BENJAMIN RASMUSSEN

THE

                     

GOOD
                                                     

CITIZEN


                                

Who was freely invited into the full protections of American Citizenship and who was kept out?

In what ways are the ripples of our past seen in our present? How can we engage more honestly with our history? Over a period of eight years,  Benjamin Rasmussen travelled to 43 states and was introduced to over 500 people as he investigated the impact of the country’s complex history on contemporary society. In this new project, Rasmussen’s photographs are combined with essays by Frank H. Wu­ and collectively they seek to provoke thought and conversation around the complicated nature of American identity.




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01VIOLENCE


By Frank H. Wu

Through photography, we envision problems and progress. Can photographs redeem racial tragedies?

     Perhaps the most compelling images documenting bigotry are lynching photos. They became the opposite of what they were created to be. Although the profound moment depicted—in the exemplary episodes, a white mob having castrated, burned, and otherwise mutilated a Black man’s nameless body, before hanging him, whether barely alive or already dead, from a noose thrown over a tree—might prompt us to avert our gaze in horror and shame, the crowd celebrating belies any semblance of grief or even an iota of embarrassment. Even if a few observers flinch, many revel in the depravity without compunction, while others stand still as if in shock. The murders happened not rarely but commonly: between Reconstruction and the period of relieved normalcy following World War II, this form of domestic terror claimed at least four thousand known victims. These atrocities were pre-meditated and organised, as if following a ritual, incited by fetishes about Black sexuality and criminality that had to be controlled and revenged. Imagination is not needed because it cannot do justice to the events—or for them.
The substantiation of killing is readily available in black and white, because participants took pictures which were then turned into souvenir postcards to be collected and traded, sent via the mails despite the Comstock Act censoring the obscene. Modern projects to memorialize the enormity of the evil rely on families donating the ephemera handed down over generations.

The stories behind many of these photos were collected by Walter White. A descendant of William Henry Harrison, the ninth President, White was the child of persons who were enslaved. Possessed of blonde hair and blue eyes, he was selected by the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) to investigate these incidents, risking his safety because he could be discovered to be Black, an advocate for civil rights, or worst of all both Black and an advocate for civil rights.

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02EXCLUSION



By Frank H. Wu

Is Asian American an oxymoron?

     Asians have been excluded from America literally and figuratively. By law, the 1882 Chinese Exclusion Act and the 1917 Asiatic Barred Zone rendered the few who made it across the border the original ‘illegal immigrants,’ namely ‘paper sons’ who presented themselves as progeny grandfathered in with elaborate backstories for their fake identities.

    Policy reflected culture. The 1869 Golden Spike ceremony at Promontory Point, Utah, omitted them from the festivities which united the nation thanks to their contributions. The transcontinental railroad was built after the Civil War, bringing together an expanse and frontier which previously had to be traversed by a perilous overland journey or circumnavigated on the seas. Virtually all of the western track headed eastward was laid by more than 10,000 Chinese laborers who blasted their way through sheer granite rockface. The phrase ‘a Chinaman’s chance’ was coined in that context, referring to long odds, because of the risk the workers would meet their demise as the new explosive tool of dynamite detonated before they could be hauled back up the side of the cliff in a wicker basket. Despite their involvement, without which there would have been nothing to celebrate, in the series of photos there is no Asian face to be seen in the crowd gathered with pride. Those images of ingenuity and industry were instantly known to all educated citizens as a memorial of the most massive infrastructure project of the era.Those images of ingenuity and industry were instantly known to all educated citizens as a memorial of the most massive infrastructure project of the era. 

    For what he called photographic justice, the late Corky Lee, who slyly appointed himself the unofficial photographer of Asian America, staged an annual re-enactment of that ceremony, bringing descendants of the original railroad workers out to the desolate landmark. Native New Yorker Lee passed away from the COVID-19 virus as he continued to document the struggle of Asian Americans in his hometown, shuttering their businesses while being blamed for the global pandemic. ‘You all look alike’ has long been a recurring theme for Asian Americans, assumed to be the model minority as they are treated as the perpetual foreigner. The attacks were mistaken identity twice over: people of various ethnic origins, such as Burmese, Korean, Filipino, even Chicana; and citizens and residents of the United States, not China. For those who scapegoat do not pause to check passports before spitting on their victims, shoving them in front of subway trains, stabbing them, or shooting them by the half dozen. The crimes culminated with serial murder in Atlanta, which the law enforcement official investigating downplayed as the confessed gunman ‘having a bad day,’ only to be discovered himself to be spreading the ‘China flu’ meme on social media.

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