The blackness of time travelling
So the internet - or at least the geekier portions of it - has been happily buzzing over the rumours-now-confirmed that the exceedingly hot Paterson Joseph has been cast as the next Doctor Who, apparently solely to ensure that kellirose1313 and I have sufficient eye candy in our Doctor Who viewing. (May I suggest to the Doctor Who writers is that they spend hours brainstorming why the Doctor no longer needs to wear shirts, because would be a terrible chest to waste?)
The news that the next Doctor would be black has predictably stirred up some excitement, with some protesting that the Doctor, like James Bond, just has to be white, and others, more reasonably, wondering what this might mean for the time travelling doctor when/if he shifts to white dominated cultures and is automatically assumed to be a slave or inferior.
I could immediately think of simple ways to get around this -- send the Doctor to cultures without the white domination paradigm -- anyplace in the Mediterranean during the Roman Empire, for instance, or to any of the exotic African cities - medieval Zimbabwe, for instance, would provide a lot of fun. But that might be regarded as avoiding the central issue entirely. (Also, as box_in_the_box noted, those locations might add considerably to the costs of the show.)
As I thought about it, however, I remembered a research project from back in my historian/anthropology days, where a fellow grad student and I delved into the U.S. census records of 1840, 1850, 1860 and 1870 of Charleston, South Carolina, studying the population of free blacks. The results astonished us - first, that Charleston had such a large population of free blacks before the Civil War. I had been under the vague impression that all blacks fled north the mere second they received their freedom, but this was clearly wrong. Second, that many of these free blacks were solid middle class, professional citizens, and a few were actually well to do. Certainly, poor mantua makers (the U.S. Census term for "underpaid dressmakers") abounded, but the free black population also boasted extensive property owners, doctors, one dentist, pilots (responsible for guiding ships in and out of the harbor), cotton merchants, teachers, bankers, and so on; one family, to my shock, actually owned a slave. Further research demonstrated that the Civil War actually worsened the economic conditions of this particular group, probably as a result of increased racial tensions after the war.
This needs, of course, to be taken with some caveats: first, the majority of blacks in antebellum South Carolina were slaves, not free; second, the wealthier free blacks tended to be "mulatto" or "quadroon" (only "part black"); third, to repeat, many of these free blacks definitely remained in the poor working class; and fourth, we could not determine how many whites shopped at or used black owned businesses and vice versa. The black bank, for instance, may well have sprung up only because free blacks needed to bank somewhere, and could not at the white owned banks.
Nonetheless, the flourishing population of free blacks in Charleston, South Carolina, at about the heart of the racist Confederacy, shows that even in a slave owning society, racial roles could at times be fluid. (And I'm also reminded of that small story from one of the generally racist Little House books, where Laura and family, all dying of malaria, are saved by a black doctor - just in time to allow Ma Ingalls to go right back to hating those Indians again.) It suggests all kinds of intriguing storylines for Doctor Who episodes.
Storylines that, as said, will hopefully include several opportunities for Paterson Joseph to take off his shirt. For purely artistic purposes, of course.
The news that the next Doctor would be black has predictably stirred up some excitement, with some protesting that the Doctor, like James Bond, just has to be white, and others, more reasonably, wondering what this might mean for the time travelling doctor when/if he shifts to white dominated cultures and is automatically assumed to be a slave or inferior.
I could immediately think of simple ways to get around this -- send the Doctor to cultures without the white domination paradigm -- anyplace in the Mediterranean during the Roman Empire, for instance, or to any of the exotic African cities - medieval Zimbabwe, for instance, would provide a lot of fun. But that might be regarded as avoiding the central issue entirely. (Also, as box_in_the_box noted, those locations might add considerably to the costs of the show.)
As I thought about it, however, I remembered a research project from back in my historian/anthropology days, where a fellow grad student and I delved into the U.S. census records of 1840, 1850, 1860 and 1870 of Charleston, South Carolina, studying the population of free blacks. The results astonished us - first, that Charleston had such a large population of free blacks before the Civil War. I had been under the vague impression that all blacks fled north the mere second they received their freedom, but this was clearly wrong. Second, that many of these free blacks were solid middle class, professional citizens, and a few were actually well to do. Certainly, poor mantua makers (the U.S. Census term for "underpaid dressmakers") abounded, but the free black population also boasted extensive property owners, doctors, one dentist, pilots (responsible for guiding ships in and out of the harbor), cotton merchants, teachers, bankers, and so on; one family, to my shock, actually owned a slave. Further research demonstrated that the Civil War actually worsened the economic conditions of this particular group, probably as a result of increased racial tensions after the war.
This needs, of course, to be taken with some caveats: first, the majority of blacks in antebellum South Carolina were slaves, not free; second, the wealthier free blacks tended to be "mulatto" or "quadroon" (only "part black"); third, to repeat, many of these free blacks definitely remained in the poor working class; and fourth, we could not determine how many whites shopped at or used black owned businesses and vice versa. The black bank, for instance, may well have sprung up only because free blacks needed to bank somewhere, and could not at the white owned banks.
Nonetheless, the flourishing population of free blacks in Charleston, South Carolina, at about the heart of the racist Confederacy, shows that even in a slave owning society, racial roles could at times be fluid. (And I'm also reminded of that small story from one of the generally racist Little House books, where Laura and family, all dying of malaria, are saved by a black doctor - just in time to allow Ma Ingalls to go right back to hating those Indians again.) It suggests all kinds of intriguing storylines for Doctor Who episodes.
Storylines that, as said, will hopefully include several opportunities for Paterson Joseph to take off his shirt. For purely artistic purposes, of course.