Whether countries or individuals, from time to time, almost everyone is tempted to alter their history — to obscure or erase the bad or sad parts, to emphasize and hype success. This is why the current president doesn’t think it’s necessary to study history in depth or in context.
Neither do others, particularly many Black fans of the TV series “The Gilded Age.” Like our anti-DEI President, they are “sick and tired” of unrelenting reminders of “slave sh–.” Instead, at the risk of suspending disbelief, these viewers are captivated by the glamorous beauty with which a Black elite is portrayed. They rejoice, welcoming proudly self-possessed brothers and sisters asserting their worth, eschewing white condescension and charity. These Black folks boast not just manners, education, and morality equal or superior to those of whites, but striving as doctors, entrepreneurial merchants, and journalists, they have amassed what America values most — wealth! And, the show contends, enough to approximate the grandeur of Robber Barons.
Is this a narrative based on actual events? Sort of. But, in ways big and small, historical reality is secondary. Almost as much as in “Bridgerton,” how viewers wish that things might have been is what takes precedence.
Does it matter that in 1882, when the program is set, no more than 25% of American women pierced their ears in order to avoid the risk of infection from pierced ears, even though that was the only way to wear earrings then? Yet, in “The Gilded Age,” irrespective of class, race, or nationality, every woman has earrings! That includes lead characters based on Alva Vanderbilt and her daughter, Consuelo, the 9th Duchess of Marlborough, two women who never wore earrings in their lives. As for men, in “The Gilded Age,” most sport boutonnières. But they are not drawn through a buttonhole, as used to be done, but pinned to the lapel, as they usually are today.
Costumes in the show, we are assured, were inspired by forty thousand historic images. Countless photographs, paintings, and prints were consulted. But I’d bet there were none that show upper-class Black women wearing low-cut dresses displaying cleavage. To project dignity or to appear demure, many African American women wore train-less dinner dresses to dances and balls, with high necks instead of deep décolletage.
“But!” Says Timothy Harvey, a “The Gilded Age” hairstylist, during an interview with the AmNews, “the makers are not producing a documentary. If it’s more entertaining or underlines a dramatic point, does it really matter if fashion designs or architecture from the 1890s or early 1900s are mixed in with what was worn or built in the 1880s? Does our audience really notice or care about such nuance and detail?”
My answer is, would no one notice or mind if a drama set in today’s White House showed a colorful rose garden with a lush lawn, or a chaste Oval Office devoid of gilded ornamentation? Merchant Ivory made every effort to make movies with utter authenticity. Before them, in Hollywood’s golden age, sometimes stars in historical dramas instead insisted on wearing modern, inauthentic padded shoulders, pompadours, and pageboys. But Bette Davis, daring to shave her hairline to play Elizabeth I, was ten times more effective.
Contrasted with the aggrandizement of African Americans, all of this is rather minor. “If, as the Brookings Institute reported, in 2022, for every $100.00 in wealth held by white households, Blacks held only $15.00,” says historian David Levering Lewis during an interview with the AmNews. “In 1882, things were far more unequal. How was a Black druggist’s wife supposed to have a diamond necklace or a tiara? If she aspired to gentility, would she have worn fake jewelry? My family never did.”
Denée Benton, Jordan Donica in “The Gilded Age.” (Karolina Wojtasik/HBO photo) 
A scene from “The Gilded Age.” (Karolina Wojtasik/HBO photo) 
1912 BALTIMORE WINTER ASSEMBLY Published in February 1912 issue of The Crisis; photograph by Addison Scurlock 
Originally created as a site-specific artwork in 2023, Oak Bluffs Toile captures the everyday lives of Victorian and Early 20th century-era seasonal residents of historically Black Oak Bluffs on the island of Martha’s Vineyard. Each vignette in the pattern, backgrounded with architectural landmarks, tells a different story reflecting back to us the Black community’s deep roots in a magical, seaside community. (Photos courtesy of Ron Norsworthy Studio) 
Award-winning artist Ron Norsworthy. (Photo courtesy of Ron Norsworthy Studio)
Wishing that life was better for African Americans in the olden days is akin to European immigrants who changed their names and, after making it in America, forgot their early history. Both align with the desire to rewrite what occurred. But, delight in these fantasy depictions sadly betrays shame harbored about the degradation one’s ancestors experienced. Most often unexamined, it’s but the inevitable inculcation of white materialism and aesthetics. What else is it that makes long, flowing, straight blond hair more fashionable than dark hair or locs and naturals? Why is an embroidered white silk Worth dress, that costs as much as most Black people’s houses, a gown a European queen would have worn, as alluring for many Blacks as it is for whites? Robbed of our aesthetic and ancestral heritage, we are only able to imagine privilege, prestige, and attainment in such white Western terms, terms that have become our own. The beauty of a liberating Harriett Tubman, holding a gun, in a rough homespun skirt, or even of cotton-picking forebears in rags, is lost on many.
