erasing history

Before the controversy erupted last week over a confederate statue in Charlottesville, Virginia, I've avoided that topic of discussion here. I did write on issues somewhat tangential twice in the past: about a white supremacy monument and a controversy at Harvard over a school crest.

But I think I'll write about the issue today. Now I realize, of course, that absolutely nobody has been waiting with baited breath for me to speak on this topic, but the whole point of blogging is to write whatever you want.

So here's what I think: I have not yet seen a compelling argument for keeping most confederate memorial statues on prominent display in public parks and thoroughfares. However, I have seen compelling arguments for removing them.

One argument I see in favor of keeping them where they are is "they're part of our heritage." It seems to be a lot of people who use that argument don't understand the meaning of heritage.

If you live in a particular city, unless you were born and raised there, and spend your adult life there, that city isn't part of your heritage. And even if you lived all your life in that city, if your ancestors didn't fight for the confederacy, it isnt really part of your heritage, either.

My dictionary defines heritage as "a tradition of honor, pride, and courage." So that infers you have to accept something for it to be part of your heritage. If you don't honor the confederate side, if you don't have any pride in it, then it's not part of your heritage even if you had ancestors who fought for the South in the Civil War.

So, really, such statues are "part of the heritage" for only a fairly small percentage of the population in a city. And how is a statue part of heritage anyway, unless your ancestors were literally responsible for funding or installing it in the first place?

Another argument I've seen is that "you're trying to erase history" by removing the statues. That, of course, is ludicrous.

Statues in and of themselves don't record history. Many of the statues in question were actually installed long after the Civil War was over -- particularly in the 1920s, in the height of the Jim Crow era.

The statues themselves tell no real story. They're bronze men on bronze horses covered with patina and pigeon shit. If you take away the statue, the history still exists. You can learn about history without ever setting eyes on a statue.

I think a common-sense, middle-ground solution can be found for these monuments. Remove them from their place of prominence in cities and relocate them to the grounds of history museums and historical societies. That way they can still be seen as historical artifacts without all the public glorification.

Arguably the best closing words on this topic come from Robert E. Lee himself. When discouraging monuments he said it was wiser "not to keep open the sores of war but to follow the examples of those nations who endeavored to obliterate the marks of civil strife, to commit to oblivion the feelings engendered."

statues revisited

I already wrote an entry recently about confederate statues, so this is sort of a follow-up to that one.

Several days ago I bookmarked this article comparing Germany, where there are no statutes to defeated military figures, to the United States, where there are more than a thousand statues to defeated military leaders. I finally had a chance to read the piece yesterday and found it very thought provoking.

The writer makes some very good points, in my opinion. The American statues at the center of the current controversy were only a part of a revisionist history process in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century that transformed the Civil War in collective consciousness into something it wasn't.

So even if the statues were removed, that would not solve the problem of a societal amnesia by many people who inaccurately romanticize something that shouldn't be. At the same time, as long as the statues stand, many people will cling to an inaccurate history.

Germany faced up to what had happened in the 1930s and 1940s, but the process wasn't immediate and it was generational. But the United States has never gone through a similar process, even though America partly directed and administered the Germanic transformation.

I had a discussion about confederate statues with my husband but only after I had written my earlier entry linked above. Up to that point, he hadn't really paid much attention to the issue, thinking it was just a nutty American thing, but when I explained it to him, he was amazed to learn what was at stake.

He's been to the United States but never realized the very startling fact that for every Union monument in America, there are more than ten for the confederacy. He found it mind boggling that "the losing side" even had one single statue, let alone more than a thousand.

"You will never solve race problems in your country until every last one of those statues comes down and everyone understands and accepts why," he said without hesitation.

Sometimes non-Americans understand Americans better than we do ourselves.

politically too correct

Harvard University recently was involved in a nasty kerfuffle involving its law school crest. The item in question (seen below) is a shield with three wheat sheaves and the Latin word Veritas, the university's motto, which translates as "truth."

Some students objected to the shield because it was adapted from the family crest of a major donor to the law school whose father once owned slaves.

IMHO, this is political correctness gone out of control. How many people would be offended by a clump of wheat? It's not like it was a swastika.

If something is patently visible as racist to many people -- a Nazi flag, a Confederate flag, etc. -- then removing it is understandable. But the pretzel logic in the Harvard dustup is ridiculous.

This is not the first time Harvard has been embroiled in a political correctness battle. Several months ago, the university stopped using the term "house master" to refer to dorm administrators because some students found that racially offensive.

Never mind that the term "house master" originated in British boarding schools and universities and had utterly no connection to slavery.

People should focus on policies and actions that actually are discriminatory and not this sort of overly sensitive navel gazing.

I would not be surprised if Harvard did away with masters degrees because, you know, racism. Or something.

what about murals?

I've written before about the Confederate monument controversy. My take is to move them but not to hide nor destroy them.

But what about controversial murals? An article currently running in the New York Times magazine reports on a series of murals about George Washington at a high school in San Francisco that has caused heated public debate.

My take on this is that the murals should stay exactly where they are because they could be a powerful lesson about how history is often sanitized and distorted by one group at the expense of others. What better place for these murals then a high school?

They can learn about Washington, how the murals are alternatively accurate and inaccurate, at the same time they can learn about the danger of distorting history. They can also learn about the WPA and the Depression. They could also create their own mural to depict what they believe is a more accurate depiction of Washington's life.

In a phrase: what an opportunity! Ergo, the murals should stay exactly where they are.

shameless or shameful?

I have been reading about controversy over ongoing removal of confederate monuments occurring primarily in the southern United States. These are usually memorials to key southern military officers who fought for the Confederacy during the American Civil War.

Both sides of the controversy have comprehensive arguments why the monuments should or should not stay. I won't go into those here, because that's not really my focus today.

The night before last, workers wearing body armor removed a particularly contentious monument that paid tribute to an organization called the Crescent City White League, some of whose members were killed in 1874 in something called the Battle of Liberty Place.

The Crescent City White League was a self-professed white supremacist group that attempted to overthrow the state government which had won office with votes from African-Americans, among others. Some of the White League members died in the attempt, as did seven police officers defending government offices.

So in a nutshell, the monument was in memory of racists who died while failing to violently overthrow the government.

I can see no legitimate argument for keeping in place a monument to a rag-tag band of people who tried to stage a violent coup nearly a decade after the Civil War was over.

I'm amazed that such a monument was ever erected in the first place and that it stood for more than a hundred years. I'm further amazed that some people in New Orleans were angry this week that the White League monument was taken down at all.

Is the White League monument any less insensitive than, say, a monument honoring people in the Klu Klux Klan who died while terrorizing others?

If people want to commemorate violent racists, they can do that in the privacy of their own homes. Public space should not be used to glorify such individuals.