Nell Irvin Painter, a historian and author, talked about race, beauty and gender.
Coming off the trails of Martin Luther King Jr. Celebration week and protests surrounding national race issues, one historian continued the conversation on Monday night at Templeton-Blackburn Alumni Memorial Auditorium.
Nell Irvin Painter, a historian known primarily for her work revolving around southern American history of the nineteenth century, addressed a crowd as part of the Kennedy Lecture series.
Painter’s discussion was primarily focused on her 2010 book, The History of White People, which she described as a “visual book.” Both the book and her talk centered on why traditionally “light-skinned colored people” have been commonly referred to as Caucasian.
The conversation also turned to race and the idea of historically beautiful women.
“I think (these conversations around race) important to have because race is a part of America,” said Ayesha Hardison, an associate professor of African American literature.
Hardison said some people intentionally avoid talking about race, but there are some well-intentioned people who do not mean to deny the problems revolving around race relations.
“Some want to have these conversations but don’t want to say the wrong thing,” Hardison said. “It’s better to talk about them then not.”
Hardison said she also was a fan of Painter before the lecture.
Painter examined the history of the slave trade of Caucasian people and how the idea of racial pseudoscience came into biologically categorizing people.
One student, Lauren Oster, a junior studying exercise physiology, said she was required to attend the lecture as a part of her English class, in which she is reading To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee that covers racial issues.
Oster said she wanted to gain “a better understanding of different races, gender and how those come together.”
Some attended the event because they already had interest in the topic matter, while some came as a matter of coincidence.
“I’m from Cleveland and I belong to a group that deals with racial problems,” said Kate Greenfield, whose husband is teaching a class at the university.
Greenfield’s group is a church that does a lot to help racial issues in the Cleveland area. While she was going to come regardless of the subject, she was particularly interested in the racial matters because of her outreach work.
“These discussions are not taboo, Americans talk about them all the time and there’s a gigantic library of scholarly work, popular work, (and) commentary. … People have talked about it,” said Painter.
She said there are ebbs and flows to the amount of attention racial discussions received in mainstream society.
“It comes and goes, in the 1960s and ’70s there was a lot of discussion and that kind of subsided some,” Painter said. “This is one of the most important social issues in our country.”
The Kennedy Lecture Series was established in 1962 and is funded through an endowment from Ohio University alumni Edwin L. and Ruth Kennedy.
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