(For some cultural context. This was written in June 2020 amidst the protests following the murder of George Floyd, as our society is currently reassessing the value of many statues and monuments to our racist and imperialist past. Some claim they are symbols of oppression. Others claim that they are unavoidable reminders of our history and need to be preserved.)
We're living in a time of social unrest, one could even say this is soft revolution. It's not uncommon in these situations for people to lash out against the symbols of the establishment people are rallying against. For example, in the 1956 revolution, the people of Budapest stormed the city park and pulled down the 25m high statue of Stalin, easily the most obvious symbol of the Soviet system they were rebelling against. Only a handful would claim that this was not a justified reaction to oppressive rule. And it would be ludicrous to object on the grounds that Stalin is a part of their history (I mean, the statue was only five years old at that point too.). Stalin had to go. The Hungarian people were sick of oppression, and to keep it looming above them would have been a capitulation, an admittance that no matter how hard they fight, there would never be change. This is only one example in a long history of the destruction of cultural relics in periods of social change. When army's invade (liberate) cities, it is the idols of the previous regime that are first destroyed.
Therefore, it's understandable that when we are experiencing a revolution against the hundreds of years of subjugation of a race of people by society, that people unleash that anger on the symbols of that subjugation: African imperialism, slavery, the Confederacy, Jim Crow, and segregation. Frank Rizzo needs to go. Jefferson Davis needs to go. God damn it, Leopold II needs to go! He should never have celebrated in the first place. This is not just done for symbolism, but catharsis. It feels good to look Stalin in the eye as his head lies, damaged at your feet.
This is not to say that this isn't a nuanced issue. For every obvious example of terrible symbolism we can no longer keep, there's five more that are fuzzy. What do we do with monuments to the architects of cities, nations even, who were deeply flawed people that supported racist institutions? Is it time to destroy statues of Churchill? Do we blow up Mount Rushmore, The Jefferson and Washington memorials, because two of the nation's greatest leaders were slave owners? Well, most people would say no. These are cultural landmarks. They're not simple statues, but architectural wonders. These don't just represent the men, but the wealth and power of America itself. But that wealth and power was built upon oppression. Do these represent that oppression? I don't know. Personally, I think these are objects of cultural significance that we need to retain. But if the Nazi's had carved the face of Hitler into the mountains near the Berghof, all but the most adamant Nazi sympathizers would want it dynamited. Clearly, being a feat of human ingenuity does not save things from destruction.
What do we do with Edward Colston the slave trader whose philanthropic work helped establish many of the institutions and buildings of Bristol? What do we do with Bristol itself or Liverpool, cities that grew to great prominence from their involvement with the slave trade and imperialism? With the right frame of mind, we could start tearing down whole sections of cities, saying the very fabric our current society is itself a symbol of oppression. A lot of people seem to be siding with this view. Is it hypocritical to say that monuments should be destroyed, but the cities that can have an even greater symbolic power should stay? I think most would argue that, no, we can't burn down our entire society because of its dark origins, we need building and schools and stores. The dictator Ceaușescu's palace is still in use in Bucharest. So is it functionality that determines if we should preserve something?
What about the statues of Christopher Columbus? He started this whole mess. He brought with him waves and waves of Europeans and sparked the genocide of an entire continent! And his most famous contribution to history, the “discovery” of America, wasn't even his (personally, I say take them down. I've been anti-Columbus for my whole life. I've never understood why we celebrated him over all the other explorers.) Well, that's a tough one too. Because if we are looking for where to point fingers as to where this whole mess started, then we'd better prepare to have sore fingers. One argument the preservationist have that I do support, is that this can very easily become a slippery slope of destruction the further back we go in history. Should we change the names of our cities and states because they were named after the British monarchs who spurred on the western expansion? If Rhodesia is a racist name, is Virginia too? Or have these been established for so long that they've lost their symbolic power, become just names?
The Red Fort, Fatehpur Sikri, and Taj Mahal were built by an imperialist regime that invaded Northern India from Central Asia. They are arguably some of the most beautiful buildings ever built, bringing millions of tourists to India. Are these symbols of oppression? Well, most would assert they are 500 year-old symbols of the greatness of Indian culture, with the Mughals seen as merely a chapter of the long march of shifting empires in the Sub-Continent. Would we encourage their destruction if we all suddenly see a mass shift towards the demonization of the Mughals? I'd like to argue that we can't. Is the beauty of the Taj Mahal? Is it that the Taj Mahal makes the city of Agra a ton of money? What about the aesthetically pleasing East India Company's buildings in Kolkata? They also bring tourists to India? Then we have the Colosseum of Rome, maybe the world's most striking and enduring symbol of slavery, oppression, and imperialism ever built. Is it time for that to go? Is beauty or public interest that makes something worth saving? Is it profit potential?
