I love Hamilton, but something about the way white fans engage with the musical really bothers me

Meta
Title:	untitled
Creator:	thequintessentialqueer
Date(s):	December 09, 2015
Medium:	Tumblr
Fandom:	Hamilton (musical) and Historical RPF
Topic:	Romanticization and Racism in Fandom
External Links:	Tumblr; Wayback; archive link
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I love Hamilton, but something about the way white fans engage with the musical really bothers me is an untitled Tumblr post by thequintessentialqueer about practices within Hamilton fandom and the revision of history by both the musical and the fans.

As of 2019, the post had over 29,000 notes.

Contents

I love Hamilton, but something about the way white fans engage with the musical really bothers me: a lot of them are posting in the tag about the actual, historical revolutionaries and founding fathers in a way that makes them seem like funny, sweet, good people. They weren’t. I don’t just mean “Jefferson was a piece of shit”: none of them were good. Every one of their asses saw black people as inferior, even if not all of them supported slavery. All of them participated in genocidal policy against indigenous peoples. If you’re watching/listening to Hamilton and then going out and romanticizing the real founding fathers/American revolutionaries, you’re missing the entire point.

Hamilton is not really about the founding fathers. It’s not really about the American Revolution. The revolution, and Hamilton’s life are the narrative subject, but its purpose is not to romanticize real American history: rather, it is to reclaim the narrative of America for people of colour.

Don’t romanticize the founding fathers and the revolution. They’re already romanticized. It’s been done. Your history books have already propagated those lies. The revolution is romanticized as an American narrative because it was a revolution lead by and for white men. Their story is the narrative of the nation and it is a narrative from which people of colour are utterly obliterated.

Do you understand what it’s like to live in a nation where you are made marginal and inconsequential in the historical narrative that you are taught from your first day of school? In the Americas, to be a person of colour is to be made utterly inconsequential to the nation’s history. If you are black, your history begins with slavery, and your agency is denied; they don’t teach about slave rebellions or black revolutionaries. You learn about yourself as entirely shaped by outside forces: white people owned you, then some white people decided to free you and wasn’t that nice of them? and then you’re gone until the civil rights movement. That is the narrative they teach; in which you had no consequence, no value, no impact until less than a century ago. If you are indigenous, you are represented as disappeared, dead, already gone: you do not get to exist, you are already swallowed by history. If you are any other race, you are likely not present at all. To live in a land whose history is not your own, to live in a story in which you are not a character, is a soul-destroying experience.

In Hamilton, Eliza talks, in turn, of “taking herself out of the narrative” and “putting herself back in the narrative.” That’s what Hamilton is about: it’s about putting ourselves in the narrative. It puts people of colour in the centre of the damn narrative of the nation that subjugates them; it takes a story that by all accounts has been constructed to valourize the deeds of white men, and redefines it all.

Why was the American Revolution a revolution? Why were slave revolts revolts? Why do we consider the founding fathers revolutionaries and not the Black Panthers or the Brown Berets or any number of other anti-racist revolutionary organizations? Whose rebellion is valued? Who is allowed to be heroic through defiance? By making the founding fathers people of colour, Hamilton puts people of colour into the American narrative, while simultaneously applying that narrative to the present. Right now, across the United States, across the damn world, people are chanting “black lives matter.” Black people are shutting down malls and highways, demanding justice for the lives stolen by police, by white supremacy. And all across the world, indigenous people are saying “Idle No More,” blockading pipelines, demanding their sovereignty. And “No One is Illegal” is chanting loud enough to shake down the walls at the border; people are demanding the end of refugee detention centres, demanding an end to the violence perpetuated by anti-immigration policies. People of colour are rising up.

…And white people are angry about it. White people are saying “if blacks don’t want to get shot by the police they shouldn’t sag their pants”; saying “get over it” about anti-indigenous policies of assimilation and cultural genocide and land theft; Jennicet Gutiérrez was heckled by white gay men for demanding that president Obama end the detention of undocumented trans women of colour. White people see people of colour rising up and they tell us to sit down. Shut up. Stop making things difficult. The American Revolution was a bunch of white men who didn’t want to be taxed, so white history sees their revolutionary efforts as just; they killed for their emancipation from England; they were militant. That, to white people is acceptable. But those same white people talk shit about Malcolm X for being too violent–a man who never started an uprising against the government leading to bloodshed. Violence is only acceptable in the hands of white people; revolution is only okay when the people leading the charge are white.

Hamilton makes those people brown and black; Hamilton depicts the revolution of which America is proud as one led by people of colour against a white ruling body; there’s a reason King George is the only character who is depicted by a white man. The function of the visual in Hamilton is to challenge a present in which people of colour standing up against oppression are seen as violent and dangerous by the same people who proudly declare allegiance to the flag. It forces white people to see themselves not as the American Revolutionaries, but as the British oppressors. History is happening, and they’re on its bad side.

So don’t listen to or watch Hamilton and then come out of that to romanticize the founding fathers. Don’t let that be what you take away from this show. They’re the vehicle for the narrative, and a tool for conveying the ideologies of the show, but they are not the point. Don’t romanticize the past; fight for the future.

Response

This articulates really well some of my misgivings about Hamilton, though I had previously interpreted these notions as faults of the musical itself as written (ie romanticizing Hamilton). Now I think maybe it was my white privilege making me interpret this as problems with how the musical was written rather than white people misinterpreting the intent of the musical. Regardless, I really, really agree that people need to fucking stop with the founding father hero-worship.

