At 03:09 PM 8/25/98 -0500, you wrote:

>        Now, I know that to be as incorrect as saying that I could not
study women
>(academically, that is) because I am a man.  However, to a certain extent
>they were correct because there are definite limits to my ability to
>understand the female experience in American history.

But are those limits really limiting?  We all have common experiences that
we can use to bridge the gaps in understanding.  Granted it's not the same
as first-hand experiences but it does give us more understanding than
simply reading about what happened in a book or listening to a lecture on
it.  We really can't understand what it was like for most of history
because we don't live in the same conditions as our ancestors but we can
relate to how they must have felt through our own experiences.  As long as
we are willing to understand and make the effort to understand, I don't see
why we should be concerned about those "limits" in our experiences.

>        Leaping from there to jobs in African-American museums, I am simply
>agreeing with the original position to the extent that I don't really
>believe I, as an Anglo, could do justice to the subjects of A-A art, music,
>cultural experience, etc.  It was those students in that African-American
>history class that give me my first glimpse at that particular problem.
> Admittedly, it has not kept me from studying the Black or the female or
>the Asian, etc. experience in American History.  I would simply be hesitant
>to apply for a job running say, a Native American museum.

Why not?  Certainly if you are interested in the subject and try to broaden
your experiences why couldn't you do just as good of a job as someone who
was A-A or Native American?  Just because someone is of that ethinicity,
doesn't make them an automatic expert on the subject matter or the whole
"experience."  The A-A or Native American could have grown-up in
white-bread suburbia and never seen a reservation or gone to a juke joint
in their lives.  Yet the Anglo with the Ph.D. in Native American studies
could have grown up on a reservation with his missionary parents.

Now I'll agree that I think "ethnic" museums should probably be headed up
by someone of that ethnicity, but it shouldn't limit people who are of
other ethnicities from wanting to work in those insitutions or studying
those subjects.

Deb Fuller

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