Naturally, there's no easy answer to any of these questions, but we do have to remember that people reassess their landmarks all the time. Streets change names. Buildings, even whole blocks get destroyed. Statues that remind us of a shameful past get torn down. This is the march of time. Sometimes people go too far in pushing forward, look at the Cultural Revolution in China if you need an example. I'm not saying that the destruction of our past and culture is something that should be taken lightly.
So how do we decide what's too valuable to our cultural heritage? Well, this needs to be done in a case-by-case basis. I'd say the older something is, the more beautiful something is, the more incredible of an achievement, yes, the more profitable something is, that makes it worth saving. UNESCO world heritage sites exist for a reason. It just seems convenient that the same people who object to the removal of an arguably racist monument because of “history”, are the same people who thinks it's fine to destroy even older, historical monuments of the Native Americans, for mining purposes. You can try all you want to disentangle this from politics, but somehow this (to me) crystal clear issue is connected to the political spectrum.
Jefferson Davis may have been a leader of such calibre that he was selected to be the president of a fledgling nation (for his being a “champion of slave society”), but he symbolizes the Confederacy, a rogue nation that separated from the United States because they supported slavery. (I know lots of people like to argue that it was a war for states' rights, but I challenge you to name one single right besides slavery they were fighting for.) It is impossible to separate the image of Jefferson Davis from slavery, so if we're to make any inroads in the battle against racism, to have him towering over us, reminding us of how half the nation was so passionately supportive of the dehumanization of an entire of race of people, that they were willing to not only die, but kill their neighbors to defend that dehumanization.
There are no Nazi statues in Germany. The racist Nazi regime lasted for 12 years and is probably the single most defining, and dark moment of modern German history, if not the 20th century. But there are very few people who are screaming, “Hitler was our history! He needs to be preserved!” (probably because they would be speaking German, but that's beside the point). That would be ludicrous. Anyone who says that would be considered a racist, an anti-semite, a fringe member of society. Yet, some people want to claim that the five year racist Confederate regime is a part of our history and needs to be preserved. The hypocrisy is clear. Sure, the Nazis were inarguably worse, but the symbolism is the same. Waving a Nazi flag carries with it the instant admittance of white supremacy, so how can anyone argue that waving the confederate flag is any different? Many of our American ancestors died fighting for racism. But these are not the deaths we should commemorate. If my grandfather thought that killing black people was fun, I would denounce him whether he's my grandfather or not. I don't care how much of a good hugger he was. If I didn't reject him, that would mean I condone his actions. An if you don't denounce your confederate ancestors, you're doing the same. And if you call them heroes, that means YOU SUPPORT SLAVERY! It's very straightforward. There's no two-ways about about it. To celebrate the history of the confederacy is to celebrate racism. To glorify the fallen heroes of the South is to glorify slavery. And if state governments continue to commemorate the confederacy by keeping confederate monuments on government property, that's akin to keeping a giant swastika in front of the Reichstag. These statues are literally putting these disgusting people on a pedestal.
These are not old monuments, hastily erected during the short time of The Confederate States. Most were built in the 1900s! You have to question why somebody would support the building of these statues 50 years after the abolition of slavery. Many of them are not particularly beautiful or architectural achievements that people 100 years from now will find impressive. Their destruction is not going to stop the flow of tourist dollars to the American South.
So why do so many Southerners feel the need to continually glorify the lives of these people, other than nationalism for a country that invaded the United States of America 160 years ago, so they could keep their slaves?
As I mentioned, I'm not a huge advocate for the destruction of the past. I think countries like Germany or Cambodia have done a great job at finding the balance between preserving the memory of their dark past without glorification. Auschwitz and The Killing Fields still stand, turned into museums so people can sombrely respect the millions who died and remember people of how whole nations of people can go astray enough to commit genocide. The Kaiser Wilhelm Memorial Church still stands in Berlin as a reminder of the ultimate destruction that came from the Nazi regime.
If we feel the need to keep our monuments for the Confederacy, do what Hungary or Russia did with their monuments to the Soviet Union, place them all in a park, so people can still see them, but wrapped in the message that it was WRONG. I think we need to make sure that the right history is being taught. Americans need to know about the horrors our nation committed in Vietnam, in Laos, in the Philippines, in South America. They need to know that the UN supported the genocidal Khmer Rouge until 1993. Brits need to know how their nation raped the glorious wealth of India or Africa. The people of the South need to be taught that their ancestors thought slavery was worth dying for. We need to make sure none of these things are forgotten. But glorifying our dark history is not the way to do it.
