Throw the fatuous argument for preserving Confederate symbols in the dust bin of history
by Leslie Butler and Alan Wain
From the tiny fingers of the most profoundly stupid public figure in recent memory came this, “THOSE THAT DENY THEIR HISTORY ARE DOOMED TO REPEAT IT!”
Trump apparently offered this as a stroke of rhetorical genius in the debate about keeping Confederate officers’ names on several American domestic army bases. As with keeping monuments to such people in public spaces, the argument seems to be that we erase history at our peril, that depriving us of daily exposure to these names and images would be a kind of Orwellian negation of history.
The debates have been sparked by America’s latest forced confrontation with its entrenched racism brought on by the murders of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, Rayshard Brooks and other blacks.
Many more than Trump are lazily on board with don’t erase history. It sounds good. But the “argument” is at best fatuous, and at worst specious. In other words, it’s either silly or intentionally misleading, or both.
A name on a building or a statue in the square is not history. At the risk of being obvious, history is a grand narrative informed by the accumulated knowledge of human affairs, a deep analysis of the human condition as it relates to people, events and past civilizations. It’s understanding and insight and judgement and revelation.
A name on a building or monument in the square is something else entirely. It’s a tribute to someone we literally look up to. It denotes heroism. It raises up qualities for us to admire. It glorifies. It’s asking for our respect and reverence.
It signifies.
So what does the Confederacy signify in America? As concrete symbols of the Southern slave economy and the bloody war to preserve it, monuments to the Confederacy cannot be reasonably understood in any other way than to signify racism, brutality, and inhumanity. Cultural shorthand for heartless cruelty, exploitation and oppression that went on for centuries.
And we are keeping these monuments because…? (Some will offer a more palatable reason for keeping them, which we will get to shortly.)
Racist brutality
Imagine for a moment — and it doesn’t take a terribly high EQ — what it must feel like for black people to be subjected to daily reminders that the culture celebrates those murderous racists who enslaved their grandparents and great grandparents. Who worked them to death generation after generation after generation. Whipped them. Lynched them. Raped their mothers and sisters and daughters. Tore up their families, sold their children. Infantalized them. Crushed their spirit, stole their heritage. Denied their very humanity.
These monuments are in state capitols, cities and towns across the South. And the memories of these guys are worth preserving?
Should South Africa keep monuments to the apartheid-era leaders up as a symbol of how that country’s black population got crushed under the iron heel of British and Dutch colonialism? Ditto for Zimbabwe. Should it have retained its colonial name of Rhodesia out of deference to Cecil Rhodes and the other upper class British twits who so selflessly and generously spread their superior civilization to the uneducated Africans while raping and pillaging their country?
Is it conceivable that statues of arguably the biggest mass murderer in history, King Leopold II of Belgium, which came down just last week, ought to stay up forever? What the actual fuck?
Keeping the monuments to colonial brutality because they are “history” is not only specious, it conveniently ignores the fact that the victims of colonialism everywhere, just like African Americans, had a long and vibrant history long before Europeans snuffed that out. Maybe monuments to that history could go up in city squares. It matters whose history you’re wanting to preserve. Yet Trump and the don’t-erase-history crowd never speak to that question.
Should we keep the names of Catholic priests who raped little boys and girls on churches and schools because that’s “history” and they were once part of a perfectly legal and very powerful religious institution run by generations of corrupt Popes and Bishops? Would you be on board with that?
A Harvey Weinstein School for Aspiring Female Actors
But here’s the thing. The hard core don’t-erase-history bunch would never openly admit they want to keep glorifying racists and murderers. So they cynically twist it, pretending that if we keep the monuments, people will start seeing them as a condemnation of racism, a necessary reminder of past evil. Thus, it follows that the monuments are kind of, sort of, a gift to black people, and the misguided BLM supporters should get on board with preserving those larger-than-life monsters on horseback in the square.
If that’s true, how about a Harvey Weinstein School for Aspiring Female Actors, a Jeffrey Epstein Charity for Victims of Human Trafficking or an Omar Mateen Memorial Shooting Range to help us remember to condemn sexual assault and the murder of gays?
If monuments have educational value about past evil, why doesn’t the Holocaust Memorial have statutes of Hitler tastefully positioned throughout? Why wouldn’t Israel welcome shipments of Hitler statues to put up in their public squares? To educate.
If the Southern states truly want to teach people about the evils of slavery they could put up real memorials at the sites of these toppled monuments — photographs, testimonials, historical artifacts, museums — that reveal the true depth of black oppression, the damage done by white supremacy. Show how it is alive and well today in the form of institutionalized police brutality, systemic discrimination and racialized social injustice.
That would be the honest way to keep history alive.