This exactly!!! And don’t underestimate the importance of hip-hop in this musical. It isn’t just a genre chosen because it sounded cool. It’s the entire reason this musical exists. It is story of a white man (a founding father) whose own life reflects that of many hip hop artists (mostly POC, and primarily black POC) of today, yet their histories are spoken of differently.

Yeah. I have a few issues with Hamilton (most of the rest are just nitpicks), but this above all (and I feel like, being white, I lack the perspective to really put it into words like this). I HATE the way it makes me have any positive feelings toward the founding fathers.

[...]I will say OP’s form of activism is the type that can be unforgiving to innocent ignorance, so keep an open mind to different viewpoints. As someone who’s never seen the play and comes into the fandom from a perspective of historical interest, it’s important to see the different message that people receive from the story and casting and how so many people hope that message will be accepted by the musical’s audience (which is largely white because…broadway).

The popularity of this post is a testament to how strongly this sentiment is felt by the people who have seen it. Bare in mind the biases that tumblr’s audience holds when it comes to interpreting historical characters that existed as products of the culture they lived in, but understand how important this message- and that bias- is. The history we learn as children in America is, overwhelmingly and criminally, whitewashed. The characters depicted in the musical were profoundly important to the establishment of our modern government, but the way we learn about them (and try to relate to them) in the modern world is inherently skewed.

Hamilton has sparked a lot of controversy- as any cultural phenomena is bound to, but the sole purpose behind its casting isn’t just to ‘reclaim’ history, but to normalize enjoyment of it. When a child sits in history class and hears nothing but the same dull stories about white men, they rightfully feel excluded, and the casting of Hamilton brings people into the fold that aren’t white or male. Which is extremely important. The more POC and women that are genuinely interested in a period, the more we’ll learn about POC and women in that period…and the more people can know the true face of American history.

While there are huge flaws in the musical- both in historical accuracy, historical inclusion, general depictions, it’s good. And, there’s nothing wrong with liking the characters that the musical depicts. You shouldn’t feel problematic for doing so. Their life stories are full of romance and heroism and tragedy, that we- as human beings- are intrinsically bound to enjoy.

But, we shouldn’t divorce those characters from who they’re depicting. At the end of the day, Alexander Hamilton was a white man who catapulted the United States onto an industrial course that, while it modernized the world in vital ways, did so on the backs of millions of people. Any character in history who gains power in the right place has the capability to do as much harm as they do good intentional or unintentional.

But, it’s important to recognize those effects of the person when we play with their public image. That’s why I’ve been screaming so constantly about how important it is that we try to inform one another about the real historical character of the play instead of pulling it further out of context.

Having an interest in history is a great way to fight for the future OP is describing. Helping a diverse crowd of people gain an interest in a field of academia leads to discovery and wider understanding- because the thing is, if only white men care about something, there’s only going to be white male perspectives researching in that field. Look at how our generation has brought forth so much evidence of queer history in prominent figures. Look at how that representation has helped the audience on this website gain a sense of inclusion. We can expand that to gender and racial studies.

I’m adding to this post, not to push my own white activist opinions against the message but in wholehearted agreement. Do not romanticize history. Take it back by expanding what you know. If you’re posting love letters about a historical figure, don’t put it in a tag that implies it’s intended for the musical audience. But, if you’re a fan of the musical, DO NOT AVOID KNOWLEDGE OF THE HISTORICAL CHARACTERS.

There’s nothing wrong with enjoying a story as long as you know what that story is.

I think this goes really well with the interview in which Daveed Diggs talks about separating the literary genius of Jefferson from the racist, sexist, and downright ethically unsound way in which he lived his life. There are things about the Founding Fathers which deserve to be admired, but please don’t romanticize a bunch of dead white men because you think the POC characters based on them are cool. Romanticize the shit out of the characters, they’re dope, but separate them from the historical figures they’re based on, just like Daveed separates Jefferson’s writing and his ethics.

The plot of Hamilton is to celebrate the origins of America but the cast was deliberately chosen to celebrate the diversity of America today:if you glorify the founding fathers who didn’t celebrate diversity and were racist then you loose the deliberate choices made by the casting directors and the writers who wanted to differentiate from the original founding fathers.

Thank you so much for writing this. I needed to hear it, mostly because even I started to romanticize the actual people for a bit after I got through the soundtrack (am I white), and after seeing many PoC speak up about that, I began to see why that was wrong of me.

I really admire Lin-Manuel Miranda. I love his music, and all the people that played the characters are fantastic. And I even identify with and/or admire some of the characters of the play, but now I separate them from their historical counterparts. The CHARACTER Hamilton motivates me to work hard and stay determined and make my voice heard and write like I’m running out of time. But I have read some of the things the real Hamilton wrote and he’s so petty and misogynistic. I don’t admire any of the ideals that were common in that period (misogyny, racism, etc.), and I LOVE that Miranda casted people of color to play all the characters that we have been taught to admire as revolutionaries for America.

Because that forces us to wake up and realize that it’s hypocritical to praise the founding fathers for starting a bloody war while condemning PoC who try to stand up for themselves, even in non-violent ways, nowadays.

Someone even explicitly stated that the whole point of the casting in Hamilton (despite the Founding Fathers all collectively being real pieces of shit, at the end of the day) was to depict “America then, with what America is now”. I forget who (I’m like 99% sure it was Lin, but honestly I don’t want to assume), but they also mentioned “reclaiming history” for POC, whose voices have consistently been silenced by white history.

fanart of genderfluid! laurens or bi!jefferson in cute pride colours is the most common example of romanticising these characters that i’ve seen.

Even the costume design plays into this – it’s historical below the neck, but the head and hair and eyes of the revolutionaries? Modern.

Examples Wanted: Editors are encouraged to add more examples or a wider variety of examples.