Testimonies, Nazis, Disney, and White Privilege

We Are Going to Make You Pay, Donald!

Testimonies is a new 5-College Publication that I picked up when over near Frary Hall. I have already written one post about it, but the food Testimonies is serving is just too tempting and so I've indulged myself once more. Ms. Jasmine Heim's article "Hail, White Privilege, Hail!"

She cites this post I wrote defending the school song, only to dismiss it. Note how she assumes that I'm ignorant of the minstrel stereotype. It's as if she's saying, "Oh, he couldn't possibly be intelligent if he thinks other than I do!" Ms. Heim writes that my defense of the song wasn't good enough.

Unfortunately, such simplistic questions and interpretations are common amongst too many individuals who are ignorant of the history of Blackface minstrelsy or simply do not care about the implications of this history.

She then cites this analogy that Nathan Fisher wrote on the comment section of this blog. He writes and she cites him approvingly.

If Claremont's Alma Mater was written by Nazi sympathizers and performed at the end of a benefit for Hitler would you really care that the song now means something different? Wouldn't knowing that--even if you didn't find out for half a century--affect what you thought of the song?

Ms. Heim hangs all of her arguments on this one analogy, as such that argument is easily dismissed once it is challenged.

Before I delve into exactly why that analogy is weak, I’d like to tell a short story, if my readers should permit me, which will do the trick much faster.

Eric Schlosser, author of Fast Food Nation and Reefer Madness, happens to be one of my favorite authors. Despite his politics, I find him an engaging read, if only because he makes nonfiction and historical research into literature. He has a way of uncovering new information that radically challenges preconceptions.

On p. 38 - 39 of Fast Food Nation, he did just that with me and Disneyland.

Schlosser writes,

In the mid-1950s Wernher von Braun cohosted and helped produce a series of Disney television shows on space exploration. “Man in Space” and other Tomorrowland episodes on the topic were enormously popular and fueled public support for an American space program. At the time, von Braun was the U.S. Army’s leading rocket scientist. He had served in the same capacity for the German army during World War II. He has been an early and enthusiastic member of the Nazi party, as well as a major in the SS. At least 20,000 slave laborers, many of them Allied prisoners of war, died at Dora-Nordhausen, the factory where von Braun’s rockets were built. Less than ten years after the liberation of Dora-Nordhausen, von Braun was giving orders to Disney animators and designing a ride at Disneyland called Rocket to the Moon. Heinz Haber, another key Tomorrowland adviser—and eventually the chief scientific consultant to Walt Disney Productions - spent much of World War II conducting research on high-speed, high-altitude flight for the Luffwaffe Instiute of Aviation Medicine. In order to assess the risks faced by German air force pilots, the institute performed experiments on hundreds of inmates at the Dachau concentration camp near Munich. The inmates who survived these experiments were usually killed and then dissected. Haber left Germany after the war and shared his knowledge of aviation medicine with the U.S. Army Air Force. He later cohosted Disney’s “Man in Space” with von Braun. When the Eisenhower administration asked Walt Disney to produce a show championing the civilian use of nuclear power, Heinz Haber was given the assignment. He hosted the Disney broadcast called “Our Friend the Atom” and wrote a popular children’s book with the same title, both of which made nuclear fission seem fun, instead of terrifying. “Our Friend the Atom” was sponsored by General Dynamics, a manufacturer of nuclear reactors. The company also financed the atomic submarine ride at Disneyland’s Tomorrowland.

Given this rather horrific history, I think it’s time that the Claremont Colleges ban Disney. They must begin the rounding up of all of its paraphernalia. I worthily sacrifice my Lion King pillowcase, nuclear energy, high-altitude flights, and all products that have come from N.A.S.A. (Yes, this includes tang.)

I shall, à la Don Quixote, take up my sword and fight against the nuclear missiles that guarded this country against the Evil Empire. No more nukes! Moreover, any countries that use nuclear power must apologize for their secular sin.

Jim Nauls sent out an email selling discount Disneyland tickets for a mere $62.00 a ticket! Doesn’t he know this evil history? He ought to be re-educated! And fast! How insensitive! How offensive!

Naturally, any who has attended Disneyland (or even Disneyworld is by proxy condoning that "problematic" past.)

If we ban Pomona's alma mater for its deeply racist, deeply offensive posts, then we ought to ban those trips immediately and recompense everyone!

I am, of course, being facetious. (I have nothing against Mr. Nauls, personally, though I think it rather silly that we have what amounts to a centrally-planning director of fun that metes out what activities we should be doing based upon his own predilections.)

But I would no more tear down the pyramids of Giza because they once were built from the backs of slaves (allegedly) than ban songs that allegedly promote “white privilege” (even though the music director said that the song's text isn''t racist at all.)

If this type of argumentation is what goes for reasoned discussion at Pomona, I cringe at the kind of graduates the college produced this past Sunday.