Trump complains our culture is fixated on slavery, and contends that we fail to celebrate our nation’s triumphs. But, why is it not “positive,” a “ bright success,” the nearly miraculous “achievement” of slowly, but surely empowering oppressed and exploited, once-enslaved Black Americans, who literally built the wealth of the USA? Making their way through a living hell, so that we might enjoy education, jobs, and comfortable homes, they fulfilled dreams yearned for despite hopelessness. And, with all that’s already been done, so much remains unfinished. So there’s plenty to anticipate of a future when the quest for equality and justice becomes complete.
How undiscerning, what ingratitude, after all the love and hope our ancestors lavishly invested in us, to sigh and say of the fakery in “The Gilded Age,” “Finally, we get to see Blacks with class and elegance.”
As opposed to comforting exaggeration, Ralph Lauren’s Oak Bluffs campaign is enlightening. Condemned by critics as elitist and an emulation of whites, actually reflecting Black ambition and aspiration, it perfectly indicates conflicted notions of African American identity. Instead of a Black aristocracy with parity to “the 400,” employing photographs and reminiscences, this retrospective-advertisement honestly pays homage to a respectable tiny clique of doctors, teachers, clergymen, and the rare entrepreneur of color, striving to be the best that it was possible for Black people to be in yesterday’s America.
It is an honest expression, showing the conservative, assimilationist sense of a Black Bourgeois at the Vineyard, Sag Harbor, and the rest of America. Defined as “design with intent,” it was conceived by heirs of this heritage of relative privilege, James M. Jeter, a graduate of Morehouse College, and Dara Douglas, a Spelman College alumna.
There can be few representations of Black Americans, more anachronistic and casually demeaning, than superstar Black interior designer Sheila Bridges’ renditions of frolicking Blacks, half-dressed in 18th-century clothes. They adorn a wide array of merchandise, from bed linens to ball gowns.
It might have been otherwise. In 2007, Ms. Bridges dropped by to see if, among my collection of vintage Harlem photographs, there were scenes suitable for the “Harlem Toile de Jouy” she envisioned. We didn’t find any. But I recommended there were far richer sources she might turn to at the Schomburg Center and the Public Library. Deciding instead to invent something, she conceived vignettes with Black lovers picnicking on fried chicken and watermelon, others playing basketball, or engaged in a Double Dutch contest. Many have bare feet. What it is that makes this, the “Harlem Toile” for the “Harlem Toile Girl,” is unapparent. In the New York Times, Sheila asserts that supposedly the antics of the figures who populate her toile, diffuse Black stereotypes. But, I cannot see how?
However, influenced by my friend Larry Bently, I sought a collaboration. Having conceived of an exhibition, “Harlem Comes Downtown”, for Emily Eerdmans’ elegant gallery on 12th Street, I wanted to juxtapose Larry’s modernist hard-edged paintings with Shelia’s ever-proliferating product successes.
But then I was shown something extraordinary, something that represented African Americans with such dignity, even nobility, but with down-to-earth matter-of-factness, that standing straighter, for a second, I held my breath.
What Larry showed me was an Oak Bluffs-inspired Toile du Jouy, based on historic graphics. It was devised by fine artist Ron Norsworthy. Well before Sheila’s popular caricatures, since the turn of the millennium, Norsworthy has designed adroit, provocative, culturally encoded wallpapers and textiles.
The poise conveyed by his Oak Bluffs Toile, the quiet forbearance it exhibits, this is an identity to be proud of — a portrait of American majesty: where education and hard work, overcome adversity and more.
Ron Norsworthy’s Oak Bluffs Toile, unequivocally commanding respect, calls forth our highest admiration.