on reading the obituary of John Hope Franklin

I will admit to being an occasional reader of The Economist Magazine. Granted, it's one of neo-liberalism's most devoted cheerleaders, but their writers are neoliberals with brains, often with a sense of humor, and sometimes even with a heart. I see these qualities most clearly in the magazine's Obituaries section. So as a means of jump-starting a little reflection on who and where we are, I've asked each of us to choose an obituary from The Economist, and reflect a little on what it means to us.

I suppose my choice of John Hope Franklin probably wasn't too hard to predict. Quite aside from our shared profession - historian - his life to me seems in many ways exemplary. As a black man growing up in the American South in the early part of the century, Franklin would have overcome challenges that I can only vaguely imagine, and which underline the easy time I've had of my own life. Which is, I suppose, a polite way of saying the obituary makes me feel like a lazy, dissipated dilletante, standing with a glass of bia hoi in my hand as I stare into the abyss of my own irrelevance.

Or maybe I'm not completely irrelevant. I was gratified to read that Franklin never taught a course in "Black History," but rather showed how the history of America necessarily included the history of its black citizens, and vice versa. My own project as an historian does something similar, chipping away at a historiography still largely dominated by issues of politics and nation that fail to capture the lived experiences of the vast majority of Vietnam's citizens. At the same time, my project with this class is to integrate stories of inequality, exploitation, and environmental degredation within the conventional narrative of GDP growth and export targets, and indeed explore how these problems are not unfortunate byproducts, but rather necessary complements of this thing we call "Development."

Nevertheless, it was the obituary's final line that touched me most deeply. Perhaps it was Franklin's character from the start, or perhaps it was the process of historical exploration itself, but that last line makes it clear that Franklin was a man who combined a commitment to justice and equality, with empathy, patience, and compassion. Exemplary indeed.