We're living in a time of social unrest, one could even say this is soft revolution. It's not uncommon in these situations for people to lash out against the symbols of the establishment people are rallying against. For example, in the 1956 revolution, the people of Budapest stormed the city park and pulled down the 25m high statue of Stalin, easily the most obvious symbol of the Soviet system they were rebelling against. Only a handful would claim that this was not a justified reaction to oppressive rule. And it would be ludicrous to object on the grounds that Stalin is a part of their history (I mean, the statue was only five years old at that point too.). Stalin had to go. The Hungarian people were sick of oppression, and to keep it looming above them would have been a capitulation, an admittance that no matter how hard they fight, there would never be change. This is only one example in a long history of the destruction of cultural relics in periods of social change. When army's invade (liberate) cities, it is the idols of the previous regime that are first destroyed.
Therefore, it's understandable that when we are experiencing a revolution against the hundreds of years of subjugation of a race of people by society, that people unleash that anger on the symbols of that subjugation: African imperialism, slavery, the Confederacy, Jim Crow, and segregation. Frank Rizzo needs to go. Jefferson Davis needs to go. God damn it, Leopold II needs to go! He should never have celebrated in the first place. This is not just done for symbolism, but catharsis. It feels good to look Stalin in the eye as his head lies, damaged at your feet.
This is not to say that this isn't a nuanced issue. For every obvious example of terrible symbolism we can no longer keep, there's five more that are fuzzy. What do we do with monuments to the architects of cities, nations even, who were deeply flawed people that supported racist institutions? Is it time to destroy statues of Churchill? Do we blow up Mount Rushmore, The Jefferson and Washington memorials, because two of the nation's greatest leaders were slave owners? Well, most people would say no. These are cultural landmarks. They're not simple statues, but architectural wonders. These don't just represent the men, but the wealth and power of America itself. But that wealth and power was built upon oppression. Do these represent that oppression? I don't know. Personally, I think these are objects of cultural significance that we need to retain. But if the Nazi's had carved the face of Hitler into the mountains near the Berghof, all but the most adamant Nazi sympathizers would want it dynamited. Clearly, being a feat of human ingenuity does not save things from destruction.
What do we do with Edward Colston the slave trader whose philanthropic work helped establish many of the institutions and buildings of Bristol? What do we do with Bristol itself or Liverpool, cities that grew to great prominence from their involvement with the slave trade and imperialism? With the right frame of mind, we could start tearing down whole sections of cities, saying the very fabric our current society is itself a symbol of oppression. A lot of people seem to be siding with this view. Is it hypocritical to say that monuments should be destroyed, but the cities that can have an even greater symbolic power should stay? I think most would argue that, no, we can't burn down our entire society because of its dark origins, we need building and schools and stores. The dictator Ceaușescu's palace is still in use in Bucharest. So is it functionality that determines if we should preserve something?
What about the statues of Christopher Columbus? He started this whole mess. He brought with him waves and waves of Europeans and sparked the genocide of an entire continent! And his most famous contribution to history, the “discovery” of America, wasn't even his (personally, I say take them down. I've been anti-Columbus for my whole life. I've never understood why we celebrated him over all the other explorers.) Well, that's a tough one too. Because if we are looking for where to point fingers as to where this whole mess started, then we'd better prepare to have sore fingers. One argument the preservationist have that I do support, is that this can very easily become a slippery slope of destruction the further back we go in history. Should we change the names of our cities and states because they were named after the British monarchs who spurred on the western expansion? If Rhodesia is a racist name, is Virginia too? Or have these been established for so long that they've lost their symbolic power, become just names?
The Red Fort, Fatehpur Sikri, and Taj Mahal were built by an imperialist regime that invaded Northern India from Central Asia. They are arguably some of the most beautiful buildings ever built, bringing millions of tourists to India. Are these symbols of oppression? Well, most would assert they are 500 year-old symbols of the greatness of Indian culture, with the Mughals seen as merely a chapter of the long march of shifting empires in the Sub-Continent. Would we encourage their destruction if we all suddenly see a mass shift towards the demonization of the Mughals? I'd like to argue that we can't. Is the beauty of the Taj Mahal? Is it that the Taj Mahal makes the city of Agra a ton of money? What about the aesthetically pleasing East India Company's buildings in Kolkata? They also bring tourists to India? Then we have the Colosseum of Rome, maybe the world's most striking and enduring symbol of slavery, oppression, and imperialism ever built. Is it time for that to go? Is beauty or public interest that makes something worth saving? Is it profit potential?
