuff is actively hazardous in some way - mould, asbestos, food poisoning bacteria, radioactive, smallpox

b) you're flushing drugs before a police raid to avoid the person whose drugs they are getting arrested

c) you're disposing of incriminating political leaflets/books before an imminent police raid if you live in a country where "women should have the right to vote/not wear a hijab" can get you arrested or jailed

d) as c, but for abortion access/abortion rights before an imminent police raid

e) you don't live with them anymore, and you've said "please collect your stuff within 30 days/60 days/90 days or I will throw it away" and despite repeated reminders, they have not collected their stuff and they don't have a reason (like eg being in hospital) for not collecting their stuff

[ashbet]

1) This comes off as a microaggression (possibly macro!) toward guests of color, and, more importantly, an ugly and unkind way to treat his wife (an immigrant and potentially a WOC, “Hispanic” is less descriptive of race than of cultural origin.)

2) I would LOVE to hear this guy’s reasoning.

3) If something racialized made my partner uncomfortable to this extent, I WOULDN’T FUCKING DO IT (particularly since he’s the one with maximum privilege here.)

This whole thing feels gross and performative on his part, and there’s no really benevolent motivation that I can think of — he’s either trying for a “wokeness” cookie, or glamorizing the Jim Crow era.

Since the entire point of the Green Book was to tell Black people where they could travel without being MURDERED, having it out when guests of color are visiting is tone-deaf at best, malicious/menacing at worst.

I promise, there are ways to decorate an older house that don’t require memorabilia of horrific racism to be “period.”

[minoanmiss]

Ughghgh that fucking movie

Why does the husband want to display a trophy of a more racist past? That’s my question about him. Hanging it on the phone makes its diorama and this one doesn’t feel educational.

But more importantly for LW. She asked her husband not to do something he could easily have done and he just refused. How many times have we seen that pattern? Ugh.

[ashbet]

I also get the “trophy” vibe from the display with the phone (versus putting it on a shelf with other books.)

[oursin]

Yes, this is really, really weird. Okay, in terms of Awful Racist Memorabilia there is a lot worse he could be having and displaying but it's a really odd thing to be doing. Hanging by the phone doesn't seem particularly appropriate anyway?

[ethelmay]

Yeah, I could certainly be wrong here, but if I saw something like that in a bookcase, or in a display near a bookcase, especially if it was with a bunch of literature and history by Black people, it would not perturb me especially. Putting it by the phone is really odd, and as everyone has said, insisting on doing something that really upsets your spouse when you don't seem to have any good reason to, that's the worst.

[minoanmiss]

Actually, putting it by the phone is part of what gives me a weird vibe about this, because that's how it was used -- people would call places listed to 1) make sure they were still operational and 2) make reservations, etc. I'm not quite sure how to explain the message I'm getting from his Action Diorama but it's not a good one.

[cimorene]

It's like cosplaying his Victorian house as if it's inhabited by Jim Crow-era Black people, but like... why? Why is it your place to cosplay that??

If there were a real historical link - if he were preserving memorabilia from the family that had owned the house for example - this race issue would be somewhat alleviated. If there were ANY connection beyond the fact that the house was already in existence when the book was published, that would at least make it more understandable, though still awkward. In the absence of that it's so weird that it's actually alarming: nobody is sure if it's meant as performative anti-racism or as a threat! Which is the opposite of the effect you would want of you were after cookies, obviously, so if that's what's behind it he must have amazingly bad judgement.

[minoanmiss]

Yes this so much this!

This discussion had me interrogating my own reaction, not least because I recently wrote an entry about disgust and politics, but I don’t find this situation disgusting but * worrisome *. I am not getting any positive messages out of his actions here.

Sent from my iPhone

[melannen]

I can see someone thinking that if their house is cosplaying The Racist Past, then it's obligatory on them to somehow *acknowledge* that racist past, and not just whitewash over it as if there was never a problem. I'm not saying I agree with that - it's a complicated question, I'm not really sure what my position is on that tbh - but I can definitely understand somebody coming to the conclusion that this is something they need to do morally. And I can also see, having decided that, thinking that something like the Green Book, which is at least sort of conceptually about allowing Black people to feel safe in the kind of spaces they're LARPing, is a good way to do that. Which, again, I don't know that I agree, but I can see how you would think that, and something like a Green Book is definitely a better option than most of the more obvious vintage ways to acknowledge period racism in your decor.

(and if the underlying disagreement is that Husband doesn't want to whitewash over segregation in their historical project, and LW thinks being reminded of racism when studying history is uncomfortable, I don't think I want LW on my side.)

(but also a Green Book is not even slightly Victorian. Get a shelf of vintage W.E.B. du Bois books or something, many of which were deliberately marketed to white folks too.)

[cimorene]

Okay, I can follow that logic. Maybe that is what's going on in his mind.

[movingfinger]

With no context other than "here's a book of addresses that black people used to be safe" for his display, he certainly does come off racist. If he has a lawn jockey, he's definitely racist and his spouse knows it. If he collects old guidebooks and triptiks, he should put it with those. If he's just being an asshole and winding up his spouse, well, there are ways to cope with that.

If he's actually interested in the period and culture, he can find more memorabilia, put together an educational selection, and donate it appropriately.

(I collect old guidebooks; if I ran across something like this, I'd consider it in that context, but I'd probably leave it for someone for whom it would be more resonant.)