Reading historical documents allows a kind of time travel. While immersing ourselves in stories written decades ago is almost always fascinating, providing a deeper understanding of earlier eras, it can also be shocking. That’s especially the case when the vocabulary of the past has come to be seen as offensive today.
What to do in those situations? Our UnClass members have developed various strategies for ensuring that offensive content is always put in context for today’s readers. During our discussions of the issue, it was universally agreed that we should never alter evidence, but we also agreed that it’s important to consider what a given piece of evidence adds to a given project.
“Our goal is to highlight communities that have not been given the spotlight before, and receiving unfair treatment was a part of their experiences,” Emily Price notes. “I think that we can respectfully reveal the unfair treatment in a way that validates the difficult experiences that certain people in society experienced because of their religion, race, sexuality, gender identity, etc. at the time.”
The class agreed too that the statement drafted by the “Acting Like a Hower” UnClass last year encapsulated their own ideas about these issues, and they decided to follow it as well.
“’Round Howard Street” UnClass Statement Regarding Offensive Content
(Originally crafted by the “Acting Like a Hower” UnClass)
Language and images presented in some historical documents may follow incorrect and harmful stereotypes based on race, sexuality, gender identity, ethnicity and/or culture. Please read and review this blog with care.
We do not condone the use of this language and have taken into consideration whether the inclusion of every primary source is necessary for telling each particular story. Such sources may be offensive and do not reflect the class’s viewpoint, but rather the social attitudes and circumstances of the period or place in which it was created.
We are constantly working on how to properly and respectfully address offensive and harmful language, so we encourage users to provide feedback to help us tackle this issue.
We are grateful to Katie Sable, Hannah Kemp-Severance, Institute for Human Science and Culture Director Dr. Jodi Kearns, and The Cummings Center‘s Dr. Jennifer Bazar and Archival Assistant Tony Pankuch for their earlier work on this statement.
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