Naturally, there's no easy answer to any of these questions, but we do have to remember that people reassess their landmarks all the time. Streets change names. Buildings, even whole blocks get destroyed. Statues that remind us of a shameful past get torn down. This is the march of time. Sometimes people go too far in pushing forward, look at the Cultural Revolution in China if you need an example. I'm not saying that the destruction of our past and culture is something that should be taken lightly.
So how do we decide what's too valuable to our cultural heritage? Well, this needs to be done in a case-by-case basis. I'd say the older something is, the more beautiful something is, the more incredible of an achievement, yes, the more profitable something is, that makes it worth saving. UNESCO world heritage sites exist for a reason. It just seems convenient that the same people who object to the removal of an arguably racist monument because of “history”, are the same people who thinks it's fine to destroy even older, historical monuments of the Native Americans, for mining purposes. You can try all you want to disentangle this from politics, but somehow this (to me) crystal clear issue is connected to the political spectrum.
Jefferson Davis may have been a leader of such calibre that he was selected to be the president of a fledgling nation (for his being a “champion of slave society”), but he symbolizes the Confederacy, a rogue nation that separated from the United States because they supported slavery. (I know lots of people like to argue that it was a war for states' rights, but I challenge you to name one single right besides slavery they were fighting for.) It is impossible to separate the image of Jefferson Davis from slavery, so if we're to make any inroads in the battle against racism, to have him towering over us, reminding us of how half the nation was so passionately supportive of the dehumanization of an entire of race of people, that they were willing to not only die, but kill their neighbors to defend that dehumanization.
There are no Nazi statues in Germany. The racist Nazi regime lasted for 12 years and is probably the single most defining, and dark moment of modern German history, if not the 20th century. But there are very few people who are screaming, “Hitler was our history! He needs to be preserved!” (probably because they would be speaking German, but that's beside the point). That would be ludicrous. Anyone who says that would be considered a racist, an anti-semite, a fringe member of society. Yet, some people want to claim that the five year racist Confederate regime is a part of our history and needs to be preserved. The hypocrisy is clear. Sure, the Nazis were inarguably worse, but the symbolism is the same. Waving a Nazi flag carries with it the instant admittance of white supremacy, so how can anyone argue that waving the confederate flag is any different? Many of our American ancestors died fighting for racism. But these are not the deaths we should commemorate. If my grandfather thought that killing black people was fun, I would denounce him whether he's my grandfather or not. I don't care how much of a good hugger he was. If I didn't reject him, that would mean I condone his actions. An if you don't denounce your confederate ancestors, you're doing the same. And if you call them heroes, that means YOU SUPPORT SLAVERY! It's very straightforward. There's no two-ways about about it. To celebrate the history of the confederacy is to celebrate racism. To glorify the fallen heroes of the South is to glorify slavery. And if state governments continue to commemorate the confederacy by keeping confederate monuments on government property, that's akin to keeping a giant swastika in front of the Reichstag. These statues are literally putting these disgusting people on a pedestal.
These are not old monuments, hastily erected during the short time of The Confederate States. Most were built in the 1900s! You have to question why somebody would support the building of these statues 50 years after the abolition of slavery. Many of them are not particularly beautiful or architectural achievements that people 100 years from now will find impressive. Their destruction is not going to stop the flow of tourist dollars to the American South.
So why do so many Southerners feel the need to continually glorify the lives of these people, other than nationalism for a country that invaded the United States of America 160 years ago, so they could keep their slaves?
As I mentioned, I'm not a huge advocate for the destruction of the past. I think countries like Germany or Cambodia have done a great job at finding the balance between preserving the memory of their dark past without glorification. Auschwitz and The Killing Fields still stand, turned into museums so people can sombrely respect the millions who died and remember people of how whole nations of people can go astray enough to commit genocide. The Kaiser Wilhelm Memorial Church still stands in Berlin as a reminder of the ultimate destruction that came from the Nazi regime.
If we feel the need to keep our monuments for the Confederacy, do what Hungary or Russia did with their monuments to the Soviet Union, place them all in a park, so people can still see them, but wrapped in the message that it was WRONG. I think we need to make sure that the right history is being taught. Americans need to know about the horrors our nation committed in Vietnam, in Laos, in the Philippines, in South America. They need to know that the UN supported the genocidal Khmer Rouge until 1993. Brits need to know how their nation raped the glorious wealth of India or Africa. The people of the South need to be taught that their ancestors thought slavery was worth dying for. We need to make sure none of these things are forgotten. But glorifying our dark history is not the way to do it.
