3 - “So What?”

Summary

Two of the biggest unethical government-funded research studies in American history were the subject of my historical scholarship: the U.S. Public Health Service Study in Tuskegee, Alabama and the Sexually Transmitted Diseases Inoculation Studies in Guatemala. A scholar can pick a particular topic, and hope that the answer to the “so what” of relevant questions and concerns will be obvious, or teased out in her work. But it is often catching a particular moment, historical contingency, and collective efforts that take the “so what” beyond the academy to social change. In restorative justice, where there is an effort to involve the perpetrator(s), the victim(s) and their communities in reconciliation, there can be restorative history that does the same. Yet the historical has to become consciously political if it is to really make a difference. This chapter explores how this was, and was not possible. It details how my focus became how these studies occurred and then travel into American culture and memory. It asks if and how any of this matters, and how I made, and did not make, this happen.